


Shards

by KerylRaist



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-12 13:45:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 142
Words: 656,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1187472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KerylRaist/pseuds/KerylRaist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The version of Shards To A Whole that went AU at chapter 290. This one's not going to make a lick of sense unless you've read the other one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Another stake out. By Tim's best estimate this is hour 4,872 of this day of staking out.

They're in a bus terminal, in something that looks like a bus, which is actually the com center for keeping eyes on the locker which is currently holding fake travel documents and more than five hundred thousand euros. Sooner or later their perp has to show up and collect this, after all, he can't get out of the country, let alone get away with his robbery, if he leaves the damn money in the terminal forever.

So, sooner or later, he's got to show up to grab the stuff.

But sooner wasn't yesterday, and it wasn't the day before yesterday, and right now Tim's sure as hell it's not going to be today.

So, he's sitting next to Tony, whom he rarely gets alone time with anymore.

"What are you working on?" Tim asks without looking away from the monitors. They take turns, half an hour on half an hour off. That's as long as anyone can focus, hour after hour, day after day on a fucking locker. It's Tim's half hour on.

Tony makes a non-committal sound, and keeps typing away at something. Tim assumes that's Tony's version of his holding up one finger, let me finish this thought before it goes skittering away.

So he does, sitting there, listening to the clicking of Tony's fingers on his keyboard, watching the locker that no one is showing any interest in at all. His fingers tap the desk he's sitting at, and he makes a mental note that next time they're breaking into the locker, tagging everything with RFIDs, and waiting for the signal to move instead of sitting here staring until their eyes fall out.

Tony stops typing and looks up at him. "Okay, what was that?"

"Just asking what you were working on."

"Oh. Reynolds," the marriage counselor they were seeing, "asked both of us to write the five best and worst things about our parents' marriages. A what did we learn from growing up like this, kind of thing."

Tim nods, that makes sense to him. "Don't marry anyone younger than your kids?"

Tony smiles wryly. "Believe it or not, that doesn't actually make my top five."

"Yikes!"

With a nod, Tony goes back to looking at his screen. "How about yours?"

Tim shrugs, wanting to look away from the monitors, but doesn't. "I don't know. Stay in the same hemisphere? Don't know enough about how their marriage worked to really know."

"You were there, right?"

"Yeah, I was. But my dad wasn't."

"Oh." Tony seems to think that's a good point. "How about good stuff?"

Tim shakes his head. "I've got nothing. How about you? What's your dad good at?"

Tony flashes him the patented DiNozzo smile. "Romance. He's always been good at that. Big gestures, little ones, no one makes a woman feel special the way my dad can. Sure, he'll be sleeping with the secretary and have a girlfriend on the side, but when there's money he's the guy who shows up with diamonds, 'just because they made me think of you,' and when he's broke, he can give a woman a daisy and make her feel like it's a diamond."

Tim thinks about DiNozzo Senior and has no trouble imagining that at all. "I can see that."

"Yeah." Tony sighs.

"Speaking of which, any news on Delphine?"

"You mean he's been with her nine months, isn't it about time he gets engaged again?"

"Something like that."

"Last I heard, they were still together and he had not yet gone engagement ring shopping. But at least half of the step-moms I learned about after the fact; I'm not holding out hope of him telling me about it ahead of time."

Tim nods at that, still staring at the monitor. "How many do you have done?"

"All five bad ones, one good one."

Tim nods and shuts up, letting Tony get back to his writing.

 

His own downtime. Finally getting to look away from the screen. He's got Jethro and Penny's notes back from Shadow Force and is thinking his way through them.

He stops for a moment, ideas tumbling around, nothing really concrete. Both of them noticed that one of the early scenes isn't really working, and he knows it isn't working, too. Knew it when he wrote it. It just kind of drags along, but he's still got to fill that chunk of time and drop that bit of information into the plot at that point…

He growls quietly at the notes in front of him, and Tony says, "Trouble in paradise?"

"Paradise is fine. Deep Six land is a bit different."

"So, is good old LJ Tibbs going to hang up his badge and hand the reins over to his trusted second-in-command Tommy DiGino?"

"Nah. LJ Tibbs is immortal. He's what moves books."

"Hard to believe the old man actually is going to hang it up."

"Yeah. He tell you he's already checked the regs to find out how much time per year he can Franks his way back into cases?"

Tony snorts at that. "He'll be Franksing his way back into your cases. He's not getting onto my team for at least a year."

"Is that for you or him?"

"Both of us." Tony's posture switches, straightens, and Tim catches it, sees what he's seeing. "Come on…" It's a man in a dark jacket who's gone past the locker three times now. "Open the locker…" Tony croons to the man. "Get us out of this prison…"

The man turns, takes two steps, and opens the locker three doors down.

"Damn it!" Tony says sharply.

Tim nods.

"I was thinking that we need to do something special for him," Tony says, getting back to what they had been talking about.

"Special how?"

"I don't know, yet. But we need to do something. Gibbs is retiring, that's big, that's planets shifting in their orbits, universes quaking big, and we need to do something to commemorate it."

"Yeah."

"Something better than a gold watch."

"Definitely."

 

Another half hour came and went, and one after that, as well.

And with those slowly crawling increments of time was a complete and utter lack of someone checking the locker.

Once again Tim was off and Tony was watching, and he got to thinking about the whole, 'you've brushed me off on the what was going on before Kelly was born bit.'

And, well, especially with talking to his mom last night, it's on his mind.

So… "I talked to my mom last night…"

"Mmmm…" Tony's watching the feed, not really paying any attention to him, which he doesn't mind; it's almost easier to say this if Tony's not entirely there.

But, less than three paragraphs in, when he gets to the got sick, cursing out Abby, stuck with Ducky knowing, Tony's paying attention, and by the time he got to the why he was saying things like that, why he even had phrases like that in his head, Tony's entirely paying attention to him.

Tim keeps talking about it, and also takes over on watching the monitors, because it's easier to just say this, without making any eye contact, and Tony's looking concerned, making the right sorts of concerned noises, and just, really, being a good friend, listening, taking it in, offering to beat the shit out of his dad and then tie him up and use him for target practice, stuff like that.

Tim can see it, out of the corner of his eye, Tony's on the verge of rage about this. He's furious about it. He's… he's doing everything a good friend should do.

And Tim's getting pissed. He can feel it just building, and he's not sure, at first, why. But he's really getting completely fucking pissed, rage into the sky, break things pissed.

And Tony's seeing it, looking more and more alarmed, as Tim's having a harder time keeping control of himself, and finally he says to him, "Tim, do you need to… I don't know… Do you need to go home?"

He's looking at Tim, eyes wide, concern radiating off of him, sincere anger and sorrow for him on his face, and Tim gets it, knows why he's pissed, knows why he wants to scream, and he nods, then got up, and left, without saying anything.

 

He texts Jethro on the way to the range, letting him know Tony needs backup. No he doesn't think anything is going to happen today, but that doesn't mean Tony needs to be there on his own.

Jethro asks what's going on, and he sends back one word. _Later._

_Okay. But we'll talk about it?_

_Yeah._

He shot through his first magazine, and the second one, and the third in fast succession, mostly just feeling the recoil and the force and the shattering satisfaction of seeing the target torn to shreds.

And it helped some.

He'd really like to fight. But it's the middle of the day, middle of a work day, so Jimmy's doing what Jimmy's supposed to be doing, working. Jethro's backing up Tony, and in no condition for it, and Ziva was on all night.

So he loads another mag. It's less satisfying, but eventually it gets the job done.

 

 

"Tim?" Abby's voice as he heads through the door.

"Yeah." He heads to the sofa, knowing she'll be over soon enough. And indeed, a minute later, he hears the flush of the toilet, rush of the sink, and then she was sitting next to him.

"What are you doing home at four in the afternoon?"

So he told her, and she was following along until he said, "And I was telling him, and just started feeling so angry, he's giving me perfect responses, sounding pissed on my behalf, and really concerned, and just…"

"Just…" she asks, not entirely sure what's going on with this.

"Just…" He looks away from her, eyes narrow, feeling the anger cresting through him again. "Like he didn't pull the same fucking shit on me for years!" He sees recognition light her face. She blinks slowly and wraps her arms around him. "Like he didn't superglue me to my desk. Like he didn't mock me for years. Like he didn't do everything he could to make me miserable. Like he didn't invent a fake woman for me to fall in love with. Like he didn't…" Tim shakes his head, and Abby holds him a bit closer.

"And I know it's been years since he's pulled any crap on me. Since he finally remembered that he used to get bullied, too, and how much it hurt. But I was talking to him, and he's looking at me with big, concerned eyes, and I just wanted to punch the ever-living fucking shit out of him over and over and over. I wanted to break my fingers on him.

"So he notices I'm not good, and asks if I need to go home, so I went."

"Oh, Tim," she strokes his hair and cheek.

"Yeah." He rubs his eyes and shake his head. "I don't even know what to do with this. It's been years… And he's just… clueless."

"Really?"

"If the idea that just possibly there's some sort of connection between how he treated me and me flipping out right now occurred to him, it was after I left."

"He on his own?"

"I sent in Gibbs."

"So, you can find out if it occurred to him. Or you could arrange for it to occur to him."

"Hm." He's not sure if he likes that idea or not. Then he shakes his head. If Gibbs smacks Tony upside the back of the head on it, it won't be on his say so. (Though he wouldn't mind if Gibbs did that.)

"What do you want him to do?" Abby asks, concern clear on her face.

"I don't know?" He's shaking his head.

"You're shaking your head. Really, what?"

His eyes narrow. "That reading micro-expressions class you took is turning out to be annoying."

She smiles at him. "Come on, what? You can always tell me anything. I'm not going to be offended. And even if you are overreacting, I'm not going to give you any crap about it. You're allowed to be a bit off kilter about this, especially right now."

He stares at the ceiling, and blows out a long breath. What does he want? "Acknowledgement that he was a fucking asshole to me for years. At least five, probably seven of them. That's a start. I want him to feel bad about it, really bad, and not because I'm some sort of fragile, damaged person who needs to be handled with kid gloves and can't take a joke, but because the way he treated me fucking sucked!"

He's staring at the fireplace, glaring at it. "I want him to know it wasn't just joking around. And it wasn't cool."

He looks back to Abby. "I want him to admit he stepped over the fucking line, and he did it over and over. I can take the McWhatevers, that's just him being him, and that's not the problem. But the superglue was just fucking sadistic. You remember how long it took for my face to heal up? He told all of the girls I was gay. The Claire thing… I mean, do you have any idea how long it must have taken him to set that up? Level five sorceress? Hours, weeks, of fucking around on that game so I could fall in love with a phantom, and then oh ha, so funny. Because my love life didn't suck bad enough back then! I needed to be rejected by every real girl I was even vaguely interested in, and then imaginary ones could yank my heart around, too.

"But, no, he's just clueless, listening, looking supportive, not a single idea in his big, fat, empty head that…" He lets that trail off. "I'm just going over the same stuff. I want him to hurt for it. And I know it's not cool-"

"And nothing. You don't have to make excuses for that. The only thing you've got to do is figure out if you want to talk to him about it, or if you want one of the rest of us to talk to him about it, or if you want to try and just let it go. You do not have to feel bad about being pissed off because you got bullied. And the fact that it was years ago doesn't mean it didn't hurt. And the fact that you took it, turned the other cheek, and smiled, doesn't mean you were cool with it. And the fact that he's not doing it anymore doesn't mean he gets a free pass for it."

Tim rests his head on her shoulder. "I don't tell you I love you nearly often enough. Could do it every minute of every day for the rest of my life, and it still wouldn't be enough."

She kisses him. "Back at ya, love. Back at ya."


	2. McGeek

_McGee says you need back up_ , flashed onto Tony's phone.

 _Yeah. Just need another set of eyes before I start to go bonkers._ Tony sent back.

_There in thirty._

 

Gibbs figures he could take the time to text or talk to Tony before getting to the stakeout, or he could just get there.

Won't take too long to grab his bag and get there, and sure, stakeout's only one step up from paperwork, but still, it's a step up, so off he goes.

He's wondering about what could have possibly happened to send Tim off in the middle of the day. New lead? He's got the computers with him…

No, he'd have called and said, not texted 'later.'

Which means it's not the case.

 

Gibbs would have rather driven. Would have only taken fifteen minutes if he had driven. But, on the off chance Geller is watching the terminal, having someone drive up, and then vanish inside would be a tip off.

So he takes the Metro and crutches his way for the last four blocks. It was nice to see his knee was holding pretty steady, but he knows he's going to be sore tonight.

Old guy with a crutch and book bag hobbling about the bus station isn't unheard of. He blends in awfully well.

He ambles over to one of the lines, moseys through it, shows his fake ticket (they set that up with the bus station when they started watching) and then heads through the line, blending with the other people stowing luggage, and enters the bus that's not a bus.

"What's going on?" he asks Tony as soon as he gets in.

Tony gestures to the monitors, and Gibbs starts watching. Then Tony takes a minute to get up, stretch, hit the head, and walk around for a bit.

"Tony?"

He sits back down. "Tim called his mom last night."

And Gibbs starts to get it. He knew that Tim hadn't told Tony or Ziva about all of what was going on, but now, apparently, he had.

"He told you about it?"

"Yeah. And he was really, really angry by the end of it. Looked like he wanted to hit someone, hard, a whole lot. So I sent him home."

Gibbs nods. He watches the monitor, hoping Tim's doing something useful, something that isn't self-destructive.

"Gibbs?"

He tilts his head a bit, signaling, I'm listening.

"The thing with his dad, it was just words, wasn't it?"

Gibbs shrugs. He doesn't think Tim lied to him or Jimmy about it. But he wouldn't put it past him to leave bits out or to have forced them out of his memory. "If it wasn't, he's not telling anyone."

Tony nods. "Why is John McGee still breathing?"

"Because Tim wants him to."

"Okay. That ever changes, I'm in."

"I know."

 

Four turns later, when it was back to Tony watching the monitor, a thought started to meander through Jethro's mind.

Every time he's talked to Tim about stuff like this, he starts out angry, and ends less angry. Sad, sure, shell-shocked, okay, but anger usually wanders off over the course of talking about this.

"He was getting pissed while telling you?"

"Yeah."

"Started off pretty cool and got upset?"

"Yeah." Tony's nodding. "Why?"

Gibbs shakes his head. "What happened with his mom?"

"They just talked."

"Nothing bad?"

"Not this time. Sounded like he didn't know what to do with what happened with her."

"Okay. You sent him off, did he look like he was about to do something stupid?"

"You mean like cut the shit out of himself by stepping into a tornado of broken glass?"

"Yeah."

"No. Just felt angry, really angry. Don't think I've ever seen him that angry."

Gibbs nods at that, too.

 

_You're not doing something stupid, are you?_

Two minutes later he got back. _Utterly destroyed a few pistol targets. Going home now._

 _Okay._ Left unspoken is, _Set an extra place, I'm coming over for dinner and we will talk about this_ , but he doesn't think he needs to say it, by now Tim knows.

"You texting him?" Tony asks.

"Yeah. Making sure he's okay."

"Is he?"

"Says so."

"Good."

Gibbs watches Tony. He can see Tony's thinking, hard, about this. He can see the anger and concern.

Apparently Tony can feel Gibbs' eyes burrowing into him, so he says, "I never even guessed it was that bad."

"Yeah. I didn't, either. Should have, but I didn't put it together."

"He didn't just remember, right? It wasn't he kept it down or blanked it out, and then it came back to him, right?"

"Don't think so. He just hit the point where he had to talk about it."

"God."

"Yeah."

"Should I tell Ziva?"

"I doubt he'd mind if you did. I know he doesn't like talking about it."

"Yeah, he told me he had to remember it to talk about it, and… And now I know why he blew me off twice."

That gets Gibbs thinking. He knows that Tim didn't call in Tony after he cut himself up. He realizes something else, Tim never calls in Tony for deep, personal, intimate stuff. Tim didn't tell Tony about moving out of the job to Cybercrime, he didn't tell Tony he was going to ask Abby to marry him, he didn't tell Tony they were dating. Tony was the last one to find out about Kelly. Tim never tells Tony about…

About anything he can be teased or bullied over.

He finally tells Tony about this, this huge, big, traumatic thing, and as he gets talking he gets angrier and angrier.

"Fuck."

"Gibbs?" Tony asks.

Jethro hadn't meant to say it out loud, but it slipped out, because he thinks he knows what's going on right now, and if he's right… "Did you say anything to him?"

"Not really. Listened mostly. Offered to help him kill his dad. Called his mom a bitch for going along with it. But not really, just let him talk. That's what you're supposed to do, right? Why?"

Jethro checks the clock on his monitor, still an hour before Ziva and Draga will show up for their shift. Two hours before he can get to Tim's.

"Did he seem angry _at you?_ "

He sees the recognition hit Tony, the way his eyes went from curious to blank to ashamed, and the soft, "Oh" that slips out on an exhale. "I…" he stops, not sure how to finish, and just lets it lie. "Fuck."

"Yeah."

"What the hell do I do with this?"

"Ignore six."

"Yeah! I get that. But…"

"But?"

"'I'm sorry' doesn't seem like it's enough."

"It might not be. You might have to take some of, hell, maybe a lot of, what you gave out before it's okay."

Tony sighs and says, "Yep. You going there after here?"

"Yeah."

"We're on shift again tomorrow. I'll go with you, try and get this done tonight."

 

Tony didn't go in. He waited in Gibbs' car. Sooner or later Tim'll come out, or he'll get a text telling him to go in.

He sits there, wondering how bad this is going to be.

He tries to remember how it felt when John Smith looked at him and said, "Why are you apologizing to me?"

Honestly, embarrassing mostly.

And there was some angry, but that was so far back… Mostly embarrassed, bad enough to have gone on and on about it, and then been wrong, about his own memories.

Gibbs had told him he didn't have to tell Tim. And he didn't. Have to, that is. But he did tell him, because it was the right thing to do.

He knew, after he talked to John, that he had flipped the story. He knew he was a victim in grade school and junior high because he was the 'homely' boy who spent too much time on his own watching movies and tended to cry at night when he thought about his mom. And he knew that by the time he hit high school he was dishing out all the shit he ever got, and then some, because if you were on the dishing it out side, you didn't have to take it. He beat his sympathy into submission, killed the part of him that felt for his victims, and went with it.

Eventually, he liked it. Eventually his laughter wasn't forced. Eventually it wasn't a protective gesture anymore. Eventually he enjoyed it, spent time planning new and more elaborate pranks.

Eventually he had a perfect mark, one who would take whatever he gave, always fell for whatever trap he set, who almost never gave him any crap back, and was always satisfyingly flustered.

And until he got talking about hanging John Smith up by his underwear, watching McGee respond to it, it didn't hit him that what he'd been doing was a really shitty thing.

And it wasn't until tonight, that just not doing it anymore, stopped being enough.

 

It occurs to Tony, as he waits (and waits, and waits, though in reality it's only been forty minutes) that part of really apologizing means opening yourself to whatever the person you wronged needs to do to feel right again.

That's the thing about apologies, the "I'm sorry, but…" isn't going to cut it. He can't stick a but on the end of this. He can't say, 'but I didn't know,' or 'but I was just joking,' or, 'but it happened to me, first,' or any of it. If he puts a but on the end of this, he's excusing his behavior, saying, on some level, it was okay, and that Tim doesn't have the right to be truly pissed at him.

If he's sorry, if he means it, he's got to take what Tim needs to do to make this right.

And given how much time Tim's been spending at the gym lately, and how angry he looked when he left, this might really hurt.

It occurs to him, as he slips into an hour of waiting, that even if Tim doesn't beat the shit out of him, he's good enough with words, and knows him well enough, that this might hurt on an entirely different level.

When hour one slipped into hour two, and he's still sitting out there, it occurs to Tony that maybe Tim doesn't want to see him, doesn't want to try to fix this, maybe all of the shit he's dealt out really is coming back to bite him in the ass in one huge, crippling chomp.

Then Tim was standing on his porch, all dressed up, kilt and boots and eyeliner and he must have gotten to the tattoo artist over the weekend because he can see the outline of the dragon on his calf, and…

And Tony closes his eyes, he thinks he knows what's going on.

This is Tim, in all his weird, McGeek, McGoth, McGoober glory, daring him to make an issue of it.

_Shit._

Honestly, it'd be easier to take the beating.


	3. Battle Gear

Habit helps. He and Abby make dinner, (and he made and extra serving for Jethro, fairly sure he'd be showing up at some point) deal with Kelly, and he rewrites that scene, tightening it up, rearranging it. It's zippier, maybe not great, but… it's solidly better.

And, as he's putting the last bits on his page, and Abby's getting food off the grill and into the kitchen, they do hear a car pull up.

Tim glances out of his office window and notices two people in Gibbs' car, even though only one of them heads into his home.

Gibbs doesn't knock, just comes in, and Tim greets him with, "I take it you two figured it out?"

Gibbs nods.

"He figure it out or you did?"

He does that little _could you have possibly asked me a different question because I don't want to lie but I'd rather the truth was different_ gesture.

"You did, then?"

Gibbs nods.

"Well, come on in. Abby's pulling the burgers off the grill."

"Burgers?" Gibbs asks. He didn't smell beef when he pulled up.

"Ground turkey, bacon, onion, and kalamata olives."

"Sounds good."

"Yep."

 

It isn't a ridiculously tense dinner. Gibbs isn't asking much, because he's figured it out. Abby's being supportive, asking about the case, distracting attention away from Tim, knowing that he's not really wanting to be in the middle of it right this second, especially not while eating.

But eventually, they do get done with the food, and Abby shoos them out of the kitchen, with a look and a pointed "Go, talk."

"You gonna make him sit out there all night?" Gibbs asks, both of them sitting in Tim's office.

"I might. Not really feeling like dealing with him."

"You're both on come 8:00."

Tim rolls his eyes. "I know. And I'm not running off again. I'll be on, and I'll work."

"Good."

"Not like I don't have practice at it."

Gibbs shoots him the _keep talking_ look.

"I was thinking about it when I was driving home, trying to remember how many years Tony was a condition I managed so that my career could work. At least three, maybe five. Seven before he started treating me like a real person. Had to go with you guys to Somalia and get Ziva back for that. At least, that's when he stopped calling me Probie."

The look on Gibbs' face is gentle. "That was never a sign of disrespect."

"When Franks did it to you. It was always a mark of my not being a real cop for Tony. It was his way of making sure I always knew I'd never be his equal. It was a way of making sure I never felt secure in my position, that I was always one screw up away from being tossed off the team."

Gibbs shrugs, he's not entirely sure how Tony understood the whole Probie thing, though he's doubtful Tim's right. Some sort of pet name, sure, but it probably was about making sure Tim knew his place (under Tony), too. But not a way of signalling he wasn't really part of the group.

"You want me to send him home? I can crash here, go in with you tomorrow."

"I don't know. Probably better off just getting it done."

"Probably." Tim's very much not getting up or heading to the door, and Gibbs sees it, and won't push him. He sits there, next to Tim, waiting, and another thought hits him, one that possibly hasn't hit Tim, one that's important, and one they didn't deal with before.

"I told you I was sorry I didn't see it. That I didn't look hard enough to see what was up with your parents. Tim, that wasn't enough. I saw him do it. Saw Kate do it. Saw Ziva do it, and I never stopped them. It was my team, I was in charge, I saw it and looked the other way. I'm sorry for that."

Tim stops staring at the window curtains, yanked away from his imaginary argument with Tony by those words.

"Jethro, no. Don't… I'm not some fragile, broken thing that needs extra protection."

"Not saying—"

"Yes, you are. You didn't protect Kate from him. You didn't shield Ziva or Jimmy. And I really doubt you feel bad about that."

That pulls Gibbs up short. "Never thought about it."

"Right. What he did never really even hit your hazing radar because compared to what the Marines dished out he was just teasing."

Gibbs acknowledges that with a look. "Still feel bad about it."

"Would it make you feel better if I got angry at you, too?"

Gibbs shrugs, then nods.

Tim snorts at him. "Too fucking bad. I'm angry at my dad, and I'm angry at my mom, and I want to hit Tony right now, and eventually I'll get pissed at Kate and Ziva, 'cause they both played along, too. But right now, I can't be angry at you. I need someone in my life besides just Abby that I'm not angry at…" He pauses as that, because that's not quite right. He's not pissed at Jimmy or Breena or Ducky or Penny or Sarah, or most of the people he loves. So it's something more than just needing a calm place in the storm. He looks at Gibbs, who is watching him figure out what's in his head, and feels it, knows what's going on. "I need a parent that I'm not angry at. So guess what? You get a pass. Maybe not forever, but for right now, you've got one. You may have scared the shit out of me by being constantly intimidating, but you never pranked me, you never glued me to anything, you've never called me McGeek, or pissed on my sex life, or called me a freak, so if that's setting the bar too low, I don't care. I need a dad. I need a man I can depend on to be there for me. I need someone I can look up to, who doesn't freak out about who I am or who I want to be. So, if you want me to be angry, too fucking bad, because I cannot bear to be angry at you, too."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

Gibbs nods. Seeing that the part of Tim that craves male approval is still there, still needing it. And suddenly gets, maybe on a level Tim doesn't or won't, why he 'managed' Tony for so long and put up with all of it, because Gibbs hadn't stepped into a Dad role back then, and Tony's jerk of a big brother was the closest thing Tim got to approval from an older male. "I'll take the pass." And I'll take your anger when you can handle it, too, is very clear on his face.

"Good." Tim stands up and heads out of his office toward the stairs.

"You gonna talk to him?"

"Eventually. Gotta get ready first."

 

It was saying the word freak, and saying to Gibbs what he needed from him that starts the idea of what Tim is going to do.

Tony's going to apologize. He is going to be sorry for what he did. He is going to own up to it, and see the man in the mirror wasn't all that pretty.

All of that is going to happen.

But something else is going to happen, too.

Tim's drawing his lines. He's going to spell out exactly what he needs from Tony, and it's not going to be Tony feeling bad, because really, that doesn't do anything, that just makes him feel a little better.

He needs a friend who can see who he is, recognize it, accept it, and support it.

 

Clothing can be a shield, or depending on how you use it, a weapon.

Tim's always used it as a shield. Blend in, be quiet, don't attract attention, dress like the rest of the herd and you'll take less flack. For him, for a very long time, the primary purpose of his clothing was a way to make sure no one noticed him.

Which isn't to say that he's got anything against office casual jeans and button downs, unlike Abby, he's genuinely comfortable in them. Because when you wear armor long enough, it molds to you, becomes a second skin, fits your flesh and makes you feel safe.

They're genuinely him. Because the defense mechanism they represent is genuinely him, as well.

The kilt and the tattoos and the boots and the eyeliner are all him, too. The part of him that isn't afraid to attract attention.

And right now, Tony is going to deal with all of him, especially the parts of him that make Tony uncomfortable. Tonight he's going out there, all of himself visible, and using his clothing as a weapon instead of a shield.

 

Takes about half an hour to get dressed, and fifteen minutes of that is the nail polish. He checks the NCIS regs while they dry, and notices that there is nothing in the dress code against male agents wearing nail polish. Which he supposes makes sense, the ladies are allowed to wear it, and if they are, NCIS can't ban the male agents if they don't want to get hit with a sexual discrimination suit.

Which means unlike every other time he's done his nails, he's not taking it off before heading to work. All tomorrow his nails, matte black, are going to be looking up at Tony, taunting him, taking him to task, making him deal with the fact that Tim's different, that he likes being different, and if Tony's really his friend, he'll stop trying to force him into a Tony-shaped mold.

See if he can make it through a full day stuck in a bus, just the two of them, without some snide comment designed to make Tim feel bad about it and Tony feel more comfortable because he's made Tim feel bad about it.

Tim's not feeling intensely hopeful about that.

 

Eyeliner was another five minutes. Hasn't done it for himself in forever, so he muffs the first two tries.

Third shot is a charm.

And unlike the nail polish which is black, he did a version of Abby's trick of green and gray. He did it in green and black. It's very obvious, and femme, and it's obvious and femme because he doesn't want to hide that part of himself either, and he knows it, like the kilt (The _skirt_ Tony calls it, always calls it.) will bug Tony.

He slips on his collar. He's not sure if Tony actually knows what it means. (He was on vice for a few years, so he might, but he's so goddamned vanilla he may not.) He's never worn it in front of Tony, or anyone else in their family who isn't Abby, but on the off chance he does know what it means, it'll bug the shit out of Tony, so he puts it on.

Years ago, when they were first dating, Tony freaked out when he walked in on Tim running the game. Probably would have wet his pants if he'd wandered in a week earlier or later, and seen one where Abby was running things, let alone doing him with the strap on.

Anything outside of the normal 'male' role bugs Tony, makes his inner frat boy itch, makes him feel like he's got to shut it down, because he can't get outside of the big, swinging dick version of masculinity.

 

Abby comes in while he's lacing up the boots. She looks him up and down, and says, "Ready for battle, then?"

"Yeah."

She puts her hands on his shoulders and kisses him, and then rests her palm on his cheek. "Just remember, he is your friend, you do love him, and you will miss him if you burn the bridge between you two."

He sighs, because dressed for battle, looking to piss Tony off, calling him a condition he managed, angry as all get out, he knows that she's right. "I know."

"And you are right to be angry, and to expect an apology, and to make him see who you are and accept it."

He nods at that, too. "He ever give you any shit about the Goth stuff?"

"No. But I know I scared the hell out of him the first few months he was at NCIS. He'd try to be cool about it, but he didn't like being alone in a room with me." She kisses him one more time, slow, lips lingering over his, then pulls back. "I really like the eyeliner."

He half-smiles at her. "It'll probably still be one when I come back."

"Good."

 

He half-notices that Jethro is on the sofa with Kelly as he heads out, but he doesn't pause long enough to catch his eye as he left.

He stands on the front porch, staring at Tony in Gibbs' car, and then crooks his finger at Tony, watching him get out.

After about thirty seconds, Tony is standing there, in front of him, looking really sheepish.

Tim raises his left eyebrow a little, and says, dryly, "Comments, DiNozzo?"

He watches Tony's eyes slide up and down his body, linger on his nails, collar, and eyes, feeling the waves of deeply uncomfortable oozing off of him, but all he says is, "Is your leg supposed to look like that?"

Tim glances down. "Yeah, three day old tats look like that. Skin gets red, shiny, and flakey. It'll be worse when I go back for the first layer of shading in a month. So, that all you got for me? Nothing about the skirt or the boots or the nail polish or eyeliner?"

Tony shakes his head.

"You've never been afraid of hurting my feelings before. Why so fucking silent, now? After all, nothing's changed. Still the same guy I was yesterday, and yesterday, you would have said a hell of a lot more than, 'Is your leg supposed to look like that?' Yesterday you'd have had at least a half-dozen things to say about the nail polish alone."

"Yesterday you weren't pissed at me."

Tim shrugs. He's not sure if yesterday he wasn't pissed, or if yesterday pissed was so deeply buried that he just couldn't find it. Or maybe, yesterday, so long had gone between something that Tony had done that genuinely had pissed him off (walking in on him and Abby and then freaking out about it) and now, that stupid little annoying crap just didn't matter.

"I'm sorry, Tim."

Tim stands there, impassive, unimpressed, and waits.

Tony's just looking at him… No. Tim's eyes narrow. He's looking slightly to the side of him, eyes wide and earnest, deeply uncomfortable, not saying anything.

"Why?"

For a second Tim sees a flash of annoyance on Tony and the sort of expression that he'd characterize as being about to say, _Don't be a girl. Don't make me figure out why, let alone say it,_ but embarrassed and uncomfortable kills it pretty quick.

"I hurt you. And that wasn't cool."

Tim shakes his head. "Not good enough."

Apparently, Tony wasn't expecting that. "What?"

"Did I stutter? Use words that were too big for you to follow? Those two syllable ones can be tricky, especially for a phys ed major. Not. Good. Enough."

Tony just stares at him, earnest is gone and shocked to hell and gone has replaced it. "I…" but he can't think of anything to go with that, so he doesn't follow it up with anything.

"Yeah, you hurt me, or at least fucking tried to, but hell, I dealt with crap like what you pulled every single day when my dad was home and being nice. McGeek doesn't quite do much when you've heard fag, cocksucker, cunt, pussy, failure, waste of space, retard, and disappointment. And having half my face ripped off when I had to pull it off my desk hurt, but compared to being threatened with gang rape by someone who meant it…" Tim shakes his head derisively.

"It's not about me being hurt." Well, it is, but they'll get there, eventually, mostly this is about being angry, and letting it out. "It's about you being a sadistic asshole who got off on pain and fear. It's about never thinking about anyone who wasn't you. Yeah, it's about me because I'm standing here in front of you and you've got to keep dealing with me, but it's also about every other person you hurt. It's about jokes and lies and pranks and all those women you never called back and the fact that you're the sorry son of a bitch who constantly needed to cut everyone else around him down to make himself feel like he was worth anything.

"That's all it ever was for you. You're standing there, hurting, powerless, so you decided to spread it around, make sure everyone around you hurt, too, because maybe if they were hurting you'd be okay. Because if they were hurting, and you got to do it, you got the power back. Well, it wasn't fucking okay. It was a shit way to buy yourself some respect."

Tony still just stands there, and Tim can see there are things he probably wants to say, but that he's also with it enough to know that saying those things probably isn't a good plan.

"Come on, this is where you say something about you were just joking, just fooling around, and it was no big deal and…"

Tony shakes his head. He might want to say it, he probably still believes it, but he sure as hell isn't going to say it, not to Tim, not today.

Tim's glaring at him, because he can see that Tony's embarrassed by this, and that he's feeling pretty crappy, and that he's got enough self-preservation instincts to not shoot his mouth off now, but he's not getting the sense that this is going any deeper than Tony feeling bad about finding out he picked on a kid who was already broken.

"It was never just a joke, Tony. You weren't fooling around. You wanted me scared. You wanted me nervous. You wanted me uncomfortable. It wasn't enough that I was young, and new, and green, and trusting. And it wasn't enough that I wasn't as smooth, or attractive, or confident. It wasn't enough that you're a decade older, had thirteen years more experience on the job, women hanging on you, and that just about everyone took one look at you and liked you. That didn't fill the hole, so you had to keep cutting my legs out from under me. You wanted me to know, in every, single, possible way that I was not your equal, that I did not deserve even the simple, basic respect of using my name.

"So, no, 'I'm sorry I hurt you,' isn't good enough. It wasn't an accident. It wasn't like you stepped on my fucking toe. And you're not even really sorry you hurt me, if that was true it wouldn't have taken thirteen years for us to get here. If you were sorry because you hurt me, you'd have said so back when you were still doing it, or when you stopped doing it. You're sorry because you're realizing I'm not what you'd consider a good target. You're sorry because you feel guilty about kicking someone who was already down.

"Well, fuck you and fuck your sorry!" He sees Tony wince at that, and he looks like he wants to argue, but he still doesn't say anything. "I don't want or need you to be sorry because you just found out that I wasn't a good target. I am not some soft, broken little thing that needs your pity on top of all the shit you poured on me. I don't need you to feel bad about the fact that I'm pissed."

"What do you need?"

"I doubt you can give it to me."

"I can try."

"I need you to know it wasn't just fooling around. I can see you aren't willing to defend it, not to me, not right now, but I can also see this isn't going any deeper than not pissing me off so bad that I hit you. I need you to own what you did. I need you to look in the mirror and see who you were. I need you to know what you did was wrong. I need that switch to flip from 'McGee's fragile and can't take a joke,' to 'what I did was cruel.'"

Tony's still just listening, still not defending, and still not really looking him in the eye, but he does say, "And…" when Tim slows down, recognizing that the bullying isn't all of it.

"And I need you to be able to look at this, look at me, and not freak out about it. Any other day you'd be cutting on me because I'm outside your definition of comfortable and you don't know how to just let it lie. You're not looking me in the eye, and it's not because you're ashamed, it's because you don't know how to handle the fucking eyeliner."

Tony shrugs, and Tim watches him, looking deep, trying to see where to take this next.

"It's not just getting off on pain. It's not just that hurting other people made you feel better. You were the different kid, once, right? And it hurt. They hurt you for it? So you let them beat it out of you, and you turned it, and started to try and beat it out of everyone else around you. Just like you flipped that story, you flipped who you were? Well, fuck that, too. You don't try to get to make me into another version of you. You don't get to try to beat my differences into submission to make you feel better.

"That's why, really, you flipped out when you walked in on me and Abby. Because everyone has to be like you. Because you've got no sense of yourself in a vacuum. There's no Tony there, there's just a mirror showing different images of what everyone else expects and it freaks you the fuck out every time you run into someone who really is a person.

"Well, guess what, here I am, a real person. I always was. And I'm done hiding it to make you feel more comfortable. I'm done taking shit, from you or anyone else. This is me. I'm edging toward forty. I'm a cop and a poet and a writer and a husband and father. I've mastered more fields than you've ever dabbled at. I'm successful in one that's hard on your soul and another that requires you to be the one guy out of a hundred thousand who puts the words on the page that people want to read. And yeah, I had to work at both of them to get there, because it wasn't easy, and I was clumsy and awkward at anything I ever tried besides computers, but I put the work in and got there. And you've mocked all of it, every step of the fucking way. In less than a year, I'll run my own department and I'll have sold more than five hundred thousand copies of my books. I've got money, talent, brains, the adoration of a beautiful wife, and a gorgeous baby girl. I like makeup, kilts, leather, games, computers, kinky sex you probably can't even imagine, and all the boring, normal, everyday life stuff that you can. All of it is real, all of it is me, and you don't get to define me or try to force me into a little box that makes you feel comfortable."

He's breathing fast, staring hard at Tony, challenging him, daring him to say something, give him an excuse to take this up to a fist fight, but all Tony does is nod and say, "Okay, Tim."

"Go get his bag for me, and head home. I'll bring him in, and see you in the morning."

Tony nods, heads back to Gibbs' car, grabs his go bag, and hands it back.


	4. Stakeout

Abby and Gibbs are looking at him when he heads in. Abby speaks first. "That sounded like the single least satisfying telling off you've ever done."

Tim nods, slowly and sits down next to her.

"It doesn't work if he doesn't fight."

Gibbs and Abby both acknowledge that.

"I put your go bag in my office. Looks like I'm taking you in tomorrow."

"No problem."

Tim's not really paying any attention to anything, just letting the feeling of right this second, and how… disappointing it is, rush though him.

He'd only fantasized about telling Tony off fifty million times those first five years, and a good six or seven million times in the five years after that, and maybe only ten or twenty times in the last three years, and this, just… wasn't it.

"Gibbs, you good on stairs now?" he asks. Because he doesn't know what to do to get whatever it is he wants out of Tony, but he does know that his office isn't the most comfortable sleeping environment ever.

"Yeah."

"You want our guest room?"

Gibbs shakes his head. "I'm good downstairs."

"You sure?" Abby asks. "Bed's bigger upstairs, more comfortable."

"It's quieter downstairs," he says with a smile.

Abby giggles a little at that. Tim sees it, flashes him a, _I'm so done with you_ look at Gibbs, rolls his eyes, sees Gibbs grin at him, trying to jolly him, rolls his eyes again, not angry so much as just… whatever the hell this is… and heads upstairs.

 

Yeah, he would have rather taken the beating.

Hell, he still might rather take the beating.

Just because Tim didn't say it, doesn't mean that 'Go home, think about what an asshole you are, and we'll get back to this tomorrow,' wasn't clear when Tim sent him off.

Fuck.

 

What's Murphy's Law? Everything that can go wrong, will, at the worst possible time?

Something like that. Because it's not like he isn't dealing with enough of this shit with Ziva right now. Not like he's not constantly having to think about it with their marriage counselor.

No, toss on another heaping serving of not being good enough for the people you love. Bring it on, more the merrier, right?

 

Normally, if he was having this bad of a day, he'd go home, listen to some music with Ziva, share dinner with her, probably not talk, not about why he's in a funk, they're both better off with just being quiet about it. But they'd talk about something else, like the book she's reading and how it got turned into a movie. Or how the book and the movie were different and why and how it works. Or a case. Or office gossip. Or the family. Or politics… or something.

And it'd get his mind off of it.

And she'd snuggle into him, and he'd hold her close, remember that he's loved, and that he loves, and there's a peaceful place in his heart and home and that's her.

But she's not home. She's with Draga, in the bus, watching the monitor.

And right now, they may be doing better, but they aren't back to good yet, and she's probably not going to be wildly sympathetic to the idea that Tim's really overreacting. Let alone to the idea that he doesn't deserve this level of comeback for the years of crap he laid on McGee.

 

Normally, he'd go to Gibbs' place if he was having this bad of a day and Ziva was working.

But Gibbs is at Tim's. (Probably whacking himself upside the back of the head. Not like he doesn't know Gibbs well enough to see him feeling guilty, too.)

And if Gibbs is already feeling guilty, he's sure as hell not going to be particularly good on the comfort front.

 

Normally, if this was before Ziva, and Gibbs was busy, he'd go pick up a woman at a bar. Have a few drinks, flirt, let her body get him out of his head, remind him that people want him, that he is pretty and fun and…

Shit.

And exactly what Tim just said to him, and what the counselor's been hinting at, trying to get him to say for himself. (So far with less than successful results.)

 

He's fairly sure Jimmy would just look at him and say, "Karma's a bitch."

Or maybe something about that part of why you don't pull the kind of crap he did on Tim is because you don't know, you never know, not really, what the back story is and who the guy you're pulling that crap on is.

He's fairly sure that some of the guys who used to pick on him back in boarding school would have felt really bad about it if they knew his mom had just died.

They wouldn't have laughed so hard about him loving old movies if they knew why.

 

His apartment is empty. There's nothing here but him and space and quiet and thoughts the he's had more than often enough and doesn't really like.

He pours himself a drink and shoots it down. Then pours another, and goes slowly. He watches about ten minutes of seven different movies, none of them catching him.

 

The other thing about apologizing is this: just because you rationally know that if you mean it, you need to lie down and take what's coming, doesn't mean you like it.

And Tony doesn't.

And just because you mean it, doesn't mean the other person is in enough control to be fair or even-handed or anything other than so fucking pissed they can't see straight. He literally just did this with Ziva, just let his own anger and fear go spewing around, hurting her just because he was so hurt he couldn't deal with it.

And just because, rationally, he knows this is part of what Tim's doing, doesn't mean that it's not pissing him off, too.

And he especially doesn't like the fact that Tim's taking him to task for things that are over. Things he can't change or do anything about. He's already made the change he needed to make to be a better man. He hasn't pulled any of this shit in years.

Sure, Tim and Jimmy have this being a good man thing down pat. Sure, they're great at it and it doesn't take any work, and they can just be married and kind and useful and all the rest of that shit. Great.

Doesn't mean it's easy for him.

Doesn't mean he doesn't work at it every goddamn day.

Doesn't mean he doesn't see dozens of openings from Tim and Draga and Jimmy and everyone else, and physically forces himself to not take them.

Doesn't mean the eyeliner doesn't make him squirm, the kilt isn't creepy, and the fucking collar, does Tim know what the fuck he's saying when he wears that out? Really? Is he going to make that big a deal of it?

He never says half, hell, a third of what that stuff makes him think, not anymore. Won't say it because it's mean and because he's working hard at not being that guy anymore, because that guy was an asshole, and it doesn't fucking matter if he's trying because apparently the last two years are just shit to Tim, and what matters is what came before, what can't be changed, and being sorry about it isn't enough.

It's not enough to regret what he did, no, Tim wants him to regret who he is, and that's just not fucking happening.

 

 

"Cute nails," Tony says as he steps into the bus.

Tim glances away from the monitor and glares at him. "Seven seconds. Even I thought you could go longer than that."

Tony sits next to him, staring at his nails for a few seconds and then looking at the monitor. "That's why you've still got the polish on, right? Trying to push my buttons and make me say something about it. Why waste time?"

"Yep. Passive aggressive argument technique. Good way to spot someone who spent most of his life getting bullied. I was thinking you had enough self-control that it wouldn't be, literally, the first thing out of your mouth."

"Yeah, well, I've got a reputation as a sadistic asshole to keep up, so I can't let little things like politeness get in the way."

Tim stares at him, seeing that Tony's ready to fight. Whatever happened last night after he went home has him fired up now. _Good._ "What, you think that wasn't accurate? Think you don't deserve that?" He switches into a babying voice. "Did I hurt your poor little feelings?"

"Fuck you. And no. I don't deserve that! I haven't pulled any crap on you or anyone else in years. No matter how much you're begging for it."

Tim snorts at that. "You still get off on it. You still want it."

"That's not fair. Doesn't matter if I still like it. I don't _do_ it anymore."

"You think I give a fuck about fair right now?" Tim says, shaking his head. "Your regularly scheduled mild-mannered Tim who cares about stuff like fair is _gone_ right now. I don't give a flying fuck about fair. Yeah, it's been years. Thanks. Your noble restraint in not bullying me is noted. The fact that you have to restrain yourself proves you're still an asshole and you're still a sadist."

Tony's glaring now, fire in his eyes. "So, if I'm such a flaming sadistic asshole, why the fuck are we friends? I mean, what the hell does that say about _you_? That you chose me to spend time with, you invite me to your home, that you picked me to stand up with you at your wedding, or agreed to stand up with me at mine. You telling me that's why you wear the collar, that you like it, you want it, you need to be put down? Just can't own up to it or say it out loud, gotta loop it around your neck and have Abby beat it into you?"

Tim pushes back in his chair so fast that it squeaks. "You do not say one word about that or I will beat the ever-living fucking shit out of you! You… No!"

Tony snorts at him. "I worked vice. I know how that game gets played. Getting picked on gets you all hot and bothered? Is that why you like me?"

"I don't want it or need it and I have _never_ asked for it from you or anyone else and... And that's not what the collar means. And if you ever even hint that Abby's ever... Just... No!" Tim's staring at him, eyes wide and blazing, mad beyond words for a second and then pulls it back in enough to say, "How long do you think we've been friends?"

He can see Tony thinking, trying to remember when he started. "What, November 2002? Something like that, right?"

"That's how long we've worked together."

"Yeah."

Tim's eyes are cold. "That's not how long we've been friends. It wasn't until after Jeanne that you even started to try to treat me like a human."

"I treated you the same way I treated everyone else."

"So? That doesn't make it any better. Being an asshole to everyone doesn't make you any less of an asshole. That makes you _more_ of an asshole."

"Fine, when do you think we became friends?"

"Like I said, you started to treat me like a person after Jeanne. Wasn't until we got Ziva back that you actually started treating me with any real respect. Think about it, I wrote a novel, didn't tell you about it. Got it published, still didn't tell you about it. Unless Abby or Kate or Ziva was there, I didn't volunteer any real information about myself, and only told you little bits and pieces when I couldn't get you to stop bugging me. Is that how friends act? You're going on and on about your astronaut costume and trick or treating, did I say anything about my Halloweens?"

"No."

"You think I came from some alternative universe where people don't have Halloween? You're telling me that horrible lie about you and the Rockette, did I tell you anything about my first time? You think I'd never had sex? Think I hadn't lost my virginity? It's been thirteen years; you've never heard my first time story, and you're _never_ going to, because you'd mock the shit out of it. You and Kate are joking about pot. I tell you I didn't like drugs. You just assume that means I'd never tried any, so you smirk, and don't ask, and I don't tell you anything about that again until we're on a triple date with Jimmy and Breena. And guess what, you still don't have the whole story on that one, either. Sound friendly? Is that a caring, intimate relationship to you? You're telling me about your glorious and probably seventy percent bullshit sports career. I say nothing. You think I never played sports?"

"Well, yes, on that last one."

"I played baseball, football, and wrestled. Never for long and I was never really good at it, but I played. And I never told you. Hell, you didn't know I was the team mascot at MIT until I'd been out of school for a decade, and the only reason you ever found that out was because we ran into Stuey. And you find that out and you act like it's the funniest thing ever."

"You dancing around in a beaver costume is the funniest thing ever."

"Yeah, it was, because I was _good_ at it. But that's not why you thought it was funny. You thought it deserved to be mocked, as opposed to something I spent time planning, had to audition for, and came up with a routine that beat out the forty other guys who tried out for it."

"I didn't know that."

"No, you didn't. Because you didn't ask and I didn't tell. Because we were just barely friends then. You just thought it was something goofy and girly that I should be vaguely embarrassed about because real guys, real _men_ , play on the team, they don't dance around and rile up the fans."

"They don't."

Tim's fairly sure the last time he was looking at Tony like this, he was shaking up the over easy eggs and two seconds away from smacking him silly. "I'm a good father. I'm a great husband. I'm a great lover. I'm a good cop. I'm a good son, a decent brother, and a good friend. That's _all_ the man anyone ever needs to be. I don't have to be John Wayne or Gibbs or your dad or whatever the fuck you've got labeled as 'man' in your head to qualify.

"You're being just like my dad. You always were. You look at me and see some sort of soft, girly, _thing_ that needs to be toughened up and turned into a 'man.' Newsflash, asshole, just like I'm not actually shorter than you are, I've got just as much dick as you do, and I've actually made a person with it, so I'm ahead on the points when it comes to the 'man' contest."

"I am not your dad!" Tony's horrified by that.

"Like fuck you aren't. You just don't have the balls to put some real hate into it. You've got this idea of who I'm supposed to be, and you've done everything you could to make me into it. And every time I wander off your straight and narrow path you either mock me, slap me down, or flip out and have an existential crisis over it.

"I mean, who the fuck cares if I want to dress up in a fuzzy, blue elf costume to impress a girl? I liked it. She would have liked it if she had ever seen it. So what business of yours was it? Where do you get off saying anything, at all, about it, let alone flashing it all over the bullpen, showing Ziva, and getting me caught by Gibbs?"

"It was fucking weird!"

"That's exactly what would have bugged him about it. It's weird and girly, 'cause real men don't dress up and play, let alone sew, and I had to sew to make it. Well, fuck you and fuck him. I am weird. I've always been weird. I was a weird kid and a weird teen and weird in college and I'm still fucking weird. I will always be weird. Same with girly. The fact that I learned to blend so I didn't get the shit beaten out of me on a regular basis doesn't make me any less weird, it just makes me a survivor."

"A survivor, really? Because of hard words? Fuck that, Tim, quit crying. My mom died! My dad sent me away two months later! Wendy, you remember joking about her leaving? You were right, she left me, at the altar. My whole making sure we got there on time thing doesn't seem so funny now, does it? Wanted to make sure Ziva was really there, that she didn't wander off, because Wendy did. So, yeah, you got teased, and yeah, I didn't use your name for years, get over it. They were just jokes, it didn't fucking matter, and you need a thicker skin."

"Fuck you, you whiny little cunt!" He saw Tony's eyes jerk wide at that, but didn't slow down to acknowledge it. "Oh, my mom died. My fiancee left me. My dad ignored me. Boo fucking hoo, asshole. You are not the only one who ever had a sucky childhood.

"My mom died…" Tim says with menacing sarcasm. "Your mom loved you every single minute she could! And if Jethro's right about them still being out there, she still loves you. She loved you when she found out she was pregnant and you were probably the last thing she ever thought about. You got hugs and kisses and petting and trips to the city to see movies, and more love and more petting. You were her special little boy and you got everything you were supposed to get out of a mom from her. And I'm sorry you only got eight years, but at least you got eight fucking years!

"I was six, Tony, _six_ , when they decided I wasn't tough enough. How fucking tough does a six-year-old need to be? Your mom died, she left you, and you miss her, so fucking what? My mom betrayed me! She let him rip me to shreds. She knew about it, approved of it, and never did a single thing to protect me from him!

"You were her little prince, perfect exactly the way you were, loved for who you were, cherished because you were hers. I was the _thing_ that needed to be changed. I was too soft, too shy, too asthmatic, too bookish, and I had to be beaten into Navy shape and neither of them cared how much it hurt because I wasn't good enough the way I was."

Those words break through Tony's anger, and he takes a deep breath, figuring it out. Yeah, Tim's pissed at him, that's real, and genuine and true, but this right here, this is not about him. He's here and convenient and a direction Tim can take to let the real anger out. "Tim."

"Your dad ignored you. Fuck that and fuck you for thinking that justifies anything! I would have given my left arm to be ignored. Being ignored was my definition of a good day! Because if he was ignoring me he wasn't using his tongue to make me feel worthless, he wasn't telling me that nothing I ever did would ever be good enough, and he wasn't threatening to hurt me, and not just these pussy little psychic wounds that have left me with nightmares twenty years later, but real, tangible, bleeding from my anus, gaping maw where my dick was, mutilated, hurt. So, don't you ever tell me about how tough it was to get sent off at the age of nine, because by the time I was nine I would have paid good money to get sent off."

"Tim." Doesn't even slow him down, the words keep pouring out.

"My fiancee left. Screw that. Oh no, Anthony DiNozzo, God's gift to women got dumped! Because no one's ever had to deal with that before. For all the shit you've pulled with women, you deserve to be dumped by every one of them you've ever loved! Jeanne alone is so much bad karma you need to get down on your fucking knees and beg God's forgiveness every single solitary fucking day just to hope Ziva stays with you for another month."

"Tim." He puts his hand on Tim's shoulder, but Tim jerks away from him, still not slowing down.

"Your past doesn't matter. Yours sucked. Mine sucked. Ziva's got both of us outclassed on suckage by a mile. Gibbs' sucked. It doesn't matter!

"All that matters is now and how we treat each other. And you failed, fuckhead. You failed for thirty years. You failed until you were forty-five and right now you're only holding onto not failing by your goddamn fucking fingernails!

"That's it! I don't get a pass for a fucked-up childhood and you don't either. No one does. Here. Now. Not making everyone feel worse. That's all that matters." Tim's eyes are wild, and he's breathing hard, chest pumping, and Tony's honestly not sure if he's about to get the shit beaten out of him, or if Tim's let it go.

A very long, very silent, very on edge moment passes while Tim keeps staring at Tony, and Tony tries to figure out if Tim's going to jump him.

"You done?"

Tim's glaring at him, but nothing else comes out, so Tony pulls him into a hug. He's stiff, and pulling back, but Tony doesn't let him go.

"What are you doing?"

"It's called a hug."

Tim's still struggling, but not hard, a lot of the fire burned out over the last few minutes.

"Let go of me."

"Nope."

Tim closes his eyes, puts his hands on Tony's shoulders, and firmly pushes him back while stepping in the opposite direction. "Let go, or I will hit you!"

Tony does.

"I. Am. Done. Taking. Your. Shit. You not listening to me. You not respecting my decisions, that's shit."

"It's not shit, Tim. It's just… proof."

"Proof?"

"I'm still here, and I'm not going anywhere. You can't yell at him: he's far away, and it wouldn't end well. You won't scream at her, though I don't know why. Fighting Jimmy or Ziva doesn't really touch it, because you're not angry at them. Beating yourself up doesn't work because… because it's not what you need. You're hurt enough, more pain isn't the answer. I don't know what's going on with you and Gibbs. You either can't stand it, or it's really not her fault, so you won't yell at Penny. Kate's dead, can't yell at her. I'm all that's left, so I'll take it. I know you're pissed at me, and I know it's real, and I know I deserve some of this, but it's not my fault your parents are bastards. That's not on me.

"But I am your friend, and yeah, I sucked at it for a decade, but I am your friend now, and I was as much of a friend as I could have been before, and if I'm the only target you've got left that scratches that itch, have at it. I'm here. I'll take it. You need to call me a cunt, do it. You need to swing at me… Well, let's get Ziva and Draga back so someone is watching that locker… But take your best shots once they get here."

Tim sits down, hard, back against the far wall of the bus.

Tony takes a step toward him, but Tim shakes his head, and Tony abides it.

He sits down, gingerly, at the monitor, and goes back to watching it, very carefully not keeping his eyes on Tim, intentionally not seeing if he's crying or cursing or whatever it is he's doing over there.

But after about twenty minutes, he feels the change, and, though he doesn't look over, he can imagine that little look up, close eyes, lick lips, thing Tim does when he's stressed.

"I know it's been years and you've been doing better."

"Good."

"Probably should have let that out a long time ago, too."

Tony nods, still not looking away from the monitor, but completely sure that thirteen years of not saying anything probably had a lot to do with how hot Tim got.

"You're right, you don't deserve all of that. And I am sorry your mom died and your dad left and Wendy… Pain is pain, my pain doesn't make yours less or vice versa, and comparing it sucks. I'm sorry."

Tony shrugs, still looking at the monitor. "I know I was a jerk. I know I hurt people. I _know_. And I know I went after you longer, harder, and more often than anyone else, because you always just took it. And, yeah, I like it. I like the power. I like the control. I like the fear. I like the fact that it makes other people laugh. I like that they like me because I can do it. I like all of it, and I always will.

"But I'm not doing it anymore. I don't even own superglue these days. And, God, you have no idea how many pranks go through my head on a given day. Especially for you and Jimmy. You two are just so fucking easy. And I don't do it."

"Thanks," Tim says, dry, sarcastic. "Good to know you're restraining yourself."

"It is, because this is something I'm always going to want, always going to need, but I don't always have to do.

"If I was still Catholic, I guess they'd call it a come-to-Jesus moment, but since I'm not, since this was part of the conversion, I guess it's a run-away-from-Jesus moment, but… But it's not really different. Not really, God's God wherever you are, but… But you remember how thinking it is almost as bad as doing it? The thought is a sin, the intention is a sin, doing it's a sin, and on and on?"

Tim nods, he remembers that not just that from catechism, but also George Carlin's routine on it, though he doesn't know why Tony's bringing it up.

"Doesn't work that way for Jews. The only thing that matters is what you do. You're Catholic, there's no reason not to do it once you've thought it, you've already taken the hit, so you might as well get the pleasure, too."

Tim's shaking his head.

"What?"

"I don't know. Didn't know you even still cared about ideas like sin."

"Not as an adult, not much, but as a kid, yeah, and that set the pattern."

"Okay."

"And it's… easier, to think that the only thing that matters is what we do."

"Good for you." Tim says, very dry, very sarcastic, very much thinking this was the sort of crap you were supposed to figure out at about the age of fifteen, and he's not feeling particularly impressed by Tony telling him this.

"You're still mad."

"Yeah, I am. I know it's been years. I know you're doing better. I'm glad you're doing better. But I am still mad."

"It's okay."

"I don't need your permission to be mad."

"Nope. You're doing that just fine on your own. Just… I get it."

"Wonderful. Take your break. I've got the monitors." Tim stands up and heads to the screens, staring at them.

Tony does notice his face is red and puffy, and his eyes are bright green. He realizes that he didn't hear anything, not even hard breathing, and that he didn't think it was possible to cry without making any noise. And it hits him that if Tim can do that, can shut down any sound that might attract attention that he's probably had way too much practice at trying not to get caught crying.

That was probably part of not being tough enough. He probably never mastered shutting down the ability to cry (like Tony did) so he learned to hide it.

Tony lets out a long, slow breath, and spends a few minutes walking around, trying to burn off some of the jittery from the fight.

For a half hour, all of Tim's turn, neither of them say anything.

When he's done, Tim gets up, heads to the far end of the bus, where the coffee maker is, and gets them both a cup.

Tony looks up at him, when he hands over the cup and sits down next to him.

"I'm still going to tease you about the skirt and the eyeliner." Tim just stares at him. "I can't not make fun of that. Still going to call you McWhatever. That's just who I am, and if you're my friend, if this giving each other what we need thing works both ways, you'll accept that I need that. That I have to have that edge. But you don't have to just take it and smile. You're allowed to fight back."

"Fuck off and die, asshole." Tim says with a grim smile.

"God, you're _mean_ when you're angry! Flipping me off works just fine and is a whole lot closer to what I'm doing to you."

Tim snorts at that. "It's wonderful that you've lived in such a sheltered world that you think this is mean. I haven't even gotten close to mean. I can't be mean to you. The power dynamics aren't there for it. You're not afraid of me. I don't control anything you hold dear. Your job, your loves, your life, your comfort, none of it is in my hands. All I've got is your affection for me, and that's not nearly enough."

"It's enough, Tim. I hate the fact that you're so mad at me, and I am genuinely sorry that I hurt you. I'm sorry I was an asshole, and I'm sorry you were a bad target for it, and I'm sorry it took this long to get this out and done. I'm sorry I can't make it better by wishing, and I'm sorry that I've ever done anything that makes you think I'm like your dad."

Tim nods, that had been a low blow, but it also wasn't just out of the blue. Can't be a low blow if there's no truth to it. "Anything girly pissed him off, got him yelling. And it's the same thing for you, the eyeliner or the nail polish or the kilt or the costumes. They set you off, too. You don't yell, but… Anything soft or girly makes you uncomfortable."

Tony shrugs. "It just hits me wrong. Maybe it didn't always. Maybe that's the armor left in place from being the kid who cried a lot because I did get shipped off to boarding school when I was nine and my mom had died two months earlier and it was 1977 and they didn't have school counselors and we didn't talk about stuff like that. But it hits my buttons and makes me feel squirmy, and I handle that by making jokes."

"Yeah. _I know_. Just about everything about me makes you feel squirmy."

"That's not true."

"It's true enough."

"No, it's not. _You_ don't make me feel squirmy. Some of the things you do, do."

"That's not how it works. You are a bully, whether or not you're doing it, you're a bully because it's who you are and what you like. I am a geek. I don't just do geeky things. I am a geek. I could go completely normal, whatever the hell that is, and I'll still be a geek because that's me. The things that make you squirmy are ME."

"Tim…"

"The Snow Elf costume. That hit your squirm button, right? I mean, you photoshopped my head on to Brainy Smurf and stuck it in the break room right after, and two weeks later, Ducky gave me the ears back saying, 'Timothy, you need to keep a better hold on these. Anthony seems to think it's amusing to put them on the bodies or Jimmy.'"

Tony tilts his head, acknowledging that. Palmer did fall asleep studying in the morgue one night, so he carefully slipped the ears on him, and got lots of pictures.

"That wasn't just something I put on for a day. That was me. I met a cute girl, who actually seemed kind of interested in me and liked to game. She invited me to a party and suggested we go as our characters. Cool, I was good with that. My character rocked. But I'm six one and back then something like one ninety. You can't just walk into a Halloween store and buy yourself a snow elf costume, especially not for a guy my size. So, hell, I'm in, I like games and costumes and hot cheerleaders, and sure I'm not cool and I don't look anything like the guys she works with, but I can learn to sew, and I can cos play, and I can get so into it, I'll blow her away. So I get a sewing machine, spend fifty hours on youtube learning how to sew and design costumes, design the damn thing, sew it, over and over and over because it is not nearly as easy as it should be to do that, and you take one look at it, and laugh. Ziva's telling me that she's feeling every ounce of respect she ever had for me oozing away because you decide she has to see it. And now you're telling me it's something I do, not who I am.

"That's who I am. The kilt, the tattoos, the games, the music, the writing, all of it is who I am. And if you've got to pretend that they're just hobbies or weird little side interests, then why are we friends?"

"Because you're my Probie." Tony sees Tim bristle at that, and says, quickly, "Just, let me get it all out. You're my partner. Because you can't be a clown without a straight man. Because Laurel needs Hardy and Holmes needs Watson. Because learning to deal with each other makes both of us better men. Because you always have my back and will slap me upside the back of the head when I need it. Because I like you, even if some things about you freak me out. I mean, I don't have to like everything about you. We aren't married. But, right now, I guess the bigger question is, why do _you_ think we're friends?"

Tim thinks about it for a much longer time that Tony did, and can see him getting nervous by it, but he's not rushing this, and he's not saying the first thought he had, _habit_ , which was mostly angry still coming out.

He sighs and says, "You never doubted me. And on things you think matter, you've always had my back. And you have occasionally provided a whack upside the back of the head, and forced me out of my shell when I needed it. And learning to deal with each other is making both of us better men. Sometimes you make me laugh. And I need men who approve of my work. There's a dad-shaped hole in my life, and you fill some of it."

"I can live with that."

"Okay."

Several more minutes go by, and another shift change. This time Tony's watching the monitors when he asks, "Do you actually like me?"

Tim shrugs. "I like things about you. I love you, if that helps."

"How does that work?"

"I don't know. I like Jimmy. It's easy to be with him, because I'm not constantly on guard, afraid I'll do or say something that'll flip him out or get me mocked. And I know you're not really that guy anymore, but you were for so long, that I can't really relax around you. I like the fact that you're getting better about it. But, you and I, it's not easy.

"I don't like how you treat people. I don't like the nicknames. I know you think of them as being affectionate, but it's an affectionate slap. Affectionate or not, it's still a slap. You need that, fine. Usually, I'm calm enough it doesn't bug me. But that doesn't mean I like it.

"I loathed the way you treated women. Hated the way you treated Kate. If it wasn't for the fact that it would have bugged her, I would have reported you for sexual harassment. And look, honestly, I'm glad Howard failed the practical part of the interview, because she was young and cute and green and trusting and I have no idea what you would have done with her.

"I have a daughter. I have a niece. And the fact that one of these days they're going to be out there with womanizers and misogynists like the guy you were scares the shit out of me, and that's nothing you can do anything about, too, but it's still there. I'm still aware of it. I still see that when I see you, and I know you aren't that guy anymore, but it's still there."

"Sex addict," Tony says quietly without looking away from the monitor.

Tim's eyes go wide and he looks away from the monitor for a second, to Tony, before going back to it, fast. "Huh?"

"Not sure if womanizer means something different, or if it's just an old term, but I'm a sex addict."

"Tony?"

"I like women. They make me feel good. Gibbs has a bad day, he drinks it away. You have a bad day, you shoot shit and get into fights. I have a bad day, I crave women. I need the external validation they give me. I don't get 'petted,' as you put it, often enough, I start to get itchy. Start thinking too much about what, if anything, is behind the mirrors. Part of taking so long to start things up with Ziva was about seeing if I could be on the wagon. Didn't like it much, especially before we were dating, because that's a lot of time alone with my thoughts and no one proving, over and over, that I'm good enough."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"That's why you were worried about looking."

Tony nods, shrugs a little, playing it off. "Ziva knows. Has known for a while. She's the one who gave me the words when I told her about how it worked. I didn't want her going into it blind. But, at least with girls, that's why I was always hunting down the next one. It was my fix. Daddy didn't want me. Wendy didn't want me. Well, all those other women did. Spent what should have been my honeymoon with her drunk off my ass and fucking anything that moved and somehow didn't get past that for five years. That's probably why 'no' would always stop me cold, but dead drunk didn't matter because as long as she was into me, I was getting what I needed from it."

"Oh."

"You just did that."

"I know. But, I don't know what to say to it."

"Don't have to say anything."

"I guess not."

Another shift change, this time Tim's watching the monitor, and Tony asks, "So, now what?"

Tim shrugs. "We go on. You need to call me McGeek, I'll take it, but you might not like what comes out after that."

"I can live with that. I'll lay off on the rest of it as much as I can. Won't always be able to do it, but I'll try."

"Okay."

"Okay."

"I'm still mad."

"I know. It's okay."

Tim nods.

 

Fourteen minutes later, when someone, a male someone, finally got to that locker, giving them both something else to do besides sit in a bus and stare at the monitors, they were both very relieved, and mad or not, they both did just fine at corralling the guy, getting him to the Navy Yard, interrogating him, and shutting down the case by dinnertime.


	5. Aftermath

"Well?" Abby asks as he heads into the house.

Tim shrugs, dropping onto the sofa next to her. "Remember telling me how during the toothpaste argument that you knew you were being insane, but you couldn't stop it?"

Abby nods.

He's got his embarrassed-as-hell look on his face. "I called him a whiny cunt for complaining about his mom dying."

"Oh God." She winces and puts and arm around him. "He hit you?"

"No. He should have." Tim sighs. "He hugged me. And I told him to stop. And he didn't. So then I made him stop. And he told me that since I was pissed at him, and could handle being pissed at him, he'd take all of it if that was what I needed to do."

"So, where are you now?" she asks, squeezing him a little tighter.

"You the two of us or you meaning me?"

"Both?"

"I'm… tired, embarrassed, still kind of angry, kind of sad, kind of hurt, just…" He looks away from her, shaking his head.

"Us? Detente? There's Sane Tim, in the back of my head, who knows it's been years, who knows he's doing better, who is fully aware that I said some god-awful hurtful things to him, that, maybe weren't called for, especially not this many years since he was seriously busting my balls, and he responded by hugging me. And Sane Tim knows that Tony's getting all of my angry at him and probably a good third of angry at my mom and maybe a tenth of angry at my dad, and half of angry at Ender, and that it's not rational, and it's not cool. Tony's not a punching bag, and I shouldn't use him as one, especially not for anything he didn't personally earn. But Sane Tim wasn't driving the bus. Angry, pissed-off, acid-tongued, sarcastic, cusses-like-a-sailor Tim was in charge, and he's not a nice guy.

"Eventually I spewed enough angry all over the place that Sane Tim could take over again, so, we're… working together. And got talking about some important things, but… It's tense. More tense than usual."

Abby nods at him. She knows Tim relaxed with Tony is not the same thing as Tim relaxed with her or with Jimmy and Breena or Gibbs.

"I told him I don't like the nicknames. He told me that's something he needs to do, but I don't have to just take it. I don't know if that's him working on making me fight it out when I'm actually pissed and not just shove it down, or if he likes the fight, or he doesn't think I'll do it, or he just can't stop doing it, so that's that."

"All of the above probably. Not like he just met you or anything. And I'm sure by now he knows that you need to let off steam more often than you do."

"Probably. Guess we'll know for sure when I see how it happens next."

He hears Kelly start crying and nods toward her room.

"Go get her," Abby says, "I'll get your dinner out, both of you can eat, and we'll talk more."

"Sounds good."

 

"He asked if I like him," Tim says halfway through a BLT. He's sitting on the sofa, next to Abby and Kelly, eating his dinner while Kelly eats hers. (Abby already ate.)

"What did you say?" Abby answers, looking up from babbling at Kelly. He didn't talk for the first half of his dinner, and she knows not to push him. It'll come out eventually. So she focused on Kelly, talking and playing with her (as much playing as you can do with a nursing baby) waiting for him to be ready to say more.

"I had to think about it. I told him there were things about him I like. And that I love him. But…" He shakes his head and takes another bite, and Abby waits for him to get his thoughts together. "He hit me on the collar, said maybe I needed to be cut down, bullied, that I liked it, that I was asking for it, that that's why I was wearing it. That I couldn't say it out loud, so I wore it around my neck and had you beat it into me."

Given Tim's history with sexual near-violence, Abby knew that'd be an issue for him. "How'd you do with that?"

"I think I was incoherently shrieking at that. Whatever the verbal equivalent is of the way they curse in comics with all the punctuation marks on the page. I think I was doing that. My vision went kind of fuzzy and my mouth was on auto pilot, and eventually I pulled myself back together enough to get off that topic, but, yeah, wasn't pretty."

"Before or after you called him a cunt?"

"Before."

"Great."

"Oh yeah. But, a while later he asked if I like him, and I had to think about it, and I was thinking about that, specifically. Do I need to be bullied? Did I want it? Was I asking for it? I mean, I put up with it for a decade, and yeah, most of it was just piddly crap, but not all of it was, and I never fought back, I never said anything, I didn't leave. I just let him steamroller me. Why? What did I get out of it?"

"A guy who hugs you when you're being a flaming lunatic?"

Another sigh, and a little head tilt acknowledging that. "Well, yeah. But was he the guy who would have done that five years ago?"

"Yeah," she smiles gently at him, "he was. He'd have given you grief about it from now until the end of time, but yeah, he was that guy, he's always been that guy. Surface Tony's a jackass, but deep Tony's got your back, and you know it."

"Yeah." Because he does, and Tim does know it. Known it since Tony didn't doubt him about Benedict, since he said to him, "First time I shot someone, I wet my pants…" And then showed up to take him out, try to get him out of his head that night. It didn't work. It was more or less the exactly wrong thing to do for him, but Tony was _trying_ , which was more than anyone else did that night.

"You tell him you knew it?"

"Yes, I did. I told him I loved him, but I didn't like everything about him. He told me he liked me, but some of the things I do freak him out. That got to me, too, because a lot of the things I do that freak him out are the kinds of things that made my dad yell. And he's not… bad… not really."

"Honey, your scale on bad's kinda skewed. Tony's a jerk when it comes to you doing something he considers outside of normal. He's just not a psychopath."

"Fine. But… It's a lot of the same triggers. I mean, I know that, that's why I put the makeup and the kilt on, I knew it'd bug him. Knew it'd stick his head in that squirmy sort of place where he has to mock it to make himself feel okay. That's the reason I still had the nail polish on this morning, and it worked perfectly. First thing he said to me was, 'Cute nails.'"

"So, he showed up ready to fight."

"Yeah. And after last night… I mean, that's what I wanted. That's what I was setting up. I wanted the fight. Wanted to rage at someone I was pissed at, wanted the chance to let it out at someone who deserved it. And, I guess he's the closest thing I had."

She nods at that, letting him think, letting him process.

His eyes come back to hers after a minute. "You take a lot of crap when you went goth?"

"Sure," she says with a quick nod of her head. "We all do. You're not really a goth until someone calls you out on it. I dyed my hair, painted my eyes, headed downstairs, and Aunt Gert looked at me and said, 'Oh, Lord, honey! Now why would you want to do something like that to yourself? You were so pretty. Don't go making yourself ugly just because you're sad.' And that was her being kind. Got a lot of less kind words."

"Yeah." He holds up his hands, nails still perfect matte black. "Why should this be a trigger? So, I'm not a native of the DiNozzo-boarding-school-jock-frat-boy-man-tribe? So what? He's not my dad. Not like my being weird makes him look bad. My being weird or femme or a geek affects him in no tangible way, at all."

"Are you really asking that, or are you more just setting up the point where you can admit how disappointing it is that someone you care that much about is bugged by you being weird? That, as you said, things you do freak him out."

Deep sigh, eyes close, head dropping back against the back of the sofa for a moment. "Both. More the latter probably."

"For the former, why nail polish or dyed black hair, or gay or trans or punk or goth or geek or anything that marks you as outside the mainstream matters is just that it does. We're humans, and most of us are wired to be uncomfortable around people who aren't part of our own little self-identified group of similar people. It's just part of us. Live or die by the tribe, so we're hardwired for it."

"You're not like that. You never were. I mean, you're not warm or fuzzy to new people in the lab, but I've never seen you cut on someone for being different, or for being normal. Our first date, I was practically the poster boy for 'normal' and you didn't give me a cold shoulder for it."

She smiles at the compliment. "Never had the chance to learn the whole hate/fear different thing. Grew up with deaf parents. Got used to being different before I knew what different was."

He popped the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth and then gently squeezed her shoulder. "I think it's just you. Just part of who you are, and the love inside of you shining out all over the place."

That got an even bigger smile, and, once he was done chewing, a kiss.

"He said some of the things I do freak him out, and I said, those aren't things I do, that's who I am, and… yeah," he closes his eyes, then opens them slowly, "it hurts. Never got the petting I needed from Daddy, so I stuck around and took Tony's crap for a decade, hoping for any scrap of approval I could get, and let him think that treating me like that was okay."

"Really?" She doesn't look like she believes that narrative.

He shakes his head a little. "No. Yes. Sort of? I'm swinging back in the other direction right now. Going from too-mad-it's-all-on-him to it's-all-my-fault."

"So, how about we get you back into the middle ground. Tony was a jerk. He's a whole lot less of a jerk now, but he's still something of a jerk and always will be. You are allowed to be pissed at him for being a jerk. It's okay to take him to task for doing things to you you don't like. Despite his jerkishness, you love him, because you know, under the jerk is someone who always has your back, and who may not be a natural at being a good guy, but he's trying awfully hard to be. He's your friend. You don't like everything about him and he doesn't like everything about you and that's fine for both of you, and it probably hurts both of you that neither of you is completely okay with the other one."

Tim shrugs at that. He'll get back there sooner or later. That's more or less his default setting for Tony, and he'll get back to the habit of being there eventually.

He sips his drink, and Abby switches Kelly to the other side. For a moment, only soft suckling noises fill their living room. Tim strokes Kelly's head, looking forward to his own baby snuggle time.

"So, he doesn't like you being weird. What don't you like about him?"

He glances at her, curious. "Thought you knew that."

"I do, just, drawing some lines."

He shakes his head. "He doesn't like it when I do things for myself that make him feel squirmy. I don't like it when he does things to other people to make them feel bad. It's not a parallel. He doesn't like the fact that parts of my existence are uncomfortable to him. I don't like that in an effort to make himself feel better, he's got to cut on me or slap me down. I don't like that he does that to other people, because it makes him feel better about himself.

"It's not he likes classic rock and I like jazz and we both can just sort of ignore it. I like costumes. Me in a costume makes him feel weird. He laughs at me about it because, especially if he can get other people to laugh, too, that makes him comfortable again. I don't like him laughing at me, because it makes me feel uncomfortable about being in the costume I liked three seconds earlier."

Abby nods at that, and sighs a bit. "Sounds dead on. And I guess you're right, it's not a parallel."

"He doesn't like how my existence makes him feel. I don't like how he treats other people to make himself feel better again. Neither of those things are under my control."

"No, they aren't."

"And when we were fighting, something that should have been under my control, me, and how I react to him, wasn't. There were a few minutes there where Sane Tim completely checked out. Not even lurking in the back of my head, watching. I was just, rage, fury screaming. Both you and he were saying that maybe I needed to 'let it out' more often, but… I know why I don't let go like that, not often. I could feel it, the rage, the kind of anger my dad aimed at me when I ripped up the Annapolis letter, those words. And… And Angry Tim's screaming because he's angry and Sane Tim's screaming because I'm acting like the Admiral and…" He shakes his head.

Abby leans against him, kissing his shoulder. "You're not being him just because you're angry. Even if you're yelling at someone. You threaten Tony?"

"I told him I'd beat the ever living shit out of him if he even so much as ever hinted again that the collar meant I let you beat me."

"Ah." She looks quite a bit less happy about that.

"Yeah." He's got a chagrined look on his face. "Told you, completely insane."

"So, you didn't so much go off the reservation as ride into town, set fire to it, hang all the residents up in trees by their ankles, and then mosey on off having stolen all the chickens?"

"Pissed in the well on my way out, too."

"Wow."

"Yeah," he sounds half-sad and half-tired by that.

"Well, part of the idea of not bottling it up for decades at a time is so that you don't go completely bat-shit insane when you finally do let go."

"Part of not doing it for decades at a time is knowing bat-shit insane is in there and not wanting to let it out. That's always been a balancing act. I know there's darkness and violence in there. That's part of being a cop, that I like the idea of being a weapon in the service of justice. That's the gun and the badge and the… the right channel. The right way to let it out.

"That's part of bootcamp, ya know? It's a way to let it out. That it doesn't always have to be stuffed down and hidden. That I can own my violence and not just keep it buried under that mountain of mild-mannered, takes-everything, forgives-everything, kind, gentleness.

"That I can still be a good person, kind and gentle and respectful, and still have that darkness and force in there. Like, I've been inching in the right direction, getting better at integrating both facets of my personality, and then I just blew it way the hell up."

"Did you hit him?"

"No."

"Were you close?"

His eyes narrow as he tries to remember what his body was doing during the fight. But he's not sure. Just like Sane Tim checked out, his awareness of anything besides the way he was feeling, what Tony was doing (he can tell you every move Tony made) and what he was saying, is gone. "I don't think so. Don't remember my hands in fists or anything."

"Okay. Nothing got blown the hell up. Keep part of yourself buried for that long, you're gonna have issues when you start to let it out. And you didn't ever really let it out, did you?"

He shakes his head, self-preservation meant he never let go on the Admiral. And after him, nothing else ever seemed worth blowing up over. Just lots of little things that all got buried. And some big ones.

"Doesn't mean you've got to stop working on integrating, just means you've got to keep working on it.

"Tim, you are a survivor of abuse. You're just getting to dealing with it. You are going to have times where you go a bit bonkers because of it. And no one expects you to have really good control when it comes to your triggers, not anytime soon. And Tony especially should have known the 'asked for it' crack was _way_ the hell out of line.

"And look, I don't know what all you said to him. I don't need to know, either. But Tony is a grown man. He's not a child. He's not a teenager. He's an armed Federal Agent with ten years on you, and he's your boss. He's fully capable of stopping you if he wants to. And if he couldn't shut you up, he's more than capable of walking away."

"I know."

"Good."

"And I know none of that was true when it came to me and my dad."

"Good."

"And it still hurts that something as stupid as me wearing nail polish bugs him."

Abby nods at that.

"Bugs me that right now my skin isn't thick enough to not be bugged by it. Normally he'd look at me, say 'Cute nails, McGoth' I'd flash him my, I'd so done with you look, roll my eyes, and that'd be it."

She smiles gently at him. "You go years not letting yourself feel stuff, or not dealing with it, and when you finally do, it comes back in an avalanche."

"I guess." He runs his fingers through his hair and looks up, staring at the ceiling, like it could make this better.

Abby detaches Kelly, looking down at her and saying, "I think you're done."

Tim snags the burp rag from her, drapes it over shoulder and chest, and then took Kelly from her, snugging her close, and patting her back gently, then stands and begins to pace their living room. For whatever reason, walking or rocking and patting works better than patting alone.

"We caught the guy. So, at least we're not stuck in a bus tomorrow."

Abby smiles at him. "There's a good thing." She thinks for a second. "So that means you were in the office, too?"

"Yeah."

"Anyone else say anything else about the nail polish?"

"Leon looked at it for like, a minute, and then looked at me, and I just raised an eyebrow at him, and he walked away shaking his head."

Abby laughs at that.

"He's probably consulting with legal about if he can put it in the regs that guys can't wear it."

"Come on. He didn't give you any shit."

"No. He didn't. I was holding a coffee cup when I went down to the lab to drop off the prints we got, and Zelaz saw my thumb first and asked if it really hurt when I did that, 'cause he thought I'd bruised up the whole nail black."

"Ooh. That would hurt."

"Yeah. I showed him the other nine and he got quiet. Told me he'd have the results back quick."

"So, no one gave you any crap, at all."

"No. Little startled, but no real crap."

"Good. Gonna take it off tonight?"

He looks at them, long fingers, very familiar, black nails, not nearly so much so, all resting across his daughter's back. "Is it something I do, or who I am?"

"Tim?"

"I said that to him, that it wasn't things I did that flipped him out, it's who I am. So is it a costume, or me?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yeah. Like, if it's just something I do… You've got no problem asking a person not to smoke in your home. It makes you uncomfortable, so you don't have to deal with it. Because it's something he does, not who he is. But you don't invite a diabetic to your home and serve him a pile of sugar, even if you do have to go out of your way to come up with something that isn't a pile of sugar, because that's who he is, not what he does. So, is this something I do, or who I am?"

"Are you asking you or asking me?"

"Both of us," he says quietly, lips pressed to the top of Kelly's head.

Abby stands up and gently touches his index finger nail. "You're a guy who likes costumes. Is it you? Right now it is. Maybe not tomorrow and maybe not yesterday, but the ability to dress up and slip into different Tims is you."

"Yeah. I think that's right. Gonna keep it on."

She wraps her arms around her husband and kisses him.


	6. Shared History

“My wife is dead.”

It feels weird to say it out loud, doubly so because there’s no one else in the room with him.

And he’s fairly sure that saying it to himself isn’t what Cranston meant by say it to someone.

God, how the hell do you say that to someone? You don’t just walk up to them and say, ‘Hey, guess what, my wife is dead.” That’s just horribly uncomfortable for everyone involved. And sure, Gibbs doesn’t usually go out of his way to avoid making people feel uncomfortable, but there’s a huge difference between staring down a perp and polite conversation among equals.

And at home, in his basement, starting the measurements for Anna Palmer’s crib, he’s not even sure who he’d say that to.

Mike.

Mike would have been his first choice. But, he looks around, and doesn’t see Mike’s ghost, doesn’t feel him, and he’s fairly certain that if he tells Rachel he’s having heart to hearts with ghosts about dealing with grief he is rapidly going to find himself embracing an even earlier retirement than he was expecting.

Fornell and Ducky had both been upset that he’d never told them. Understood, eventually, but still upset. So… he puts his pencil down and picks up his phone and hits Ducky’s contact number.

“Hello, Jethro.” Penny’s voice. He’s getting ready to ask for Duck when a few things hit him. Penny’s a widow. Penny lost her husband after forty years. The husband that by all accounts she adored.

Penny’s done this.

Penny has perspective.

“Hi, Penny. Are you busy?”

“Not right this second.”

“Wanna get some coffee with me?”

He hears the pause, where she’s wondering what is going on. “Are you serious?”

He nods, realizes she can’t see it, and says, “Yes.”

“Just me?”

“Just you.”

“Do you know you dialed Ducky?”

“Yep.”

“Okay. Did you want me to give him a message.”

“Nope.” He can imagine the perplexed look on her face.

“Do you have my phone number?”

“Uh huh.”

“So why did you call him?”

“Why did you pick up?”

“Phone was sitting next to me, and he’s in the kitchen.”

“Then that’s why I called his phone. So, coffee?”

He can hear the confusion in her voice as she says, “Sure.”

 

“Jethro,” Penny says as she slips into the booth across from him. Before he could say much more than ‘Hi,’ Elaine’s over.

She hands the menu with the specials on it to Penny, while asking, “What can I get you to start off with?”

“Coffee’s fine.”

“Iced or hot?”

“Hot.” Elaine nods at that and then says, “New friend, Jethro?”

He smiles at her. “Keeping track of my ladies?”

“You know it, Hon. Looking for your next sweetie.”

“Elaine, this is Penny, Tim’s grandma.”

She looks more carefully at Penny and says, “I should have seen that straight away. Shape of your eyes and face… Well, welcome Ms. Penny. Used to just get Jethro, but the last few years he’s been bringing the family in. Get to see your darling baby girl on Sunday mornings. Anything you want, just holler and we’ll have it for you. On the menu or not.”

“Just Penny is fine.” Eliane nods as that and heads off to get her coffee. “Sunday mornings?” Penny asks Gibbs.

“You know I’ve been going to church and Sunday dinner with them?”

Penny nods; Breena and Tim had mentioned that in passing.

“Last two, and hopefully going forward, weeks, we’ve had breakfast here first. Eight on Sundays, you and Duck want to come, to breakfast or church too, you’re welcome. Meet Breena’s family. They’ll probably invite you to supper after.”

Penny nods at that, smiling, as Elaine set a cup of coffee down in front of her, along with cream and sugar. 

“Not sure how you like it, but I know tastes tend to run in families, and he takes his with cream and sugar.”

Penny pours a splash of cream into her coffee as well as one sugar. “They do tend to. He had his first cup of it at my house. Would have been ten or eleven, drank some of mine, liked it.” She stops telling the story there, but Gibbs catches the hesitation and knows there’s more on that for when Elaine heads off.

Elaine sets a piece of strawberry pie in front of him to go with his coffee. She looks to Penny. “We’ve got pecan and raspberry, too. I know Tim likes both of them.”

“Is the raspberry a frozen pie or a jam pie?”

“Oreo cookie crust, raspberry ice cream, raspberry puree, whipped cream and chocolate shavings on top.”

“Yeah, he would love that,” she says with a smile. “Bring me a piece, too.”

Elaine nods at that and heads off again.

“So, let me guess,” Gibbs says quietly, “John was fine with him drinking coffee until he saw it was yours and sweet and creamy and then yelled about how men drink it black?”

“Something like that. I was there, so it was just a few sarcastic comments, not full out yelling, but in context of what happened when I wasn’t there, Tim dropping the coffee, spilling it down his shirt, which resulted in more sarcasm about being clumsy, and never drinking it again when his dad was around makes a whole lot more sense.”

Jethro shakes his head and grits his teeth. And while learning more about Tim and his dad is something he’s interested in, it’s something he wants to learn from Tim, and also if he gets into it, he’ll use it as a way to avoid dealing with his own stuff.

He doesn’t know if Penny senses what he’s thinking, or if she’s just curious, but she asks, “So… what’s got you offering coffee, Jethro? We’re obviously not talking about Tim, or you would have had something to say besides just gritting your teeth. We planning a surprise for Ducky?”

“No. We could be, I guess, but we aren’t… unless you want to.”

Penny laughs at how startled he looks by that idea. “I’ll put that on the back burner. So, if it’s not about Ducky, what’s going on?”

He takes a sip of his coffee, not saying anything for a long second. Then put it down and exhaled deeply. “Did Tim tell you he’s got me seeing someone?”

“No, and what sort of someone?”

“A counselor. Dealing with…” another long exhale, “everything.”

“No. He didn’t mention that, and I’m glad to hear it.”

“Yeah, great.” He’s feeling monumentally uncomfortable, and while she’s listening attentively, she’s not meeting him halfway or filling in the blanks on her own. “It’s ummm… yeah…”

“Less than easy or comfortable?”

He nods decisively at that and jumps over the cliff. Dithering about it can’t make it any easier. “My wife and daughter are dead. They were murdered when I was in Iraq. They are the loves of my life. And they’re gone. And I haven’t handled it well. And I realized that you’ve dealt with something similar.” He tries to smile with that, but it comes off more pathetic than anything else.

Penny reaches across the table and squeezes his hand. 

“You two were married forty years, right?” he asks as her hand withdraws.

“Yeah. Met in early ’46, when I was fourteen and he was twenty-four. The Langstons were a navy family, too, and my dad was Nelson’s commanding officer. Brought him home for working dinners a few nights a week. It was right after the war, I had a twenty and twenty-two-year-old sister at home, and my dad was dangling them in front of him, thinking he was good husband material for them.

“He was a Captain then. Working on making better aircraft carriers. I was bright and precocious and interested in math and geometry and how thing flew. My dad thought he was humoring me, letting me join in some of those conversations. After a few months of it, most nights we’d wrap up dinner, my mom and Elsa, the oldest sister would clear up the table, and Nelson would spread out his drawings and calculations, and we’d work on them together until I had to start my own homework or go to bed.

“By ‘48 he’d decided that he couldn’t do a better job of trying to build a better aircraft carrier until he really knew what it was like to fly. He was accepted into the naval aviator training program, and we got married fast and headed to Pensacola, three weeks shy of my seventeenth birthday.”

Gibbs shakes his head at that. Then he thinks for a moment. “Would have been forty years for us in October of ’18.”

Penny knows how old he is and does the math. “So you were babies, too.”

“Not quite that young, but yeah. We were eighteen when we met. Really met. Lived in the same small town, went to school together, but were never in the same class. And even if we had been, I probably wouldn’t have been brave enough to talk to her.”

Penny smiles at that. 

“Were you Mrs. McGee back then, when you first got married?”

“Mrs. Captain Nelson McGee.”

Gibbs laughs at that.

Penny sips her coffee and takes a bite of the pie. “I was so obnoxiously proper back in the day. At least about things like that. Even back then having a seventeen-year-old bride, especially in the Officer Corp made you stick out. So, I dressed older, my manners were impeccable, and I was pretty enough to be attractive, but not so pretty that men wouldn’t listen to what I had to say when I said it. I didn’t talk a lot, not to the others, but when I did have something to say, it was always dead on right.”

“How’d you get to be Dr. Langston?”

“Finished high school by correspondence just about the time John was born in ’49. Had three more boys and finished my Bachelors by ’56. Began working on original research in ’57. I already knew that in the field I was working, medical technology, that Penelope McGee wasn’t going to get any traction. And P. McGee didn’t sound much better. So I’d publish as P. Langston. There wasn’t biotech per se at that point, but in ’61 John’s Hopkins wanted to move in that direction, and, without knowing P. Langston was a woman, they offered me a research position based on the strength of my publications. I said yes. They were awfully shocked when I showed up, but Dr. Renner, who ran the program knew I was the real deal, and kept me on.

“You know about some of the stuff I worked on after that. A lot of it is still classified. But by ’72 my husband was an Admiral, my oldest son was a Lieutenant Junior Grade in Vietnam, James, our second boy, had been killed in action, and Michael and Thomas were still too young to enlist.”

“I didn’t know you’d lost a child.”

“Hasn’t come up in conversation, and, though I’m sure Tim’s aware of the existence of his Uncle James, it’s not like they ever met.”

Gibbs nods at that. “You two made it through though…”

“By the skin of our teeth. By the end of ’72, I’d legally changed my name back to Langston and drawn up the divorce papers.”

“But never pulled the trigger on it?”

“No. We worked a lot of it out, and after that dinner parties at the Admiral’s house were always…” she smiles, “interesting. I was done being horribly proper, and he decided that having me, as me, in all my me-ness, was worth the occasional uncomfortable moment with the higher ups.”

“Not a lot of higher ups when you hit flag rank.”

“There is that. The number of guys he couldn’t tell to go to hell with impunity was fewer than ten.”

Gibbs thinks about that and nods. “What did you do when he died?”

“Handled it." She says with a rueful look. "I was a Navy wife, an Admiral’s widow, stiff upper lip and all that crap. The Navy took care of the burial. Whatever’s left of him is deep in the Pacific somewhere, maybe swimming around as ten or twenty generations of some sort of meat-eating critter. He’d have liked that. That maybe there’s a king crab out there that’s part him.

“You live with sailors or fishermen, you’ll notice something, they don’t, usually, eat crab. Maybe they do now, so few of them get killed in action, but especially when I was young, you could always tell a navy family or a fisherman’s family because crab and lobster, no matter how cheap it was, and in Boston it was cheap, never went on the menu. Didn’t know who you were eating. But he’d joke about that, how one day he’d be the biggest, meanest, oldest king crab scuttling along in the Pacific.” She makes a pincher gesture with her fingers. Gibbs smiles and nods.

“I knew it as soon as I heard the knock. There’s that, pause, stopping in front of the door that people just don’t do when its good news. I heard the footsteps, heard the pause, and then the knock, slow, precise, and I knew. Hell, back during Korea and Vietnam, until we lost James, I was one of the people who’d stand on the porch, next to the Chaplain, ready to help comfort.

“I planned a very proper memorial, stoically took the condolences of the probably thousand people who dropped in over the course of three days. John brought me his flag, but I wouldn’t take it. It meant more to him than it did to me, so he kept it. He’s got it in his office along with all the medals.”

“And after?”

She smiles again. “Four day after the funeral, after everyone had left, when I was just knocking about alone in my house, the way I had been doing for a decade at that point... It was just like him being at sea, except it wasn't because he wasn't ever going to come home again. That alone and waiting had changed to just alone. I broke down, finally let go of stoic, cried for days, and then I cut my hair off. Total buzz cut. I think it was a third of an inch long. Packed everything up. Gave most of it away. Put some of it in storage. Tim’s mom got a few boxes. And then I bought a ticket to Italy and spent the next two years traveling. We were going to travel. He had placed he wanted me to see. I had places I wanted to see. So, I did them. Took pictures. Sent post cards home. Tim probably still has some of them. Didn’t come home until I was feeling like a person again.”

“How’d that happen?”

“I don’t know.” The expression on her face is soft, comforting. “It just did. You ever chip a tooth?”

He nods.

“You know how you just can’t not keep poking it with your tongue, and you end up with a chipped tooth and a sore on your tongue.”

He nods at that too.

“But eventually, you get the tooth fixed, and eventually your tongue stops hurting.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what happened. Eventually it stopped hurting so bad. He went the way he wanted to. Sooner than either of us would have liked, but it was fast, painless, and at sea. He couldn’t have asked for more than that.”

“Still miss him?”

“Sure. Especially for family things. I love sharing Molly and Kelly with Ducky. That’s true and always will be. But I would have liked to have seen Nelson hold his great grand-daughter, too. Wanna hear something funny?” 

“Sure.”

“They would have liked each other. You’d have never gotten the two of them to shut up. Nelson loved stories, too, and had a million of them. He was a good listener and a good story teller and the two of them would have gotten on splendidly.”

Gibbs smiles at that, trying to imagine both men together. 

“I think Tim gets that from him. He always had to put everything into stories. It was how he made sense of the world.”

“You have any serious boyfriends between Nelson and Ducky?”

She smiles at that, looking very amused. “I had friends. Some very good friends. Some less good friends. Some acquaintances. Ducky’s the only man I’ve attempted to live with, since.

“One of the things I’ve missed most about Nelson was a man who didn’t find my mind a threat. Someone who would love me because of it, instead of in spite of it. I’m an academic. Even traveling, I tended to stay in places filled with people who live and die by their minds. And what I rapidly found out was that men who had a brain, and a modicum of charm, and who weren’t intimidated by a woman with a brain, were all married by the time they hit my age. The ones who weren’t, were like Ducky, married to a job. Or they were grad students or undergrads, which was fun, but not any sort of long term solution.

“Jerks and blowhards existed in droves. Mincing piranhas who couldn’t have identified manhood, let alone been one, tons of them.”

Gibbs was looking at her curiously. It never occurred to him that someone who was proud of being arrested at different peace/feminist rallies would appreciate “manhood.”

She sees the look, and responds to it with, “Women don’t need men. But we want them. I never had any problem with any man who wanted me and wanted me to want him. I had and have a whole lot of problems with men who try to create or uphold a world where I need one to survive.”

“People like to be needed.”

“Men like power. Being needed creates power. Men especially love the power and hate the responsibility of that power. So they write laws that codify the power and let them off easy on the responsibility.”

Gibbs decides this is a good point to get off politics or philosophy or whatever this is and get back to family history and getting through grief.

“What happened after James died?”

“Didn’t like the last topic, hit too close?”

“Don’t like being judged based on the actions of every other asshole on earth. I imagine you don’t, either.”

“Fair enough. June of ’72. Things were slowing down, but not done, in Vietnam. Nelson was the newest Admiral of the US Navy. John was a Lieutenant Junior Grade. James was three weeks out of Annapolis, brand new Ensign. They were both turtle navy.” She gives Gibbs a questioning look, making sure he knows what that is. He nods, familiar with that term for Naval deployments on rivers. “Bringing supplies in, taking men out, stuff like that. Dangerous as hell, on a tiny boat, filled with weapons, moving through the jungle, no real line of sight, possible ambush from anywhere on shore, and on occasion, the rivers got mined, too.

“Three weeks in, his boat took fire, he didn’t make it.” She looks away from Gibbs, out the window of the diner, just staring into space for a long minute. “That never gets easier, does it?” she asks, shaking her head, ruefully.

“No. It doesn’t.”

“I’d already joined the peace movement at that point. Quietly. That was the deal Nelson and I had, once he made Admiral, I could be as outspoken as I wanted to, but before that, I needed to keep quiet. And I did. And he’d give me occasional bits of information on thing he thought were dishonorable, that no honest man could support, and I made sure they saw the light of day.

“Like what you were doing with the Annex project.”

“That was one of them. It’s one thing to be a warrior and to fight other warriors. It’s another all together to unleash plague and famine upon non-combatants. Neither of us approved of that. Napalm to clear a landing zone is one thing. Napalm on a village is another all-together.”

Gibbs nods at that. There have been numerous times he’s wondered what he would have done if he’d been five or ten years older and ended up in Vietnam. He and Fornell have had a few long conversations about that. 

“When James died, quiet stopped. I started getting arrested. Admiral’s wife at protest march made for impressive headlines. I wanted to destroy anything that had a hand in sending my son off to die. But to do that, I had to cut ties with two of my sons, Michael was a plebe at Annapolis that year, and my husband.

“When we should have been pulling together to share the grief, we all ran our own separate directions and screamed it to the heavens.”

“But you pulled together eventually?”

“Eventually. Like Nelson, James was buried at sea. Should have been shipped home, but when you’re an Admiral you can get things like that done. We’ve never been a dust to dust family. From the sea we came, and to the sea we return. Or as Nelson would say, ‘We’re water given breath and set free to walk upon God’s green earth. Allowed a short time to see what else is out there, and then we’ll return to the oceans that gave us life.’ But, because of that, I never really got a proper goodbye. And I was so mad at him.

“Eventually in early ’73, Nelson got home. And we got a chance to talk, and yell, and cry, and scream, and fight and mourn and all of it… And when it was done, we still loved each other and we decided to stay together. What did you do after your girls died?”

“Earned my second purple heart the day they died. Didn’t come out of the coma I was in until after they were buried. I was invalided home, granted compassionate leave on top of that. And for a week, I more or less lay on the sofa, stared at the ceiling, and did nothing. Only time I did anything was when Mike Franks, the NIS agent handling Shannon and Kelly’s case would come around. He’d get me up enough to eat something and occasionally shower, took care of me in a hands off sort of way.

“Wasn’t like he was asking me questions or anything. They knew why my girls had been killed. They knew who did it. It was just a matter of trying to get the guy who did it.

“That was the pattern for about two months. He’d pop by once or twice a week, usually with a bottle of bourbon, two cups of coffee, a bag of McDonalds hamburgers and fries, and ‘fill me in on their progress’ while pouring the bourbon, coffee, and food down my throat.

“Eventually he hit the point where they knew where the guy was, but Mexico wasn’t going to go out of its way to capture or extradite him. So, Mike invited me in to his office, told me that it’d be a good plan to show up having gotten a shower and shave so no one would notice me when I went in, and then while he was ‘releasing personal items to me’ he got called away from his desk while the file with everything about the man who killed my girls, including their best guess as to where he was, was sitting open on his desk. Then he ‘forgot’ I was in there for two hours.”

He could remember Franks heading back into that dingy little office, seeing him there, giving a big, mock startled jump, saying, “Good Lord, Gibbs! Completely forgot you were in here. Here, let me get this signed.” He took the bag with the ‘personal items,’ which was actually empty, none of the evidence in the case could go missing, signed it, staring at him, and said, “I hope you found what you needed,” his eyes giving Gibbs permission to do what he wouldn’t.

Gibbs nodded at him. Didn’t say anything, and left.

“When Hernandez ended up dead, killed by a sniper’s bullet, no one fussed much. Guy ran a drug family, competition’s pretty fierce in that job. The Federales didn’t exactly strain themselves looking for who shot him. After that case, Mike got transferred back east.

“Like you, I packed everything up, headed back east. I put that life in a box, bunch of boxes, stuck them in the attic, found Mike again, and learned how to be a cop.” He fiddles with his coffee cup as he says that. 

“And now you’re taking that life back out of the boxes?”

“Been doing that for ten years. Trying to figure out what to do with it’s more likely.”

“That’s always the question, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Ideas?”

He blows out a frustrated breath. “Working on getting some.”


	7. Conversations

The problem with trying to have a somewhat serious conversation with an eighteen-month-old is that eighteen-month-olds have the attention span of a humming bird, and also, the time sense.

To a toddler everything is right now or not happening at all. 

Later is something they’re still learning. 

But, in that Jimmy and Breena are getting Molly ready for church, and after church, Sunday supper, and in that they got the 18 week ultrasound results back, and would be announcing that Anna Palmer was healthy, growing like a weed, and as the name indicates, a girl, at said supper, finally saying something to Molly about her little sister seemed like a good plan.

So, holding his little squirmy ball of not wanting to go to church on his lap, while Breena stood in front of her, trying to get the shoes she was trying to kick off onto her feet, Jimmy said, “Molly, we’ve got a surprise for you!”

That stopped the flailing. Surprises are good things, sometimes involving cookies. She squirmed a bit more to look up at him, while Breena dove in to take advantage of the lull in the kicking. 

“Around Christmastime you’re going to be a big sister!”

Molly doesn’t look very impressed by that surprise. Probably because while she knows what some of those words mean, Christmastime and big sister are concepts that mean nothing to her.

Breena stood up from wrestling on the shoes, and Jimmy held out Molly’s hands, pressing them to Breena’s tummy. “There’s a baby growing in mama’s tummy.”

That was more concrete.

“Kelly?” Molly asks. Kelly = baby in Molly’s mind.

“Like Kelly. But this is a very, very little baby right now.” Breena held her hands less than a foot apart. “When it gets cold out, she’ll be about Kelly’s size, and then she’ll come out.”

Anna decided this was a good moment to start kicking, and Jimmy quickly moved Molly’s hand to where her little sister was getting some exercise. 

“That’s your little sister, Anna, kicking. Just like when you’re in the pool. That’s what she’s doing in there,” Jimmy says as Molly stares at Breena’s belly. 

“Eat baby?”

“No! We don’t eat babies!” Breena says, bending down, nibbling on Molly’s ear and neck, making Cookie Monster snarfing up cookies sounds. “No eating babies for us. Nom nom nom nom nom!”

Molly shrieks with laughter, and Jimmy adds to it, tickling her gently.

 

“We are never going to be anywhere in less than an hour ever again, are we?” Abby asks.

Tim shrugs as they pull into the diner, seeing that Gibbs’ car is already there.

Of course, it would be, in that they’re twenty-five minutes late. 

Massive diaper blow out two minutes before leaving the house, involving not just Kelly, but also Abby needing to completely change outfits, and honestly, get hosed off, (and since Tim was on clean up baby duty, while Abby got herself cleaned up, that meant his suit also had to go by the wayside, because there’s no way on Earth to get a two month old completely cleaned off while wearing long sleeves, unless you want whatever it is you’re cleaning off the two month old all over your sleeve. Fortunately for him, unlike Abby, he could just put the same outfit back on again once Kelly was tidied up.) too, means that they are nowhere remotely near on time. 

They were halfway in when Tim noticed that Gibbs wasn’t alone in his usual booth. In fact, he wasn’t in the usual booth at all. He scans the diner and sees Gibbs, Ducky, and Penny in the larger booth in the back corner.

He kisses his grandmother’s cheek as they slide into the booth, seeing drinks waiting for them.

“Hi?” Not that I’m not happy to see you two, but what’s up? on his face.

“Jethro invited us,” Penny answers. 

Abby’s looking at Gibbs expectantly. 

“Family traditions. Seems like the start of a good one.”

“Are you coming to church after?” Abby asks, taking a sip of her frozen watermelon lemonade. 

“At least this once,” Ducky replies. “Maybe more often.”

“Probably not every week. See how it goes.”

“Do Jimmy and Breena know you’re coming?” Tim asks.

“Yes. I called him before we left,” Ducky replies. “If all goes well, they’ll probably join us next week.”

“Anyone think to invite Tony and Ziva? Sure they probably don’t want to come along for church…” Abby says.

“I’ll ask Ziva at Bootcamp. Offer the invite to church, as well. I mean, if this is part of our family thing…”

Elaine heads over to them, plates of food, unordered, but awfully tasty looking, for both Tim and Abby in her hands. 

“Figured you’d probably want something hot and ready to go fast. Get you off to church on time.”

“Thanks, Elaine,” Tim says while Abby nods, making a happy noise, seeing waffles piled high with strawberries and whipped cream on her plate. 

Kelly got a quick little petting and a ‘hello darling girl’ as Elaine headed off and Tim and Abby started to eat, quickly, so they could get to church on time.

 

In general, Abby considers staying out of any fights the boys get into to be a good plan. They’re grown-ups. They can take care of themselves. And, honestly, getting extra people into a fight has never, in her experience, ever made anything better or defused the situation.

You just end up with even more people pissed off. 

But, after Shabbos, she can see Tim and Tony still both tense, both walking on eggshells, and more than that, still kind of pissed.

And, okay, that’s probably an excuse. Tim’s comment about Tony talking about the collar and ‘asking for it’ rankles. Especially about asking for it. 

She knows Ziva, Tim, and Jimmy are at bootcamp with Gibbs, and she’s pretty sure where Tony’ll be. So, as the Sunday supper/Anna Palmer celebration party began to wind down, she heads toward Tony and Ziva’s place.

 

“Abby?” Tony says, opening the door, seeing Abby in front of him, wearing a cute, Sunday-best sundress, Kelly in the snugli on her chest. “What’s up?”

“You and I talking is up.”

“Okay.” He backs tentatively into his living room. “Not that I’m not happy to see you but, what are we talking about?”

“There’s exactly one thing you never, ever say to someone who’s been abused, and that’s ‘you asked for it.’”

He looks embarrassed. “I know.”

“And I know you know that, so why’d you say that to Tim?”

“Besides the fact that I was trying to piss him off as much as he was pissing me off?”

Abby nods. 

“Because he put the collar on, paraded it around in front of me, and basically told me he does ask for it. I worked vice, I know what that collar means,” he cringes a little, probably isn’t aware of the fact that he did it, but Abby certainly notices, “and just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean you can’t. I get it’s consensual and whatever, and you’re both grown-ups, but…” He winces again, and that time he did seem to know he’d done it, so he stops it, fast. “But if he’s wearing that, he’s telling me and everyone else who knows how to read that symbol that he does ask for it.”

Abby’s eyes narrow and her voice goes very hard. “Ziva asked for it. She knew she had no back up. She knew she couldn’t do the mission on her own. She knew she’d be captured, and she knew what they did to captives. Instead of scuttling the mission, she went on, walked right into the terrorist camp. She was asking for everything that happened to her in Somalia.”

Tony’s glare was hot enough to boil coffee.

“Yeah, that was way the hell out of line, wasn’t it?” Abby says, pacing in front of the sofa, patting Kelly’s back, and trying to keep her voice even so she doesn’t get upset. “And saying it to her, no matter how pissed I am, would be even worse.”

He nods, slowly. 

“Makes you want to hit me, right?”

He shakes his head at that. Not hitting girls is a deeply ingrained trait for him. 

“Want to yell at me, then?”

“Yeah.” 

“Back at you. Tim has never asked for it. He wasn’t asking for it when he was six and it started. He wasn’t asking for it when he was fourteen and being a teenage snot to his dad. He wasn’t asking for it when he was twenty-four, and you started messing with him. Him sleeping at his desk wasn’t asking to have his face superglued to it. Nothing he does is asking for bullying. There’s no such thing as asking for it; there’s just justifying your behavior so you can sleep at night. 

“When he wears my collar, he’s not ‘asking for it’ let alone telling you he’s ‘asking for it.’ It’s not about whatever you remember from your vice days. It never has been and it never will be. S and M aren’t part of either of our playbooks, but even if it was, it still wouldn’t be the crap you used to bust people for. The only thing that collar symbolizes is that he’s mine. Same as the ring and the tattoos.”

Tony doesn’t buy that. “If it was the same as the ring and the tattoos he wouldn’t have added the collar to face me and you wouldn’t have given it to him.”

“He was wearing it to wig you out. How long were you in vice?”

“Two years.”

“You didn’t pay much attention, did you? Black handkerchief in the back pocket is the symbol of being up for the rough stuff. The collar is a sign of belonging and submission. It’s about being able to take orders. It’s about him being MINE. And he knew that’d flip you out. That anything that goes off the John-Wayne-man-in-charge roll is squirmy for you. He wasn’t trying to flip you out with violence, but with gender-role reversal. 

“And it’s part of the armor, Tony. Gearing up for the fight, donning his lady’s favor. Something like that. 

“As for me giving it to him, the kind of place we go where he wears it, the rings and the tattoos aren’t a definitive MINE signal. The collar is. Let’s everyone else know to keep their hands off. Otherwise, he’s fair game.”

“Uh huh. Because that’s normal, going to places where a wedding ring isn’t enough of a hint that he’s off limits.”

“No, it’s not normal. But it’s fun. The music is good. The beat’s hard. And it’s amazingly sexy. And I know you feel that. Other guys check out Ziva, and you feel that, MINE… Feels good, right?”

He rolls his eyes a bit. “Yeah. Sort of. Feels angry, too. She’s mine, eyes off asshole. She’s MINE, I won her, she picked me, not you, loser. Both of those things are there.”

“Before I had him, the eyes-off-asshole was definitely part of it. But I’m not afraid of him wandering off anymore. No shot of losing him. So, we go out, I don’t feel that. Just the high of knowing that half the woman and a quarter of the men are checking out my guy, seeing the collar, knowing they can’t make a move because he’s mine.” 

“Great. I don’t need to know that about you two.”

“No, you probably don’t. But you should know that collar or not, geek or not, femme or not, or whatever it is you think is an invitation, nothing he’s doing is asking for it.”

“I get it.”

“Good.”

“I haven’t pulled anything beyond mild teasing in years.”

Abby nodded. “I know that and he does, too. He loves you, you know that, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And it hurts that you look at the collar or the kilt and wince.”

“I know. I’m trying. But…”

“Yeah, I know, it hits your ick button. Took you a while to get used to me.”

“And on you, it’s cute.”

“It’s cute on him, too,”

“Guys over the age of twenty aren’t supposed to be cute! Almost thirty-seven year old men who are fathers and are on the verge of taking over their own department of a Federal Law Enforcement Agency really aren’t supposed to be cute.”

Abby rolls her eyes at that. “Uh huh. You two going to be okay?”

“Yeah. I may not get the collar, but I get punching the asshole in front of you when you can’t hit the asshole you’re really mad at.”

“He’s really mad at you, too.”

“Not the way he’s mad at his dad or mom.”

“True.”

“And I’m here and they aren’t.”

“Also true.”

“We okay?” he asks Abby.

“We are. I know you’re doing better. And a lot of his mad is the fact that he just kept shoving every piece of crap into the background for decades—“

“Which means I’ve got ten years of shit I’ve pulled on him all bubbling up at once. I get it.”

“Okay. I’m going to head home. Try and get her in her crib before she falls asleep.”

“Good plan.” 

 

A minute after getting out of the locker room, Tim noticed Ziva was still hanging around. Normally they fight, hit the showers, and head home. 

But she’s standing outside the men’s locker room, chatting with Gibbs, and when she sees Tim and Jimmy come out she says to them (because he’s got to snag a ride home with one of them, his car was still at the Slater’s with Abby and Breena) “I’ll run him home.”

Tim’s eyebrows rise up be he nods in agreement, vaguely wondering if Tony spilled the beans and told Ziva about Ender. But as they get into Ziva’s car, and she turns it, and the AC on, but doesn’t put it into gear, she says, “Everyone else gets to hear your story, but not me?”

“Ziva…” Or it could be that. 

“It’s not a demand or anything, McGee… just… I am here. I am a good listener. And… And I know more about being small and powerless, dependent on the will of someone who wanted nothing good for me, than anyone else you know.”

“I know, and that’s why…” He closes his eyes and sighs a little, half shaking his head and licking his lips. “It just feels so self-centered and whiny to complain or even talk about anything like that to you. You were…” he doesn’t want to say it, not sure if he doesn’t want to acknowledge it, or if saying it makes it worse, or what exactly is going on there, but the word doesn’t form on his lips.

“Raped, McGee. That’s the word,” she says with a steady voice and a nod. “Captured. Tortured. Interrogated. Starved. Given only two cups of water a day. And raped. More than once and by different men.”

He half-smiles at her, not sure what to do with that. She half-smiles back. 

“You don’t have to hide it or mince words. Not speaking the name of something gives it more power, not less, that was in one of those Harry Potter books you gave me. And it’s right. Living it was bad enough, and I refuse to give them another second of power over me or another molecule of fear.

“When you got me back, I was ready to die. My spirit was broken, attached to my body by less than a thread. But you got me back, and in time my spirit came home again, and realized how to be in my body once more.”

“I remember… I remember a lot of getting you back and how you flinched when anyone touched you for weeks after. How you looked like you wanted nothing more than to curl into Gibbs, but couldn’t do it.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s a big part of not saying anything to you. It was just words. Mean words. But just words. And mean words pale in comparison. And flipping out over it, being all sensitive and off and… It’s like complaining about a broken ankle to someone who’s lost a leg.”

“Pain is pain, McGee. Mine, yours, it’s all still pain. Fear is fear. It’s not less fear because the monster in the closet was just a shadow, and it is certainly not less because someone else had a real monster in their closet.”

He shrugs.

“The monster in your closet was real. The monster in mine was worse. That does not make yours any less real. Nor does it mean you do not get to seek comfort for the wounds that monster left.”

“You never sought comfort from us.”

She tilts her head acknowledging that. “In a way.” She sighs again. “I imagine right now I am looking at you very much the way you are looking at me. Not pity, because that’s not it, but that pain of knowing someone you love was hurt, wishing you could help, knowing you can’t.”

He nods at that.

“I couldn’t take that look. Not from any of you. Not then. My own pain filled up enough of my life, and I couldn’t take yours or Tony’s or Gibbs’ on top of it.”

“Why you told us not to come when you buried your father?”

“Then, too. I took what I could from you, normal. The rhythm of cases. The fact that you weren’t willing to treat me like glass. It wasn’t enough, but it was what I needed, then. Two years of counseling helped, too.” 

“I didn’t know that.”

“I didn’t tell anyone.”

“Why not?”

“Probably the same reason you did not tell us. You have to keep going back to it to talk about it.”

“Yeah, you do. So I guess Tony told you why I flipped out on him.”

“He did. And I am sorry to hear it.”

He shrugs at that, too. Not sure if there’s a graceful response to ‘I’m sorry your parents abused you.’ “It wasn’t that bad.”

“You don’t have to say that to me. A broken ankle hurts. Really hurts. And you have to adjust to moving a different way. But it heals, stronger than it was before it broke. You baby it for a while, take it easy, avoid the same situation where you broke it in the first place. But when you stop protecting it, and you start running again, you’re not as fast, and you stumble and trip and get hurt again. But if you keep at it, you do get stronger than you were before, than you could have ever been before. 

“I survived, Tim. You did, too. And neither of us are cripples because of it, not anymore.” 

He leans over and hugs her.


	8. Why Marry Them?

Gibbs set Rachel's coffee on the little table she had next to her chair, and limped to the sofa, setting his crutch to his side, and taking his coffees out.

"How's the knee doing?" she asks once he's settled, taking a sip of the coffee. "Thank you, this is lovely."

He nods. "Down to just the brace next week. They want me to go to physical therapy."

"You don't sound happy about that."

He shrugs. "Not happy about the whole thing." He taps his knee. "Don't like feeling useless. They'll only okay me for light duty once I get off the crutches. Then won't get okayed for full duty until the physical therapy is done, and that'll be about a week before I retire."

"Sorry to hear it."

"Yeah, well… It is what it is. Work with the boys. Have Ziva put me through my paces. I'll get it done faster than they expect, but faster'll be two weeks, three weeks before they boot me out? Not a big difference."

"No. I guess not." She makes a little note of that.

"What?"

"Reminding myself to talk with you about retiring, but probably not today."

"Okay. What are we talking about today?"

"Did you do your homework?"

He nods, taking a sip of his coffee.

"Who'd you tell?"

"Penny."

Rachel thinks about that. She knows the name but isn't immediately coming up with who Penny is. He sees that.

"Tim's grandma, Ducky's…" he sort of rolls his eyes. "Can you call a woman north of eighty a girlfriend? And if I did, I'd have to listen to her lecture on she's a woman, not a girl, and that describing her by her relationships to the men in her life diminishes her personhood. Or something like that. I zoned out last time."

"The third corner in your grandparenting triangle?"

"Yes. Kelly's great-grandma. Maybe that one won't get me chewed out. She might do it just because she knows it bugs me."

"Sounds like you have an adversarial relationship."

"Not really. Not as smooth as the rest of the family; there's friction but not anger…" he thinks about that and decides it feels right. "If she was thirty years younger, I would have been interested. Of course, if she was thirty years younger, I wouldn't have been smart enough for her."

"Is that part of the friction?"

"Nah. We met on a case—"

"Not through Tim?"

"Not really. He was taking point, she's his grandma after all. She wasn't talking, actually playing him, so I went in and went hard, and she may have called me a jack-booted fascist, or thought it, not sure if it actually came out, but she didn't know I wasn't as straight up law and order as I looked and I didn't know she wasn't as hippie-dippie, peacenik as she looked, and we both kind of nudge each other with it now and again."

"Family dinners must be a blast."

He nods, smiling. "Little tense right now, but yeah, usually, they are.

"Tense?"

"Long story. Not actually mine, this time." He's not breaking Tim or Tony's confidence.

"Will it be okay?"

"I think so. Might be some more cussing and the occasional head slap to get 'em all moving right, but we'll get there."

"And it's your job to deliver the head slaps?"

"Only if they can't work it out for themselves. I think they will."

Rachel makes a note of that, too.

He looks at her curiously.

"One of these days I want to hear about this family you've built. Created families of the kind you have are fairly rare, working ones rarer still. Tim and Penny are the only two with any blood ties?"

He nods and she makes a note of that, too. Long note. He decides not to ask what she's thinking right now. They'll get to it sooner or later.

"So, why Penny?"

"Her husband died back in '88. She'd been married to him all her life at that point. They lost a son in 'Nam. Wanted to talk to someone who got it."

"Sounds like a good choice."

"I think so. It was a good conversation. Got to know more about her, too. Though neither of us seem to know how the switch flips and you move on. She said it just did."

"How'd her husband die?"

"I don't know the details. She said he was at sea, it was unexpected, and painless. It was the '80s and he was an Admiral, so I'm fairly sure it wasn't combat related."

"Admiral?"

"Yeah, her son, Tim's dad, is one, too."

"You weren't kidding about not being smart enough."

"No. Not smart enough. Not ambitious enough. You need at least a PhD before she's willing to look at you for more than a good time."

"She must be a very interesting woman."

"She is."

"He likely died of natural causes?"

"I think so."

"And she doesn't think she had anything to do with how he died? No guilt?"

"Probably not."

Rachel stares at him.

"Yeah, I know, probably has a lot to do with flipping that switch." She makes a note at that, and he has a feeling she's thinking up his next homework assignment.

"How did saying it feel?"

His look could best be described as, _how do you think?_

"That's the point of this, Jethro, I don't assume how it works for you, I ask. And even when I do know, I still ask, because then you have to think about it, put it into words, and actually tell me."

"Really uncomfortable."

"Why?"

"Talking? Bringing it up out of the middle of nowhere? That look that comes right after you say it? All of it?"

Rachel nods.

"Are you going to do it again?"

"Probably. There's this diner we go to. Elaine's the lady who runs the counter. She asked when I put the ring on, 'Go and get married again, hon?' and I said no, and left it, and she hasn't poked. Probably tell her the next time I go in for a late night coffee."

"Sounds good."

He shrugs. "She'll give me a hug and pie."

"Hugs and pie are good."

"Not saying they aren't just…"

"It's easier to be invulnerable?"

"Yes!"

"Too bad. You're human, Jethro. None of us are made of stone."

"Yay," he says, dry and sarcastic.

She takes another drink of her coffee and picks up the pages he wrote about the wives and girlfriends. "I was reading over your collection of ladies, and I wanted to know, why did you marry them?"

He blows out a frustrated breath. "Beyond it seemed like a good idea at the time?"

"Yes. You're a fairly traditional guy, so can I assume that at some point, for each of these women, you went out, found a ring, came up with some sort of 'let's get married' speech, set up some sort of romantic encounter, and then stuck around long enough to plan a wedding, and then got married?"

"Only two weddings."

"Hm. One was Shannon, who was the other one?"

"Diane."

"What were the other two?"

"Eloped. Justice of the Peace with Hannah, Marine Chaplain owed me a favor for Stephanie."

"Okay. So let's start with Hannah. What made you think, 'I should marry this woman?'"

He exhales, looking a bit sheepish. "Not exactly my finest moment."

She smiles at that and nudges him on. "We can talk about your finest moments, later. Why'd you marry her?"

"She was young, twenty-three, going to school to be a pharmacist. Which was why she was in DC in the first place. She finished about four months after we started dating. Her family was in Buffalo. They wanted her to find a job closer to them. Wanted her to drop me, move home, meet a nice guy, one a lot closer to her age, settle down, make lots of little red-haired grandbabies. They didn't much like me, probably because they had an easier time seeing who I was than she did. So, she was telling me about her parents giving her grief about heading back north. I wasn't in love with her. But I didn't want her to leave. And if I didn't make a move, she was going to go, and I was going to be rattling around the house with just memories and bourbon for company.

"So, I found a ring, and I lied my ass off about loving her for the rest of our days, and she said yes, and two weeks later she was Mrs. Gibbs."

"How was it?"

"Okay, for about a year. That year was better than Diane or Stephanie. We got on pretty well. Not… not what I wanted, but better than nothing."

"And after that year?"

"I caught the Boone case, and that one ate me, and our marriage, alive. I don't even know when she actually left. Just one day I noticed that her stuff was gone. She could have left that afternoon, she could have left a month earlier, and I had no idea.

"Didn't contest the divorce. Signed over whatever she wanted, besides the house. That was mine. That's the only thing I've managed to keep a hold of, besides my tools, through the three divorces."

"And Diane?"

He smiles at that. He might not remember where they were when they met, but he certainly remembered that look she gave him, and the way she said, 'Back off. I don't like cops.' "She told me I wasn't her type."

"And you had to prove her wrong?"

He shakes his head, half-smile still on his face. "Or die trying."

"Why did you have a real wedding with her?"

"Diane and I liked anything that made sparks. Sex, teasing, fighting… Anything that got us hot was good. And a wedding is seventeen million things to fight about. Hell, I almost cancelled the thing three times just to stretch it out even longer, because the arguing was fun."

"Did she think it was fun?"

"She changed the date on me twice."

"Cold feet?"

"Moved it up the second time. Nah. Just messing with me. But eventually, we did get married, and we had a great honeymoon, and we got home and ran out of stuff to argue about. And if we weren't fighting, I wasn't interested."

Rachel stares at him, looking like she doesn't think that's the whole story. "You won?"

"Yeah. I won. I proved her wrong. And I got bored. And she got angry. And that kept things going a little longer. I got more and more into work. Into the next case, the next puzzle, the next challenge. She got more and more annoyed. Then she got mean. And I pulled in further. She got clingy and meaner. I took Agent Afloat. We were divorced by the time I got back."

Rachel squints at him. "The way you write about her seems… fonder."

"I am fond of her. Now. And a long time between then and now helps. We keep running into each other. And… We're okay… ish, now. At peace, definitely. For some reason, every single fall, it's practically clockwork, sometime between September and November, I'll find Fornel or Diane at a case, and within minutes the other one shows up."

"God's amused by you three together?"

He rolls his eyes and sighs a little. "Satan probably. Every year. And I already know the one after next. Tobias is getting married in October of '16. Last time she got married, she invited both of us. We didn't go. Tobias was going to, got all dressed up, showed up at my place, saw I was in street clothing, and we spent the rest of the day drinking in my basement.

"So, he's already got it set with Wendy, she's cool with it. After all, she's not just his ex, but also his daughter's mom. He's going to invite her. And she'll come. I'll be there, I'm the best man." Gibbs looks up, licks his lips, and shakes his head.

"Jethro?"

"Unless she's found herself a new pet, she'll show up, we'll argue, it'll be fun, and we'll end up in bed together."

That got a curious look from Rachel.

"We were always good at pushing each other's buttons. And so far, every time we've run into each other, she's been married, or had a new boyfriend. But last I heard, she was single again."

"You seem pretty sure your advances would be welcome."

He's not entirely sure what that look on Rachel's face means. "Are you asking if I think I'm God's gift to women, and she'll just fall for me because I think it might be interesting, or if I actually know something to indicate making a move would be welcome?"

She nods, nicely, but nods. He sends her a wry look, one that makes it pretty clear that he knows he's not God's gift to women, not these days.

"She told me I was her Shannon. I think, especially if we spent a night sniping at each other, all dressed up, kind of tipsy, it'd be welcome. Probably end up making out in the parking lot."

And while Rachel looks really surprised at that, she's not surprised about the making out in the parking lot comment. "She knew about Shannon? Did you tell her?"

"No. Never spoke her name for… close to a decade. Like I said, we had a great honeymoon, we got home, and I got bored. She knew I was bored. Knew something was wrong, didn't know what. We limped around for a few months, and she got more and more angry, and I dug further and further into work. The challenge was over. I'd won. She was Mrs. Gibbs, mine, and even whacking me with a golf club didn't shake the boredom.

"I took Agent Afloat. Six months in the Med. While I was gone, she went through all my stuff, and found out about them."

"Oh. Yet, even with that, it sounds like you're still attracted to her."

"I am. She's beautiful. And I do like her. Always did. Probably always will. Don't like the way she gets mean and shrill when she's unhappy, but I do like her."

"So. You aren't the same man you were then. Say you did go to the wedding, you did get tipsy and push each other's buttons, find yourselves a quiet bit of parking lot, would a new start be welcome? Obviously she cares for you. You like her…"

"Don't think I'd be able to trust her enough for it. Not for more than sex."

Another curious look.

"I'd been afloat for five weeks when I got the 'I'm pregnant' letter."

Cranston winces. She remembers the comment about the vasectomy.

"Tobias'?"

"Yeah. Her name is Emily. She's sixteen. Beautiful girl. Funny, smart as a whip, calls me Uncle Gibbs."

"You have a relationship with Emily Fornell?" Cranston looks stunned and amused.

He chuckles, shaking his head. "Life is weird. I'm her father's best friend and her mom's ex-husband. Yeah. She's at my house for extended family parties a few times a year. Occasionally she crashes at my place when they're driving her buggy. My door's always open, and they both trust that if she's at my place, she's safe and well-looked after."

Cranston closes her eyes, smiles, and shakes her head. "Sounds like you and Diane are better than okay… ish."

"We're okay, now."

"But you don't trust her?"

"Not deep down."

"But you trust Tobias?"

"Yeah."

"Why?" _Takes two to make a baby_ clear in her eyes.

He licks his lips and looks up again, trying to figure out how to put this feeling into words. "The three of us got on great. Dinner at my place, especially before we got married, was always a lot of fun. I knew he liked her. I knew she liked him. And when I got the letter… It was the nineties, hard to make calls off a battleship, but I was the Agent Afloat, so I managed it. I called Tobias. And I was so…

"So…"

"I knew it wasn't mine. I mean, I just knew. I'd told her I didn't want kids. She seemed on board with that. She'd been on the pill."

"You didn't tell her about the vasectomy?"

"No. Couldn't tell her about that without telling her why I'd had one. Not like the scar is obvious, so, never mentioned it.

"So, I knew she couldn't be mine. But, I saw the word on the paper and felt the thrill of it and the kick in the balls all at once. I called Tobias, and he was acting off, but I was too out of it to really notice, but he did remind me that sometimes vasectomies heal up, so I should get it tested before I got a hold of a divorce lawyer."

"So you did."

"Yeah, easy test. Anyone with a microscope can do it."

"And you hadn't had any sort of miraculous recovery."

"No. And when the medic told me that, I realized that Tobias had been acting off, and I suddenly knew why. And that hurt like fuck. Fourth worst hurt of my life. But… He's not the one I married. He's not the one who told me he was okay with not having children. And he's not the one who slept with my best friend and tried to pass off his kid as mine."

Cranston nods at that. "What do you think she was doing?"

"I think she thought that, after seeing the shots of Kelly, that if there was a baby it'd get my attention, and keep it. And it would have. She was dead right. Like I said, Diane always knew how to push my buttons. If Emily had been mine… But she wasn't."

"Does Emily know…"

He shakes his head. "She's under the impression Diane and I got divorced a year earlier than we actually did."

"Ah."

"None of the three of us see any reason for her to know the truth on that."

"Probably wise. How about Stephanie? Why did you marry her?"

He shrugs.

"Don't give me that, you know."

"I couldn't have Shannon, and I needed a distraction from Jen. She looked, smelled, and acted enough like both of them that I could kind of pretend."

"That's why you slept with her. Why did you marry her?"

He glares at Rachel. She smiles back.

"Come on, I'm not stupid, and you aren't either. And we both know you'll sleep with a woman for distraction, but that's not why you'll marry one."

"She wanted to."

"Nope."

"Nope?" He's got a startled look on his face when he asks that.

"Nope." Rachel shakes her head. "You and I are not strangers, we have not just met, and I do not, for one second, believe a man who couldn't be bothered to come home on time for dinner regularly married a woman because she wanted it. Try again. Dig deep. Why did you marry her?"

He hasn't thought about it for years. So he does. Moscow, it was brutally cold and very snowy and lonely and why marry her?

Oh.

"In '96 Franks left, and I got a new Probie. Stan Burley. Great guy. Good agent. Put up with my crap and then some. Including the fact that I called him Steve for four years just to see if I could piss him off enough to do something about it. In '98 NCIS began to shift its main focus away from crime to anti-terrorism. At that point in time we had nothing in the way of anti-terrorism talent.

"I'm good at languages. Stan's family was well-connected. He was a Senator's aide for years. Law school, all the rest of that. So, they sent us to Europe to head up the new NCIS anti-terrorism squad."

"Europe?"

"Moscow, Paris, Romania, few other places."

"Don't sound like hotbeds of international terrorism."

"Like I said, we weren't the crown jewel of the anti-terrorism world. Anyway, it was '98, and NCIS also wanted a stronger female presence, especially on all of the 'premier' teams. So Stan and I got this new Probie, and that was Jen.

"Stan's not stupid, and he's not blind, so he knew how I felt about Jen. He saw the way I'd watch her. Saw how she'd watch me. Probably had a better idea of what was going on in her mind about that than I did.

"We're in Moscow, and we know we're going to Paris, long mission, at least four months, maybe longer. We know Jen's going, because the couple in love cover works well. What we don't know is which of the two of us is going.

"He was going to go over my head. He'd knew I'd fuck it up. And he was right, I did exactly what he thought I was going to, and we got a few lucky breaks and were able to pull it out of the weeds. But I know it, and Jen knows it, and Stand did, too. In the end it was luck. Because I fucked up and got distracted and put more into her than the mission.

"We were planning the mission, and he's giving me the 'you aren't going to Paris with her' look, and I had a girlfriend, and I knew we were still a few months out, so…

"So, Moscow has, or at least had, the kind of malls where you could buy anything and everything. Stephanie and I were out, and she'd been moping about something, like me missing dinner, so we walk past one of the jewelry stores, and there's diamonds all over the place. She's staring at them. I nod at them and say, 'Pick one out.' Ten days later we were married, and Stan stopped riding me so hard about Jen."

"That's cold."

"It was Moscow."

"Cute. You said Stan had a better idea of what Jen was doing. What did you mean by that?"

"I was the next rung up the ladder, and she was going to climb me however she could. I saw pretty, sassy redhead with…" He realizes he'd kept that sentence going a few words longer than necessary and stops.

"With…"

"Attractive curves—"

She smiles at the way he's censoring himself. "Big boobs?"

"Yes. And some other nice curves, too. Jen was an extremely well-shaped woman. And between being my probie, and so cute, and sexy, and she had this mix of standing up for herself and taking orders and… she had me wrapped around her finger pretty fast."

"And you like women who challenge you, ones you can't have."

"There was that, too."

"She liked me. I liked her. That was real. That'd she'd play up the sex to get the men around her to do what she wanted was true, too."

"And Stan saw that better than you did?"

"Yeah. Probably didn't hurt that he had a serious girl then, made him more immune to big boobs, doe eyes, and sass."

"And it worked for her?"

"It did. There are a few things that every other NCIS director has had in common that she didn't. One of them was twenty-years in. Department head was another. Marine or Navy service. Somehow all those 'rules' vanished when her name got on the list."

"Was she a bad Director?"

He shrugs. "She was herself. She put me in charge for a week while she was at a conference. Great. Message received. Being Director is hard. I get it. So that was fine for the two of us working things out. But, I've never gone higher than Team Leader for a reason. I didn't become an officer for a reason. And we lucked out and nothing too big happened that week. But if something had happened, I wouldn't have been able to handle it, not without pissing off everyone in DC with initials, and not without making the whole agency look bad.

"She was good at people. Running them, building relationships and teams. She was good at politics. She was bad at not getting caught in the little stuff.

"Was she a good Director? I don't know. I think there were things she could have done better, but that's true for everyone. Are you actually asking me if I think she slept her way into that position?"

"Do you?"

"No. But she used her charm to move higher, faster than she would have otherwise. And it's not like she wasn't good. Not like there wasn't substance to go with her looks. But she mixed them together and got a lot further than someone who wasn't as pretty would have."

"A male someone?"

"Sure, or a less attractive female one. She was tiny. And she'd look up at you, big green eyes, and say something unexpected, sharp as a whip, and dead on right, and just use that charm to shape the world around her to the way she wanted it to be."

"How about the other ones you didn't marry?"

"Jen wanted the job a hell of a lot more than me. Elizabeth was… a friend with benefits? That's what Tony'd call it."

"How about Hollis? Were you getting serious with her?"

"We were starting to talk in that direction. She had her twenty-five in, and was thinking of retiring, wanted to know if it'd be worth it for her to stay in DC. I'd said yes. Starting to feel kind of hopeful about it. Like maybe this time it'd work…"

"But…"

"But she found out about my girls, and I'd never said anything, because I thought she knew, and I think she decided I wasn't going to be able to get past it, and next thing I knew she'd moved to Hawaii."

"You didn't talk at all?" Rachel sounds credulous.

"I thought we were going to. She looked at me. I looked back at her. We didn't say anything. She left. I figured that she'd take a day or so and then give me a call. But she didn't. And I caught a hot case. So, eight days later, I finally come up for air, and notice there are no messages on my machine, no emails, nothing. I'd told her that…" he trails off on that.

"Told her what?"

"When she was talking about retiring. I told her I'd be around, that I wanted her to stay. Helped her fix up her place so she'd have a better home for staying. So, she knew I wasn't going anywhere, she knew I was hoping we'd have something. But she didn't call, and I got the message loud and clear. She retired and moved to Hawaii."

"And you never tried to reach her?"

"Didn't know her number. Figured she would have called if she wanted me to find her. It just ended there."

"Was she already moved after a week?"

"No."

"So, you had her number, you just didn't call. A week went by and you just dropped her."

"I think she dropped me."

"So, you're telling me this person you cared about just wandered off and you did nothing about it?"

"Yeah."

"You really want me to believe you just let her go?"

"Yes."

She's building to something, but he's not sure what. "How many other things have you ever just let go?"

He shrugs.

"How about Susan? Did you just let her go, too?"

He thinks about that. "Not exactly. I sent her off."

"What happened? You obviously cared about her. How'd you make the jump from this is good to no more?"

That's a whole lot more recent so it doesn't take long for him to remember the, nope, this isn't right, moment. "Valentine's Day. We're having lunch, and the guys are all talking about their plans. What special things they were getting or doing. Tony was worrying about not having a plan yet. Stuff like that. And I liked Susan. She's sweet and beautiful and kind and just… just a really good person, you know? Just being around her makes you feel good."

"She sounds great."

"She is. She really is. Anyway… The guys are getting their various things ready, and Tony asks what I'm doing, and I… think I didn't answer… brushed it off in a sort of Valentines never works sort of way… which was true, we caught a case and Molly was born. No one got home until the 15th. But I could hear them talking, especially Tim and Jimmy, and they were really into it. Not the hearts and flowers and cuteness stuff, but the doing something to make your woman happy part of it. Even Tony, who told us five hundred times how much he hates Valentine's Day was saying it because he was scared of not doing enough. And I had some plans in motion, we had our Valentines that weekend, and it was nice. But that was it. It was nice. We saw a movie she'd been looking forward to, I made dinner, quiet night in front of the fireplace. It was nice. She liked it. She was happy.

"But I was going through the motions. I was doing something to make her happy, not because I was enjoying her happy, but because I didn't want to make her sad. Tim, Tony, Jimmy, they were all doing things that would make their girls happy, and that happy would make them happy, feed them. All I was doing was avoiding sad.

"I thought about that more, and two weeks later broke up with her. Then spent a few more weeks acting like a bear. Which was when," he taps his ring finger, "that happened."

Rachel thinks about it. "Did making Hollis happy make you happy?"

"Yeah, it did. I repiped her home and put up drywall. Yeah, making her happy made me happy."

"Jethro, did you really not love her, or was she just not Shannon?"

He thinks about that. "I don't know. I'd like to think I'd have gone to see her, or called her, or something, if I had loved her."

"Really? Would you have? On the verge of a functional relationship, something that might work, might make you happy, might threaten the sacred space you hold your love of Shannon in? Another shot at getting your heart ripped out? Do you really think you'd have gone after her if you loved her? Would you have jumped into that again?"

"No."

"Especially after she left without saying anything to you?"

"No."

"Did you love her?"

He closes his eyes and sighs. "Yeah. I did."

"Good."

 _Good?_ His look says, disbelieving.

"Good. It's one thing if you can't fall in love, it's another thing if you won't. And won't is a lot easier to deal with than can't."

"Wonderful."

"So, can you guess what this week's homework is?"

"Think about love some more?"

"Yeah. What is love? This time not defined by Shannon. Don't have to write it down or anything, but think about it."

"Okay."


	9. Getting Her Groove Back

You fall in love, get married, get pregnant, have a baby, life changes, your body changes, your home changes, everything changes.

It has to.

You can't do all of that and have things stay the same.

And Abby knows that.

There are welcome changes, like Tim curled around her each night, or the feel of Kelly's breath against her breast as she nurses, and there are unwelcome changes.

Like the inch of blond roots peeking out from her black hair.

And yeah, it's not the end of the world or anything. But her hair is one of her defining characteristics. It's black and up in pig tails most of the time. It's dark and cute and perky and just fun.

But she's naturally blonde, and until Kelly was on the outside every two weeks she'd dye it to keep it looking perfect. She's so good at the upkeep that a lot of people don't know that her hair isn't naturally black. It's her own special dye mix, organic, natural, no ammonia, beautiful color that doesn't make her hair feel like straw. None of this right out of the box stuff for her.

It's her hair, and she loves it, and…

But, because it's not the out of the box stuff, and because it's natural and organic and has no harsh chemicals, it takes her two hours every other week to keep it the way she likes.

Two hours she could be doing something else, like sleeping, or Tim.

But it's _her_ hair…

God, she hates this; it feels so whiny. She wants "her" hair. She doesn't want to spend the time she needs to to keep it "her" hair.

Okay, really, it's not the hair. Well, it is… but… It's just the one last straw on the camel's back. Her favorite tattoo is broken, her skin's covered in stretch marks, none of 'her' clothing fits, even though she's only twelve pounds away from her pre-pregnancy weight her hips and boobs aren't even close to the same size they used to be. Even her shoes don't fit properly anymore. (That one kills her. She's probably got fifteen thousand dollars' worth of beautiful boots and shoes, that she spent the last twenty years collecting and they're all at least half a size too small now.) Nothing about her feels the same, so she could at least keep her hair, right?

Breena and Ziva are looking at Abby as she's saying this.

"Could you just dye it less often?" Ziva asks. "The roots aren't very noticeable until they get to be about a quarter inch long."

Abby mopes at that. "I can see them. And it makes me look like my hair's really thin because I end up with what looks like a really wide part."

"Tony uses Garnier to cover his gray. He likes it, and it doesn't take two hours. I am sure they have black."

Abby nods at Ziva's comment. "They do. They all do. But my hair's so fine it feels like straw after I use one of those dyes. And especially with nursing, I don't want to use anything I didn't mix up myself."

Breena's staring at Abby's hair, playing with it a little. "Go blonde. What's your real color? Kind of light honey blonde?" That's what color her roots are.

"Lighter. About the color of your highlights. At least that's what it used to be." She thinks the roots were always this color and it just got lighter as it got longer, but she doesn't really remember. It's been almost thirty years since she dyed it black the first time.

Breena's thinking about that as they sit in Abby's living room. Summer's inching to a close, and once more Labor Day weekend has come around. So, right now, as the guys are outside messing about with the grill and keeping babies entertained, the ladies are inside, taking advantage of the AC, (It's way too hot out there for Breena. At five months pregnant, anything over eighty-five is torture.) and working on making some plans for getting Abby's groove back.

She ruffles her fingers through Abby's hair, feeling how thin it is. "It'll take a lot of bleach to get rid of the black, and that's hard on hair. So, cute, sassy, short little cut, bleach it back to whatever you think it is, and we can fine tune when more of it grows in. Maybe put some pink or blue on the tips, too. When you're out of all babies all the time, you can go black again."

"Cute and short sounds like time getting it cut instead of dyed," Abby replies, twirling one ponytail between her fingers, not loving the idea of chopping them off. Though she finds herself wondering how much of that is not being willing to let go of Kate. Last thing she ever said to her… almost last thing... last thing was about the tattoo on her bum… was how much she liked Abby's hair up in ponytails.

"Yeah, but every other month instead of every other week," Breena answers. "And you go out to have someone else do it so you get some baby-free time where all you have to do is sit around and let someone else take care of you for a while. I don't think you'll have a hard time selling Tim on the idea that you need a Saturday afternoon off every other month."

Ziva smiles. "He will drive you to the appointment himself, smiling."

Breena stares at Abby's hair, runs her fingers through it again, and says, "Actually, the first cut's really only about limiting the damage from the bleach to get your hair lighter. If you don't want that afternoon off, just grow it back out again after the first one."

Abby stands up and heads to their downstairs bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror. "How short are you thinking?" she calls out to the others.

Ziva joins her. Breena stays comfortable on the sofa. She'll be doing enough up and down and chasing Molly around soon.

"Not a pixie cut," Ziva says.

"Noooo…" No way in hell she's doing that. Though it would take care of the dye issue all-together. Cut it that short and it'd just be her natural hair and maybe some tiny little black tips. _That actually might look kind of cool… Okay, no that's insane._ Ten pounds from now, when she can find her cheekbones again, maybe. But right now her face is too round for it.

"Maybe jaw length?" Ziva suggests.

She can kind of imagine that.

"Maybe."

They hear the sliding glass door to the porch open, and the sound of Tim's voice. "Dinner's ready. Got some ladies that want to eat?" He looks at Abby and Ziva a little oddly when they both come out of the bathroom, but doesn't ask about it.

"Do I want to know?" he whispers to Abby a few minutes later while everyone floods into the kitchen to put together their burgers and salad.

"Just talking hair."

"Hers or yours?"

"Mine."

"Really?" That has his interest.

"Yeah."

"What are you thinking?"

"I don't know. Tossing around the idea of short."

He thinks about that and kisses the back of her neck. "I'd like short."

"Yeah?"

"Like long too, and really long, but yeah, short might be interesting. Looks bad, it'll regrow. Not a big deal."

"You'd really like short?"

"I like my mental image of short. If it looks anything like that, I'll like it."

"Hmmm.."

"What are you two conspiring about?" Penny asks, snagging a few more glasses.

"Nothing big."

"Good, get moving, we're waiting on you to eat."

"Yes, Ma'am," Tim replies, and Abby suddenly has a very clear idea of him at eight or nine-years-old being told to hurry up a bit and get to the table.

They get settled and dinner begins, bits and pieces of conversation floating around while Kelly naps and Molly pokes at the little cut up pieces of hamburger she's eating off of Ziva's plate.

Conversation bops around, mostly just family stuff, little bits of work, catching up on the things they've done lately. As burgers, salad, and corn on the cob is cleared off, and strawberry-peach shortcake (sans cake for Jimmy and Tim) was passed around, Kelly starts crying.

Tim heads up to get her, and hears the tail end of, "finally hired a nanny," as he sits down, handing his daughter to his wife.

"Her name is Heather, and she starts on the 15th. Give her a little time to get used to this while I'm still home."

"I met her, didn't I?" Gibbs asks.

"Yep. She was the one telling you about artificial knees."

He rolls his eyes a little at that. _The twelve-year-old._

"So, does that mean you're heading back to work soon?" Penny asks.

"Back on the twenty-first."

"Good, you've got to get them into the shape. They keep working on other teams' evidence," Tony says, half-joking.

"I'll remember to speak severely to them about that," Abby responds, like Tony, half-joking.

"It actually is something of an issue. It's not that they are working on other teams' evidence, it is that they do not seem to grasp the concept of murders take precedence over drug deals, thefts, or money laundering," Ziva adds.

Tim nods at that. "Priorities are a little skewed. They seem to do a sort of first come first served sort of thing."

"And I get the feeling they aren't used to doing much in the way of time sensitive work. I've sent Jimmy down with samples on several occasions, and sometimes they just sit there for a few days."

"They are doing a whole lot more work, too," Jimmy adds, feeling like it's important to get the idea across that the lab staff didn't suddenly triple, have the same amount of work, and were doing it badly. "They're getting everything from all the Afloats, too. But, yeah, we're not getting the sort of personal touch we're used to."

"Then I guess I know what my first job is."

* * *

While they were cleaning up the table, Penny quietly asked Jethro, "Still seeing your new friend?"

"Yeah."

"Finding any clarity?"

He shrugs. "Haven't stopped going."

"Are you getting what you want out of it?"

"Maybe. Thinking about things different, so that's something."

She gives his shoulder a squeeze. "Yeah, it is. Not that I'm planning on blabbing, but, who all knows about this?"

"Haven't said, but I think it's already gone through. Think Tim let the crew knew that was part of Tony and I getting back on the job."

Penny watches Tim and Tony tossing a ball around with Jimmy and Molly through the sliding glass door.

"They look like they're getting along better."

"Yeah. Tony's been watching his step better. Tim's been playing it straight." Jethro had noticed he was wearing jeans today, rather unusual for a hot summer day at home, but… probably keeping things calm between them is a good plan. Let a little more time go by before they start rubbing on each other again. "But sooner or later Tony'll shoot his mouth off or Tim'll do something weird, we'll see how they're actually doing."

"You think it's weird?"

"Yeah, but weird doesn't bug me…" He can see her not believing that. "I'm not letting it bug me. He needs a man who doesn't flip out about stupid stuff, so I'm not flipping out."

Penny smiles at that. "He does. And I'm glad you're willing to be that man."

"Didn't take talking to Rachel to make me decide I was going to be a good dad to my boys."

* * *

NCIS may be closed on Labor Day, but the just about everywhere else, isn't.

So, having dropped boys and babies off at the McGees' house, the girls ventured forth for a girls day out. What started as a haircut for Abby morphed into treat the ladies day when Jimmy looked at Breena and said, 'I'll take Molly over to Tim's, you go out and have fun, too. Don't come back until you've had at least a massage.'

So, with both of them thinking massages and facials to go with Abby's hair transformation, sounded good, Breena just made the appointments for Ziva and Penny, too.

The Gibbs clan ladies were going out, and that was that.

* * *

One of the good things about living in the Capitol City of the US is that it's not hard to find places that will cater to a quad of ladies looking for a nice day out, let alone a nice day out that involves things like haircuts and massages.

Only tricky part was picking where to go.

But Breena took that in hand, and by shortly after 8:30, all four of them were very happy with her choice.

Abby had to admit that getting a reflexology treatment while the black cooked out of her hair was awfully nice.

She was really nervous about the staff here being able to do what she wanted, because they were awfully… vanilla looking. She didn't get the sense that much of the ladies here had any edge, or if they did they kept it well hidden.

But as she described the idea for her hair, short, shag cut, lightened to match her roots, little touches of pink to frame her face, Amanda, her stylist got really excited, and started gushing about the new dyes they got in, taking her in hand and dragging her over to see all the shades they had to play with.

"We never get to use them," she said, gesturing to the close to six different pinks, (they had a similar inventory of blues, greens, and reds, along with a large library of standard hair colors) and holding up a few of them to Abby's face to see how they looked with her hair and eyes. "How about this baby pink, and maybe a touch or two of this rose color?"

"Sure!" she was starting to get excited about this idea of… changing.

* * *

"You know, while we're at it, we could take a stab at your wardrobe," Breena said as they got lunch. "Gonna be a while before you can get back into your jeans and skirts. You're going to need something to wear to work."

Abby kept staring at herself in the mirrored wall behind them. It felt really odd to be able to identify everyone at the table at a glance, besides herself. She also kept turning her head, fast, feeling this new, short hair flip around her neck and jaw.

"They don't really sell the kind of clothing I tend to like here."

Ziva was looking her over. "Maybe you might try some new clothing to go with the new hair. Sort of like how your court wear changed, maybe you could try something less…"

"Me?"

"No, not less you, different you. New armor for new battles. Boss-wear," Breena said, enthusiastically.

Abby looked to Penny, who shrugged. "Do you have any even vaguely appropriate tops that fit?"

"No." Double D nursing breasts were doing everything they could to get out of every top she owned. (Which was why she'd been wearing a lot of Tim's t-shirts lately. Why she was wearing one now.)

"Then you need to get something. But you've got time. Head online and get your old style. Play with the girls and try a new one. Do both. But having spent my entire professional life working with male scientists, I have noticed they tended to be more respectful and more willing to pay attention to what I was saying when I dressed a certain way."

"So that's what you did?" Breena asked.

"Certainly not! I had to dress like a nun to get them to pay attention. I wore whatever the hell I wanted and when they ignored me I shoved my better understanding of the subject down their throats and made them see I was a better engineer than they ever dreamed of being. I intentionally dressed like a woman so they couldn't just sort of pretend I was a small man with long hair.

"But… and this is probably important, I was also not trying to create a harmoniously running department, I was not joining an already up and running team, and for a lot of those years, I was the only female in Biotech anyone had ever heard of, let alone seen. The only thing I was doing was making sure they understood lack of penis did not mean lack of brains."

"Yeah, that's not precisely what I'm going to be doing."

"So, as Breena put it, getting some Bosswear might be in order. At least until you have a better handle on them. Or go all out Goth and make them see that collars and black leather doesn't mean lack of brains, either."

Abby looked from Ziva to Breena to Penny. "What would Bosswear look like?"

* * *

Tim, Tony, and Jimmy were entertaining Molly (naptime for Kelly) when Breena and Ziva and Penny came in. For a second Tim was feeling a bit apprehensive because Abby was lingering outside of view and the three of them were grinning stupidly at him.

Jimmy stood up and kissed his wife. "You guys lose a member of the party?"

"Oh no. We just wanted to be in range to see you respond to the grand unveiling," Ziva answered with a wide and happy smile.

Jimmy looked at Ziva, watching the pleasure on her face, and says, "Ziva, you're a girl."

Tony whacked him. "Really astute, Palmer."

"No. I mean, look, she's grinning, and really happy about a makeover party…"

Tim's aware of the fact that they're chatting about this new revelation that Ziva does indeed appear to like some girly stuff, he's somewhat less aware of Penny's commentary about 'girly stuff' being a social construct. (Ziva liking girly stuff is not, in fact, a revelation to him, he figured it out when he finally saw all of wedding stuff put together. No way you put something that pretty together without being a girl. He, Tony, Gibbs, and Jimmy could have worked on that wedding until the end of time, it still wouldn't have looked that good. Hell, infinite monkeys planning infinite weddings would have gotten that level of elegant, refined prettiness before he, Jimmy, Gibbs, and Tony stumbled onto it. Mainly because, there're fifty-fifty odds that any given one of those infinite monkeys is a girl. What that says as to his belief in the idea that appreciation of girly stuff is a social construct shoved down the throats of baby girls at a young age is probably better left unsaid in the presence of his grandmother.)

No, he's standing there, sort of aware of them talking, of Molly riding Breena's hip, waiting for her to come in. Abby and dress up games has always been one of his favorite things and…

His breath literally caught in his chest. It's just so…

Her hair is short, comes to her jaw at the longest part, and blonde, mostly, bits and pieces around the edges are pink. He doesn't know what that sort of cut is called. Not a bob, but beyond that, he's clueless.

It's cute and playful and flirty and _adult._ That's always been the thing with the pony tails. They're a link to her past, her childhood. They're adorable, but not the mark of a grown up. This is fun, but sophisticated, and so sexy, her whole neck is visible, and the colors perk up her skin and…

"Wow!"

"You like it?" She's looking a little shy as she asks, so he takes two steps, pulls her close and bends her back into a deep, passionate, oh my God! YES sort of kiss.

A bit later, as he was getting both of them standing regularly again, he noticed Breena saying to Jimmy, _"That's_ how you respond to a new haircut."

"Yes, dear." (Apparently 'Yes, dear,' must have had some unspoken context, because Breena gently whacked Jimmy's shoulder, and then he grinned at her.)

He stepped back a bit, and looked Abby over a bit more carefully. "You've got new clothes, too."

That got a smile out of her. "Yeah."

These are a lot closer to her traditional style than the hair is. From what he can tell, it's just a bigger version of the clothing she normally wears.

"Got some work clothing, too."

"Gonna show me?" he asked with a raised eyebrow and a little sexy grin.

"Eventually."

"Ooo…" He was about to say something mildly salacious about how she could show him, but Kelly woke up, so she turned and headed toward her room.

"Let's see if she can figure out who I am."

* * *

Dress up came later that night, after they were on their own.

It's stunningly amazing how much difference a new haircut/color makes. Even in her "regular" clothing (as much of it as she could squeeze into) light hair and different jewelry made some of it look, almost, normal.

Not plain or boring, but… Not nearly so edgy. Some of the less skull bedecked pieces started to look classically professional with the new hair and no cuffs or collars.

And there was the new stuff. Tim could feel the hands of Breena, Penny, and Ziva on those outfits. Granted none of it looked like anything that the three of them would wear, but all of it was vastly more aware of traditional office casual/high end professional wear, with, like everything else, an edge..

He's not sure what kind of skirt it is. Tight. It curves perfectly from her waist to just above her knee, has a little slit up the back so she can walk more easily. She's got it paired with some sort of black shell, and a white blouse and… little black pumps and… just… wow…

"Do you really like it?" She's staring at herself in the mirror, not sure about this change at all.

"Oh yeah."

"Really?"

He steps over to her. "I like anything that shows off your butt." His hands trace from her waist to her thighs. "And anything that puts this luscious curve front and center is good by me. So, snug jeans, those short flirty skirts, whatever this thing is called. Really, I'm awfully easy on this… Booty right there?" He squeezes her gently. "Yep? Happy Tim!"

"It feels really weird."

He nodded at that. "Look, if it's not really you, it's okay. Taking it back isn't a problem, or just using it for court dates. If you wanna go back, that's fine. But playing is good, right? That's what you tell me?" He gestures to himself, kilt, t-shirt, wrist cuff, three new tattoos, and thirty-five fewer pounds. "I don't exactly look like that guy you started dating again back in '12. Not exactly him, either. You still love me. And if you want to go all satin and sophisticated with just and edge of punk, I'm good with that. I'm not going anywhere, and I'm more than happy to play new Abbies with you."

"Feels weird."

He nods at that.

"Good weird?"

"Just weird. I was really into it with the girls, but now… It doesn't look like me."

"Nope. Looks different. Good different."

"I feel really naked in this."

He looked at her curiously. "Naked?"

"Yeah. Like… I'm terrified I'll spill something on myself. My legs and feet are practically bare."

"Oh, literally, naked."

"Yeah."

He headed over to their bed. "How about the trousers?"

They're slim cut, navy, some sort of light-weight wool blend. As he was handing them to her he said, "You know when it fits again, both of these would go with that pink blouse of yours, and you could probably match this with some of your belts and cuffs, and nicer tank tops type shirts."

"Maybe." She pulls off the skirt and begins to wriggle into the trousers. And like with the skirt, Tim was seriously appreciating the cut on them. "Who was picking these out?"

"Mostly Breena and Ziva. Penny kept me from breaking into hives at 'normal clothing.'"

"Remind me to thank Breena and Ziva, and Penny for getting you into it. Weather you ever wear these again or not, they fit really nicely."

"You think so?" She's looking at herself in the mirror critically.

"Maybe I just really like what's under them. Either way, I'm having a good time."

"And that's what matters?"

He shrugged. "At least one of us should be enjoying this, right?"

She laughed at that, shaking her head. "Yeah, I guess so. There's a sort of drapy top that goes with this…"

And Tim headed over to their bed to dig through the bags and find it.


	10. The Dragon Knight and The Alchemist

"How's it going?" Abby asked, looking over his shoulder as his fingers flew over the keys on his computer.

"Just about... done!" He hit the enter key one final time. "And off you go!"

"What are you doing?"

"Well, this time tomorrow, some of Cybercrime is going to notice that they can't get into anything their automatic password service was handling, and that they've been logged out of said service, and their meta password has changed."

"Ewww!"

"Yeah. Shouldn't cripple anyone, but it'll be annoying. If they're on the ball my worm won't be able to crawl on in, if they aren't... expect lots of cursing from the basement tomorrow."

She smiles at that. They heard Kelly start crying, asking for her second supper. "So, wanna play tonight?"

That made him smile. "I'm all in favor of that."

"Good. I'll get Kelly. You get all pretty for me. Be in bed, waiting for me, when I get done."

He was grinning at that. "Gonna define pretty?"

She looked him up and down, remembering his battle gear, and how, fight or not, she liked the way it looked. "Naked, eyeliner, nail polish, collar, wrist cuffs out but not on."

He gave her a quick kiss, wanted to do a long, slow one, but Kelly's getting pretty insistent about get-me-now. "I like your idea of playtime."

"Good."

"How do you want me on the bed?"

She thought about that for a second. "Kneeling, hands crossed behind your back."

Tim smiled at her. Yep, this was an excellent idea for not playtime.

* * *

Feeding Kelly had streamlined down to only forty-five minutes, which was… tight. He rubbed his face, and yeah, he needs to shave. Normally he'd have waited until morning, but he's fairly sure that she'll appreciate smooth.

And it's not like it takes him long to shave. But shave, nails, and eyeliner, that's a different proposition.

So, yeah, tight. He was hopping up the stairs two at a time, Abby smiling at him, looking really amused by how eager he was.

Okay, clothing went off first, that was easy and took about twenty-six seconds. Can't do anything while his nails dry, so they have to be last. Shave first, don't want to mess up the eyeliner. And a plan was born.

Shaving, easy enough, he did that all the time. Eyeliner, he tried to do it too fast and had to wash it off and start over again, twice. On the upside, he had got the smudgy, rock and roll, guyliner thing Abby liked down. Sure, it was an accident, and he was thinking he might look slightly more like a raccoon than he have liked to, but only slightly.

He stared at it for a few more seconds, debated taking it off again, but a quick check on the clock said his nails weren't going to be dry if he didn't book, so, collar.

There was a sort of calm that went with wearing it, but that was the point, really. Well, partially. Part of the point was ownership, which was true enough. He is Abby's, always will be, and just like the ring and the tattoos, the collar reinforced it. Part of it was the sign of submission, and since that was what he was playing tonight, it was appropriate. Part of it, which for him was the most difficult part, was the headspace, the full surrender, and like putting it on evoked a certain sort of calm, it was supposed to help him get into that headspace. And it wasn't that he had a hard time with submitting, that part of the headspace was easy enough, it was quieting everything else, focusing solely on Abby and his desire to please her.

He always had an easy time with following orders and rules, especially the sorts of rules she was going to be laying down for him. But the ability to let all the little background voices drop away, to exist solely in the space of her words and the sensations of his body, that was a lot harder to catch.

He pulled it snug, looking in the mirror to buckle it, and then twisted it so the buckle was in the back. And while he might want to think about it more, he's got two more jobs to do.

Okay. Nail polish. It didn't take him long to put on, but it did take long to dry properly. He'd been told (by Abby) that the non-matte polishes dry faster, but he couldn't see having shiny nails. Black matte is cool. Shiny black isn't. And no, he couldn't explain why.

Three minutes to go. Kneeling. Usually kneeling on the bed meant his butt on his feet, body facing the door. He assumed the position and then jerked up. He'd gone to get the shading done on his Father's Day tattoo on Saturday and sitting all of his weight onto his calf stung pretty bad.

He'd just gotten settled into kneeling up, hands crossed at the wrists behind his back, when he realized the wrist cuffs were still in the toy box.

Another quick move, put them on the bedside table, kneeling again, and…

And less than thirty seconds later, he heard the door to Kelly's room shut.

* * *

His head was bowed, but he heard her stop at the door to their room, could feel her looking, could feel his body respond to her look, not getting hard, not that fast, not just from her looking, but longer and fuller, oh yeah. Knowing she was enjoying him on display like this always does that.

He was aware of her footsteps, very quiet, bare feet on carpet, and could track her circling around him, looking from all angles, making sure he'd done exactly as she asked.

He thought she was pleased, had the sense of a smile even though he couldn't see her face right now.

He heard her moving again, and the sound of her hands on something plastic, phone probably, and then music, his: smooth, soft, lush jazz, filled the room.

Another step, from the dresser where his phone was to the side of the bed. Her fingers trailed down his hip, along his thigh, and then, brushed, lightly, so lightly, sending a burning itch though his leg, over the dragon tattoo.

"Dragon Knight. Captured in Cyrmu. Battle of Pontypandy. We know from your clan marker," she traced her fingers over his cuff tattoo, "That you're one of the McGees."

He didn't smile. He wanted to smile, this'll be fun, not what he was expecting with the collar, but definitely fun.

"They tell me we've had you for five days, and no one's been able to make you speak."

He kept his head bowed, aware of her moving around him, around the bed, picking up the wrist cuffs.

"They say you take orders, so we know you understand, but you won't say anything."

He didn't respond, head down, posture relaxed and loose.

"They tell me they aren't even sure if you can speak. Of course, Dragon Knight, you wouldn't need to, the link with your dragon was psychic. And if you're the McGee we've been looking for… Well, you don't need to know which one of you we want."

She knelt behind him, securing his wrists to each other. "Comfortable?"

He still didn't respond.

"Doesn't matter much one way or another. It's my job to find out if you can speak. And if you can, it's my job to find out who you are. And from there… Well, we'll get there. Stand up, off the bed."

It was awkward to go from kneeling to standing on the bed without hands, but he did, and then stopped right next to the bed, head still bowed. He can see her feet and legs up to her hips, and while she was wearing a pair of his drawstring jammy pants when she went in to feed Kelly, they were gone now, replaced by her black robe with the cherry blossoms.

"They're right; you're very good at following orders." Abby pointed to right under the hook in the ceiling, still currently providing a place for the plant. But he had a good idea of how this was going to go and what would happen depending on how good of a job he does at 'resisting interrogation.'

He stood where he was directed to, and heard her head to the toy box, where the chain they use to tie the wrist cuffs to that hook is, along with the ropes.

"Five days is a long time to go without making a sound."

He couldn't see what she had gotten, but he didn't hear any clinking so that leaned toward a rope, or a toy, but not the chain. If it was a toy, she might have picked this spot just because of the good view from the mirrors.

"But you would be good at it, wouldn't you?" She put something on the bed, outside of his circle of vision. "Can't be a dragon knight without a strong mind, strong magic. The dragons eat you alive if you can't dominate them." She stepped closer to him, tilted his head up so he was looking in her eyes.

Looking up he wanted to smile, but didn't. _Sir… whoever he is… Gabriel, Gabriel McGee, Lord of… he was probably supposed to be Irish. Cyrmu is Wales, right? Donegal. Lord of Donegal. Is Donegal a city? Doesn't matter. Sir Gabriel wouldn't be smiling. Captured Dragon Knights don't smile at their captors. Okay, Dragon Knight, but what was he, where did he fit? Captured for interrogation, has to be a high value captive. Has to have information worth this set up... Commander of the… hell… dragons… what sort of dragon… Hungarian Horntails? No. Irish… Nightfuries? They're Viking dragons... Still better than Hungry. Besides, there's only outlining and shadows on the calf tattoo, so right now it is a black dragon. Won't be green until the final run through. Good._ Character set, he just had to keep it somewhere in his mind so he could whip it out when he needed it.

Holding his gaze, Abby said to him, "So, Dragon Knight, you must be used to being in charge, to giving orders and having people obey your every command." She grinned and stepped behind him, and he felt her tie something to the collar, ribbon maybe, didn't feel thick enough to be rope, and then she reached up, removed the plant, and after grabbing the footrest that went with the easy chair in the corner, tied whatever it is to the hook.

Okay, that was new. They'd never tried tied by his neck. He tentatively shifted a bit, getting the sense that he had about a half foot range of comfortable motion, before his collar'll get too tight. He checked the view in the mirror, it is ribbon, not very thick, and he was certain it couldn't hold his weight. If he let his body drop, it would snap. No chance of him strangling on this.

"I imagine this will be very different for you. Not being in charge. Taking orders rather than giving them." She traced her hand over his chest, stopping for a second to circle a nipple, pull gently on it. "The order is simple, answer my questions."

He looked down again, away from her gaze, not answering.

"Not feeling chatty, huh?" She sighed dramatically. "Eyes up, watching me." He looked up to follow her with his eyes. "Do you wonder, Dragon Knight, why we're still feeding you? Do you wonder why you've been asked questions, and yet not touched? You must know most interrogations don't happen to prisoners who are well-kept, well-fed, let alone in a sumptuous bedroom, or handled by a beautiful woman."

He blinked, slowly, at her. Just acknowledging that he heard her.

She strolled around him, moving deliberately, each step making her hips and breasts sway enticingly. He tracked her nipples, subtle points under her robe, and made a gleeful note of the fact that she'd taken her bra off.

"They say the Dragon Knights maintain a psychic bond with their mounts. That in order to do that they have to be strong in both magic and will power." She was directly behind him, and he was looking into her eyes in her reflection on the mirror on the bathroom door. "I don't know if that's true." Her fingers trailed very gently, just the tips, down his spine, skipping over where his hands were bound behind his back, ghosting down the cleft of his ass, and then skittering over the back of his upper thigh. "What I do know is that it's vastly easier, and tidier to make a man talk by offering him something he wants, than it is to try and scare or beat him into compliance."

She breathed against his shoulder, biting gently.

"Especially men like you. We could deny you water," soft, wet kiss on his throat, just below the collar, "but you'd just conjure it for yourself. Same with food. We could try pain," another very light stroke over the tattoo, another slow burn itch, "but you'd just pull your mind away from it." Her hands slipped down his sides, settling on his hips. "You must know that we've already broken fifteen Dragon Knights looking for a successful way to interrogate you. After all, the dragons report back when their masters die. So, you must know of the others."

He glared at her. Eyes narrow, trying to project pissed-off-captive, and probably not doing a great job of it, after all, it's not like he's an actor.

"But dead Knights yield no information. And we want information quite a bit more than corpses. Corpses are only good for manuring the fields. Information on the other hand, is power. And power is victory." She gave him a gentle slap on the ass.

"And you must know about the other three. Still missing. The Dragons must have reported back that they are not yet dead. In fact, you've probably been getting… confusing… reports back from the dragons about the other three. About how they don't want to be rescued any longer.

"So, you've been held, questioned, given food and drink, offered a soft and warm place to sleep. All in preparation for this."

He raised an eyebrow, signaling, _'What's this?'_

"Still not talking… How disappointing. Did you notice, Dragon Knight, that though you've been offered a comfortable billet, provided with good food, and treated to the most gentle of interrogations, but that the only time you've been given free use of your hands is when someone else has been around? Likewise, you've been kept in certain positions, comfortable I'm sure, but limiting your access to certain bits of your anatomy?" Her hand stroked lightly over his dick, which wasn't full hard yet, but was certainly getting there.

"Five days without release is a long time for you, isn't it?"

He didn't respond to that, but did try to rub himself against her hand.

She stepped back. "Oh no. On my terms. Not yours. We know you checked your food and drink for poisons."

He looked surprised at that.

"Yes, our casters are good enough to monitor what magics you use. You didn't think to check for aphrodisiacs."

He gave her a _those aren't real_ look.

"Aren't they? Haven't you been feeling more, _eager_ , than usual. Waking up harder, dreaming more intensely, wishing for just a moment or two alone with your hands. Or maybe wishing you could roll onto your stomach and take care of it by rubbing up against those nice soft sheets in your comfortable billet." She pointedly looks down at his dick, which was full hard now. "You're certainly looking interested in sex." She stepped close, and inhaled against that spot where neck becomes shoulder. "I can smell the desire on you." Her hand slipped over him again, base to tip in a long pull. "Maybe aphrodisiacs aren't real. Maybe it's just been a long time for you." Another long pull. "Or maybe, Sir Knight, every drop of water you've drunk, every bite of food, that gentle scent you thought was incense, maybe all of that was designed specifically to wear you down, lower your will, just a hair at a time," she whispered against his jaw.

"Dragon Knight, have you guessed yet who I am, yet?" she asked with a kiss to his ear.

He tilted his head a bit, indicating he had a pretty good idea.

She licked her lips, and then leaned in and licked his, tongue slipping slow and easy over his bottom lip, followed by her teeth giving it a gentle pull.

"Lady Skye," whispered against his ear, fingers of her one hand trailing down his chest, fingers of the other wrapped around his dick, providing a gentle, warm squeeze, "Mistress of the Alchemical Guild. Or, as I'm known in a few, select circles, King William's Encyclopedia. When he wants to know something, he asks me, and I always get the answer."

He bowed his head and shoulders as much as he could given the tie on his neck.

"Courtly politeness." She laughed at that, letting go of him, stepping back. "You Dragon Knights are amusing."

He smiled widely at her, keeping his eyes hard, head tilted in acknowledgement.

"So Sir Knight, let's start here, what is your name?"

He shook his head.

"Playing hard to get? Probably a good gambit." She stepped in closer, lips whispering over his, "After all, if you talk immediately, you don't get to see what happens." Her tongue darted out, slipping between his lips, and he leaned in toward her, as far as he could, kissing her back. After a second of her body, warm and rubbing gently against his, she stepped back. "And I think we'll both enjoy this quite a bit more, if it takes you a while to break."

He tried to convey, _not a problem, I can go all night_ , in a look. He's not sure how successful that was, but she giggled at it and said, "Yes, we've all heard the stories of the Dragon Knights' incredible stamina." She took his cock in hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. "Though if memory serves those stories usually have a lot more to do with fighting all day and all night and all the next day. That you take strength from your dragons to keep going and going. But your dragon isn't here. And besides, they lay eggs, so I'm not sure how handy your link will be for this."

He shrugged.

"What, have you never tested it?"

Another shrug.

"Really? No words at all?" She asked while pulling her hand up his dick.

He shook his head again, but thrust in counter point to her hand, enjoying the friction quite a bit. She loosened her grip but sped up, lighter, softer friction. Almost too light.

"Do you like this?"

He shrugged. _It's okay,_ on his face.

"You could tell me how to do it better. Tell me exactly how you like to be handled, and who knows, you may get it."

He smiled at that, gestured with his eyebrows _come closer,_ tilted his head forward, like he was going to whisper into her ear, and when she moved closer to listen, he kissed her ear, licking over the shell, and gently biting the lobe.

She pulled back, amused look on her face. "That's how you're going to play?"

He nodded.

She let go of him and stepped back to the bed. "Do you like to watch, Dragon Knight?"

He nodded enthusiastically at that, too.

"Know what this is?" She said, reaching for the toy she placed on the bed, letting her right shoulder slip out of her robe.

He nodded, very pleased to see that. That was a glass dildo. It didn't get out of the toy box all that often these days. It's aesthetically pleasing, great for a show, but too hard and thick for serious play, especially on him. And these days, toys that they can't both play with tend to spend all their time in the box.

"Man of the world then?" She was holding it between her palms, rubbing it gently, robe having fallen off of both shoulders, but still keeping her breasts and everything below covered. "Not all of your brothers were so well traveled."

She continued to rub it between her palms and then said, "James McGee? Subcommander of William McGee's strike force. Second son of the Lord of Waterford?"

He shook his head, wondering where she came up with that, and then remembered that Waterford is a place in Ireland known for glass.

She held it out tip first. "Lick it."

He kept his mouth shut, raised an eyebrow, and gave her his best, _I don't think so_ look while shaking his head.

She lay it back down on the bed, and turned to him, letting her robe drop to the floor.

She let him look his fill, and he did, trailing his eyes up and down her, lingering in a very obvious way on her curves.

"You know, I should be insulted. Here I am naked, and you say nothing. I'm beginning to think you might not like this." She reached for her robe, and he shook his head vehemently, feeling the pull of the collar against his throat.

"Nope. Not good enough." She began to slip the robe back on.

A soft whimper escaped from between his lips.

"So, you can make sounds! There's a step in the right direction. Every time you cooperate, you get rewarded." She dropped the robe, and settled back onto the bed, legs wide, letting him look all he liked. Another soft whimper of appreciation followed the first.

She picked up the dildo, trailing it over the skin of her thigh, stroking it against her pussy.

"Wet glass is so slick. It just glides over everything. Slips into nice, tight places so easily." She continued to stroke it up and down, gently over herself, watching his eyes following her every move.

"It'd be so much easier if it was wet. You'd like that, wouldn't you? Get to see me slip it inside?" She licked her lips. "You'd like to know it was wet with you. Your tongue getting it all slick so it could just ease inside and spread me wide."

She lifted it away, and he saw a faint thread of her natural lube stretch between the tip of the toy and her.

That got yet another whimper as she stood up, once again holding out the dildo, and said, once more, "Lick."

This time he did. Tongue darting out, lapping her taste off of it, adding his saliva to it.

"Like the taste, Dragon Rider?"

"Mmmmm…."

She smiled at that, trailed a finger between her pussy lips, and then lifted it to his mouth, letting him suck it off.

"You're very good at that, Sir Knight. Are you used to sucking? You swing both ways?"

That got a quick glare.

"Pity. I like men who can give as well as get. They're so much fun."

She settled back onto the bed and began to play with the dildo again, stroking the whole length of the dildo up her clit in a slow, slick slide. "So much better with it all wet. The next question, Dragon Knight, is can you talk?" She shifted her grip, using the tip to circle over her again and again, then slipping down, dipping between her lips, but not penetrating.

He made another frustrated sound at that.

"You'd like to be this dildo wouldn't you? Your cock slipping hot and wet between my lips." She pressed the dildo in, slowly, making sure he had a great view of it as it slid into her. "You can imagine how good it would feel, can't you…"

God, yes he can, he can imagine it, and remember it, and feel it on his skin, and he's trusting against nothing right now, just at the idea.

"Is that a good speed for you?" She matched his movements with her own, speeding up a bit. Abby moaned, soft and low and wicked, and the sound of it ripped through him, pumping up his own excitement. "Oh… It's a good speed for me."

Then she lifted the toy to her mouth, sucking it, licking the tip, and sucking again. "Or maybe those lips, want to slip between them?" That got another groan from him. "Or maybe…" she slipped it down her body, dragging it over her skin, over her clit, between her lips, and down to just rest at her anus. "Maybe there… Would you like to have me there."

"Yes." It came out as a low groan. _God yes, please, let's do that, now!_

She smiled brightly. "You can talk! Excellent! What's your name, Dragon Knight? I don't bed a man until I know his name."

She pressed the toy against herself, easing it, so slowly, forward. Not really penetrating, just pushing a bit. "Good choice. So hot and so tight. You've never, ever felt anything that tight." She twitched her pelvic muscles. "And I know how to ripple, how to squeeze and flex. You've never even imagined feeling anything so good as me."

He groaned again, stepping the half foot forward, closer to her.

"You are eager aren't you? All you have to do is tell me your name. Which McGee are you?"

That got another torn sounding whimper. He wants to get off, bad. Wants to keep playing, too. So he keeps holding it together, reminding himself of his name, but not saying it. Not yet.

She stood again, dropping the dildo, and he whimpered again. _Keep doing that!_ very clear on his face.

"No, Sir Knight. You like it. I can see that. But you're not broken yet. I think you need something more persuasive."

She knelt elegantly. Sinking to the floor, holding him, firm, licking gently and then taking him to the root, until her chin rested against his balls and he was whimpering.

Two minutes, three? She set a quick, deep, pace, all the way up and all the way down, and fast. Fast enough his balls were crawling up, and his legs and back were tense, wanting to cum, wanting to thrust, wanting to fuck harder and faster.

Then she let go, pulled off him, looked up, and said, "Did you like that Dragon Knight? Do you want me to finish? All it takes is a name. Just a few syllables, and I'll swallow you again, work you with my lips and tongue and hands…" she licked the tip, rubbing the flat of her tongue along the underside, while her hand jacked him, slow and steady.

He groaned again.

She blew on the tip, mouth hovering just over it. "Maybe that's not enough? Maybe you don't just want my mouth." She opened her mouth, holding it around his dick, letting him feel the moist heat, and soft breath, but not closing her lips or sucking.

"Do you want to mark me, Dragon Knight? See your seed on me? Striping my face and chest." She licked him again, and this time closed her mouth over the tip of his dick, sliding down again, starting up that quick pace again pushing him closer and closer to the edge, and he could feel his climax building, that less than thirty seconds from falling over the cliff sensation in his dick and balls, the almost ache of being so close. And there she stopped. "It just takes a name. What's your name, Dragon Knight?"

"Gabriel!" he gasped out, very glad he'd already picked that because there had been absolutely no shot of him making it up on the fly. "Gabriel McGee, Lord of Donegal, Commander of The Nightfuries."

"Excellent, Gabriel." She stood up and he whimpered. Her standing up was not part of the deal. Kneeling down and finishing him off was the deal. Her standing up and walking away was really not part of the deal. She headed for the nightstand and opened it, getting the lube.

Okay, that looked good. He wasn't sure what she was going to do with it, but as long as it involved him getting off soon, he was all in favor of anything involving lube.

"Do you want to come?"

"God, yes!"

"Excellent." She was smiling widely at him. And once again she knelt, and he thought he knew what was coming next, adjusted his stance, shifting his legs further apart so she'd have good access, but apparently that wasn't her game.

She took his dick in hand again, and blew all over it, making sure her saliva had dried, and then took the bottle of lube, flicked open the cap, and carefully dribbled a few drops over the head of his dick, making sure they were full enough to slide down his shaft.

He groaned at that slow, meandering drip.

Then she stood again. "So excellent. So marvelous to have someone so eager. So, ready… and…" she squeezed gently and a drop of pre-cum oozed down his dick following the path of the lube, "so wet."

Her voice slipped over his ear, hot against his neck, as she stepped behind him and started with slow strokes to spread the lube and his pre-cum over his dick. "It'd be so easy. Just a few quick pulls and you'd be spurting, hot and wet and sticky all over my hand. Making a mess on my nice, clean carpet. But that's for… common information. Say, confirmation of something we already know."

He groaned, voice low. Half from sexual frustration, half trying to think of anything that could possibly qualify as 'good information.'

"Now, for good information, say something we don't already know, I'll release your hands from the chains, can't unbind them fully, can't risk you running off, but I'll unchain you, let you lay down on my nice, soft bed, and then let you lick me." Long, slow pulls, all the way up and all the way down, and he was thrusting into her hands, all six of his brain cells that weren't entirely devoted to getting off flailing away for some sort of story for her. "You like pussy, right? Succulent, wet, pussy, right on your lips. Your tongue deep inside."

A pained breath hissed out of him.

"Oh, come now, are you not talking again? I thought we'd gotten past that. Do I need to go back to where we began? Say, let go of you all together? Leave you standing there, so hard, so full, so… needy." She started to pull her hands away.

He had to buy more time, because he's coming up with nothing. "What do I get for excellent information? Something you can't find out for yourself?"

That got a wide smile, and a stronger, faster stroke. "If you give me information I truly can't find out for myself, something useful and secret, I'll tie you down on my bed, let you eat all the pussy you want, and then slide down your body and ride you like one of your dragons."

Another groan. He tried to look torn, because Gabriel would be torn, but hell, he wanted to fuck, and mostly was just trying to think of anything that would work with the game. Finally something hit, and he spit it out, fast.

"Lord Ashworth has been spying for us for three years," came out fast, in one quick breath.

Abby smiled at him in the mirror, chin on his shoulder. "Oh… I like that." Her hand pulled faster over his dick and he could feel his climax building, wouldn't take much to push him over, but this wasn't how he wanted this to play out.

"No!" gasped out. "That's not common information!"

"Are you sure?" her hand slowed, back to that keep-him-on-edge pace. "At least half a dozen people on our side know about Ashworth."

"Like fuck they do. We wouldn't have thrashed your men at London and Cadbury if you'd known about the intel he was sending us. If you know he's a spy, fine, but you don't know what intel he's sending us."

She let go of him, and that also got a groan. "That is… compelling." He felt her undo the right cuff from the left one, and then she said, "Hands in front of you."

He did, and she recuffed them to each other, and then undid his collar, leaving it dangling from the ceiling.

"Onto the bed, Sir Gabriel, Lord of Donegal."

He sat, and then lay down, and she recuffed his hands into the slats of their headboard.

"Something so wonderfully delicious about a bound and hard man. It's just… fabulous." She licked gently up his thigh. "You like it, too, don't you? Need, desire, shame, it all wraps together, makes you so hard, so eager." Another lick, this time over his testicle and up his dick. "Mmmm… Nothing on earth tastes so good as a bound knight."

She straddled his hips, and moved up his body, stopping when she straddled his shoulders. "Well, Sir Gabriel, we know you can talk with that tongue, can you do anything else with it?"

He started with a long, wide swipe of his tongue, getting a little bit of everything from top to bottom, and then went to town. He was turned on enough that he doesn't want to linger on this. He wanted her riding him, hard and fast and now, and for the first time in a while, he was noticing that she's wet, really wet, maybe not dripping, but good and slick.

He focused in on her clit, fast little circles, over and over and over, keeping the pressure light at first, waiting to feel her hips roll against him in counter point before pushing up against her. She moaned at that, gripping his hair, and he grunted in response, liking the way she was sounding very much, feeling it go straight to his cock.

She started moving faster, harder, having a more difficult time holding a rhythm, but he kept pace with her, he knew this dance, loved it, and in a minute, she was shuddering over him as he switched to light, gentle, come down licks.

Abby leaned against their headboard, breathing hard. "Sir Gabriel, I don't think we're ever going to ransom you. You're way too much fun to let go."

He smiled at that. "Are you saying you want me for your own personal harem, my lady?"

"There's a thought. I'm sure King William would let me have you as a pet." She leaned over to the night stand, and fished out a condom. He was already slick with lube, so she didn't add any to the condom before slipping it down him and saying, "Would you like that? My personal plaything? Available whenever I want you."

She glided her pussy over him a few times, letting him grind against her.

"I can think of worse jobs."

"I'm sure you can." She lifted up a bit, getting the angle right, and then slid down onto him in one long stroke.

"Ohhh…" escaped him in a slow exhale. "Uhhhh…" followed as an inhale as she rose up.

She set a slow pace, and he didn't know if that's still getting used to post-baby sex, or playing the role, but it was driving him crazy. He thrust up against her, and didn't see any pain or discomfort on her face when he did it, so he was thinking slow was the role, but either way she rested her hands on his hips.

"Oh no, Sir Gabriel. I decide when you come. And right now, you haven't earned it, yet."

His brain was melting, one slow stroke at a time, and he was coming up blank on anything that might work for the game, but he knew he wanted to go faster, had to go faster, needed to get off, this was starting to hurt. So he got his feet flat on the bed, knees up, (Abby squeaked in surprise when he did it, falling forward a little, hands landing on his shoulders, and then snuck down for a quick kiss, breaking character for a moment.) and thrust up.

"Only so long you can tease, lady." Another hard thrust, forcing her forward, this time, though, she arched back into it, moaning. Her hands were on the bed, either side of his head, and he turned his head and nipped at her wrist. "Before the dragon'll bite."

It was more difficult to set the pace from the bottom, but difficult wasn't impossible, and he was so hard by then, so turned on. He used his legs for extra leverage, raising her up on his hips with each fast, hard thrust, and she was slamming down on top of him, groaning on each down stroke, tightening deliciously against him as everything besides the feel of her body on his faded away, wiped out by rushing, pulsing pleasure.

* * *

They were both lying there, happy, warm, comfortable, Abby's head resting against his shoulder.

"You know. Gibbs hasn't been able to break this last suspect yet. He spent eight hours with her in interrogation and she said nothing. Maybe I need to try your technique."

Abby laughed. "Head in all naked and sexy, and see if you can seduce it out of her?"

"Why not?" he said with a giggle.

She sat up, slapped his shoulder lightly, grabbed a tissue, and wiped them both up, tossing the condom in the trash, then uncuffed his hands. He stretched out his shoulders.

"Mmmmm… Good game. That your plan all along?"

"Nope. Saw the tatt and decided to run with it," she said, heading for their bathroom. A minute later she was back in their bed, lying on her side, him spooned up behind her.

He said to her, feeling sleepy, "Definitely going to be another chapter of that story."

She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it.

A few minutes after that, they both checked out from the waking world.


	11. Having It All

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick heads up. If the Shards and STAW chapter titles are identical, it means the content of that chapter is identical. I know some of you are reading both, so this should save you a little time.

"Gibbs?"

"Abbs?" He looks up from Anna Palmer's crib. He's gotten all the pieces cut, now it's time to start putting them together.

"Hey."

He glances around briefly, but doesn't see or hear anyone else. "So…"

She sits on the second from the bottom step. "I don't know how to be the Boss. I'm not sure I even want to be the Boss."

Gibbs smiles at that and sits next to her, wrapping his arm around her. "Trust me, Abbs, you know how to be the Boss. You've scared interns into wearing bells in your lab. You'll get those three whipped into shape."

"That's not being the Boss… That's not leading. That's just being scary."

Gibbs gives her a _if it gets the job done_ look.

"These are professionals. They're good at their job. They deserve respect, and I can't just threaten or pout at them until they toe the line."

"You want a team of equals."

"Benedict technically is. He ran his own lab for seven years. Only reason I'm in charge is seniority."

"And you're a better scientist."

That gets a smile out of Abby and a kiss on Gibbs' cheek.

"Leon knows his job. If you're still in charge, it's not because you've been around longer. He's got no problem shuffling people around if it'll work better."

Abby leans against him. "How do I do this?"

Gibbs shrugs. "Takes a long time to get a good team. And all the leadership on Earth isn't gonna help without the right people. But, first of all, there are no teams of equals. One of you is going to lead. You can be… conciliatory. You can be like Jen, building alliances and teams, but someone is going to make the decisions at the end of the day. And that's gonna be you."

"I don't like being in charge."

Gibbs tilts his head at her in a sort of _really, you're gonna try that with me_ look.

"Not saying I don't want things the way I want them, or like them exactly right, but… That's not leading. That's not being in charge. That's me forcing every assistant I've ever had out because I can't stand working with someone else for more than a few hours at a time."

She looks up.

"I'm a prima ballerina in the lab, and the ballerina's only in charge of her own dance. She does it perfectly, but she's only responsible for herself. And now I've got to learn to be the director and choreographer and make everyone work."

"Yep."

"How am I going to do that?"

"One day at a time, Abbs. Keep remembering the point of the ballet, and let the other dancers do their thing so you can get through it."

* * *

Seven AM to seven PM. At least, that's the idea of how it'll go for now. Tim and Abby are both hoping that eventually they can get their schedules wrangled well enough to make sure that at least one of them will be home every day around five.

Mostly because twelve hours a day five days a week is a long week. Add in commute time on top of it, and it's a really long week.

But, for now at least, those are Heather's hours.

And she seems happy to be working them.

Abby's not actually going back for three more days. Right now, they're both home so Kelly's not just getting dumped into someone new's hands as Abby goes sprinting out the door.

The idea is that she's taking a back seat, letting Heather get the hang of dealing with Kelly, learning where everything is and how they run their home.

That's the idea at least.

She's honestly not sure which is going to be harder, sitting back and letting a stranger take care of her child, or trying to run her other baby with all those new people in it.

Every time Kelly chirps she wants to leap up and grab her from Heather.

And it's not even that Kelly seems to be having a bad time. Actually, as much as you can tell with a baby, Kelly seems to be doing fine. (She's not crying any more than she usually does.) Heather doesn't seem to be struggling, either. They're getting on fine. Learning each other, but fine.

And not swooping in and taking care of it is killing her.

"Mrs. McGee—"

"Abby."

"Abby. This part is always hard. I've got her schedule. I've got your number. I'm sure you've got cameras somewhere so you can do a spot check. How about you head out for a bit, get some lunch or something? This'll go easier for all of us if Kelly and I get some time alone."

And sure, that's logical, that makes sense, but she still wants to rip her hair out as she heads off.

* * *

"Okay. I know this needs to happen. I know I don't want to be home with her all the time. I know I'm starting to go buggy on laundry and nursing all the time, but how do you do this? How do you leave your baby with a stranger?"

Breena looked up from the lady she's embalming. "You just do it. And it sucks, and you visit fifty times the first day, and you cry more than the baby does, but you do it. But eventually it gets easier and you get used to it, and you don't feel so beaten down when you are in charge, don't feel like baby care is an unending run of hours and hours of mindless nothing which means you enjoy being with her more when you're with her."

"What if I don't want to get used to it?"

"Well, you better, or you'll be going to college with her, and she won't appreciate that, and neither will Tim."

"Yeah." Abby picked listlessly at the edge of the embalming table (currently empty) that she was leaning against.

Breena tied the knot on the final stitch closing the incision that would keep the cotton she'd packed into the corpse's torso in place. "All done Mrs. Callum. We'll get you all dressed up and ready to go soon. Your daughter tells my mom that you love the dress they picked out for you."

"Ducky does that, too."

"Talks to the clients. Of course. They're humans, so you've got to talk to them. If you stop talking to them you'll start treating them like things."

Abby nodded at that as Breena straightened up, and gently stroked Mrs. Callum's face.

"Your parents died when you were still in the breaking away from them part of life, right?"

"Sort of. The end of it. I was still swinging between wanting lots of hugs and vastly too cool to be in the same hemisphere with them."

"I remember those days. It'll get easier, it really will, and it's something you've got to do. Maybe not this early, not if you don't want to, but… That's the job, we hold them for a little while and then send them off."

"Great." Abby looked remarkably unenthusiastic about that.

"How long have you been out of the house?"

Abby checked her phone. "Thirty-six minutes."

"Okay, come on, give Heather a call, and then we'll go get some lunch."

And yes, Skyping with Heather and Kelly for two minutes, just to see that she was indeed sleeping peacefully felt stupid as all get out, but it also helped. Made it easier to head off to lunch. She checked back in at the end of lunch too, and saw Kelly getting a bottle, looking just fine.

Kelly was still awake when Abby got home, so there was snuggle time, which felt very, very good. (She's getting a better sense of why most nights Tim makes a bee line to Kelly for snuggles as soon as he can.) And Kelly seemed very happy to see her, too. Which was also good.

But… but maybe it hurts a little that someone else can do this, can make her little girl happy and keep her safe and…

And maybe she wants to be the only one, but she doesn't, because she can't, because this will drive her buggy if it's all she's doing… and… and she just doesn't know.

So, she goes on, stowing the breast milk she pumped in the fridge, putting Kelly down when it was naptime, letting Heather get her when she woke up, then nursing. And she tried to burn this into memory, tries to make it last, knowing it can't and won't, feeling… she wasn't sure what this feeling was, just that it was here and real.

And then she started to figure out what to do tomorrow. Because like Gibbs said, one day at a time. And tomorrow, even though it's not her first day back, she was thinking it'd be a good plan to drop into the lab and just get a feel for what's going on.


	12. Of Triage and Dragons

"Abby!" Benedict says as she heads in. "Didn't think we'd be seeing you for a few more days."

"Nope. Supposed to meet Jimmy and Tim for lunch, but they're going to be an hour." Which is true, but misleading. They're going to be an hour because she showed up an hour early. "Figured I'd head down and see what's going on."

"Right now we're running trace for McKellan's theft, Jamison's murder case, Apley's drug ring. And Corwin is logging evidence on the Meyer's case."

She doesn't recognize any of those names, so they must all be Agents Afloat. Apparently it's a bad time to be at sea. "All at once?"

"As much as we can. Only so many slots in the mass spectrometer."

She bristles a little at the way Benedict is treating Major Mass Spec like it's just a tool, but that's not important here.

"Okay. You've got the reports up to date?"

"As up to date as they can be mid-case."

"Good. I'll log on and get reading. Want to be ready to hit the ground running when I get back."

"Great."

* * *

One of the good things about the position of her main computer monitor is that she can be 'reading' her reports while watching, with a fairly clear view, what's going on in the lab. What's even better is that, with the door shut and her music on, her new underlings are sure she can't hear what they're saying.

They are absolutely right about that. She cannot, at all, hear what they are saying.

Of course, she doesn't need to hear what they are saying to follow the conversation.

And, it's not like they're saying anything particularly troublesome or indiscreet. They are, after all, professionals, at work, doing their jobs. Little bit of gossip about the new hair and wondering if that music is going to be on all the time (She makes a note to get more earbuds.) as well as some speculation as to exactly how many tattoos she's got and where they might all be, (something you get used to when you've got as many tatts as she does) followed by some speculation as to what kind of skin ink Tim must have, but for the most part they're talking about work.

And skimming the reports, they do seem to be doing fine.

The quality of the work is good.

The tests are accurate, well done, and thorough, exactly what she expects if she's the one doing them. Likewise they're maintaining the equipment properly, and running tests on it often enough to make sure that everything is in tip top shape.

So, if there's any issue with this crew, it's that they don't seem to grasp the concept of triage. The most important work comes first. They do indeed seem to be working on the idea of the first case in gets worked as each spot in the lab opens. So, Major Mass Spec can handle twelve samples at once, so the first twelve bits of whatever get run, and if that means the trace under the nails of the vics of the triple homicide have to wait because the robbery got there first, then wait they will.

So, that's the first job, getting the triage protocols set.

As she continues to read through the reports she's noticing that computer forensics is looking a bit shaky. They've been handing things off to Cybercrime that she or Tim would usually handle, but… well, okay, technically that's part of what Cybercrime is supposed to do. Still, gotta get that up to shape, make sure they understand that their lab handles all forensics that comes into them.

But, it might just be that, in that they are forensic scientists, and not computer guys, they just don't know how to do that sort of work. Not uncommon, computer forensics wasn't a skillset the forensic lab usually hires for.

That might be her new prima ballerina area, she'll be the shining star of the computer forensics, and let them do more and more of the traditional lab work…

Maybe.

Day after tomorrow she'll officially be back, and they'll figure it out from there.

* * *

After an hour, she did head over to Autopsy, say hello to Ducky, and collect Jimmy for their lunch date.

"How's it going?" he asked as the elevator took them up to the Bullpen.

She nodded her head a little. "It's going. Zelaz is very interested in how many tattoos I really have."

Jimmy nudged her shoulder with his and grinned at her. "Aren't we all?"

"Twenty-two."

"That many? Really?"

She pushed up the sleeve of her lab coat so he could see the stitch marks. "Well, this is nine of them."

"Okay."

She can see him thinking through that. "You've seen all of them. Anyone who's seen me in a bathing suit has."

"That's what I was thinking."

"Yeah, I could see you counting it in your head."

The doors opened, and Tim saw them head toward him, held up his index finger in a _one minute_ gesture, and typed faster. And a minute after that he did join them.

"Finishing up an email to Vance about my last test on Cybercrime."

Jimmy and Abby both know that's not something he really talks about at work, so they both nod, wait for the door to the elevator to close, and then Abby asks, "So?"

"Just clean up stuff, details about the six of them who completely failed to figure out what was going on. I checked the regs, and since, technically I'm a co-worker and not their boss, I'm not allowed access to their HR files, so I was asking him for permission to get them."

"Why asking permission? Don't you have a rule for that?" Jimmy asked.

"Because if I don't get permission, they can sue me, personally, for breaking into their records for privacy violations. I'm not so gung-ho on Gibbs' rules that I want to bankrupt us."

"Thank you." Abby said.

"No problem. So, how's the first day back going?" he asks with a quick hello kiss.

* * *

They talked about work, and about Abby's plan for creating some sort of evidence/case triage system. Talked about getting used to the idea of being at work, of not being Kelly's primary caregiver. And, in that they're dads, and no one ever expected either of them to be their baby's primary caregivers, talking to them about it is somewhat less satisfying than talking to Breena, but they're both very supportive and trying to be sympathetic.

As lunch was winding down, Tim said, "I was thinking…"

"God, that sound ominous," Jimmy adds.

Tim kicked him lightly under the table. "How would you feel about being major characters in a series I'm thinking of writing?"

Jimmy put his drink down. "Wait, are you actually asking, ahead of time, if we'd like to be in one of your books?"

"Yeah."

Abby's eyebrows shot awfully high up on her forehead. Like she can't believe he'd ask. (Of course, having starred in one of his series, and having been told about one of them when he was writing it, and having to scour the internet to find the other, she's… used to… might be the best way to put it, being his silent muse.)

"I'm contracted for one more Deep Six, and I was thinking of… I don't know… I don't want to stop doing them all together… Maybe writing more of them on spec…" He can see Jimmy and Abby don't know what that means. "As they come out. Instead of a set schedule of one a year.

"And I was thinking of a fantasy series." Abby lights up at that, knowing what characters he's playing with. "Maybe not full on Game of Thrones, but something for adults, something with dragons."

"You aren't going to make me a dragon, are you?" Jimmy asks.

Tim looks a little startled by that. "I hadn't been thinking of it. You wanna be a dragon?"

Jimmy shakes his head. "I am not your comic sidekick."

"No, wasn't thinking that. Besides, does three tons of flaming death machine sound like a comic sidekick to you?"

"Oh, real dragons." Jimmy lights up at the idea of that.

"Yeah. Book for grown-ups. Serious hard-core, magic-wielding, fighters. Not… snarky house cats with wings."

"Might like being a dragon, then…"

"I was thinking of the Lord of the next castle over."

"Sidekick?"

"Partner/friend/brother-in-arms." Jimmy doesn't look thrilled by that. "You wanna be the main character, write your own book."

Jimmy smiles and takes a sip of his drink.

"So, you're going to be the main character in your own book, finally?" Abby asks. Tibbs leads the Deep Six series, with Tommy and Liza being the main secondary characters, McGregor, Amy, and James are all firmly in back up territory. And nothing even remotely like him shows up in the T. M. Gee books.

"Yeah. I was thinking maybe it was time to really be in my stories, not just have them happen around me."

Abby squeezes his hand. "I like that."

Jimmy smiles. "I think Gibbs should be a dragon."

That got the other two of them laughing.

"He should be an old, silver one, trains the young dragons, beats them into shape."

"Fornell, too." Tim adds.

"Oh yeah. Can you just see that? Old dragons, just a bit past fighting prime, wings are starting to get a little droopy, but the brains, claws, and teeth are still sharp, the spells still fly fast and deadly…" Abby says, getting into the idea.

"Dragons can change shape right?" Jimmy asks.

"Why not?" Tim replies. Some dragons can. No reason his dragons couldn't.

"Then there's your twist. We are the dragons, but we're the knights, too. No one outside the Dragon Knights knows that, though. They use the magic to keep it a secret, for, I don't know, whatever reason… thinking that up is your job…"

Tim looks at Abby, grinning. "That'd explain the 'need to be strong of will and magic to control them' bit. It's not that the dragons eat the knights that can't control them, it's that they are the knights, so they don't let anyone else ride them. Building up the mythos of their power and the power of the men who control them."

She nods along with that. "If you've got to be a total badass to even get on the dragon… Yeah, that works. So, why are we at war?"

"Who the hell cares?" Tim asks.

She rolls her eyes. "It's been a while since you've read an epic fantasy, hasn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Trust me, they care now."

"I'll figure out something. So, wanna be in my next series of books?"

"Yeah."

"Yes."

"I'll ask Breena, too. After all, the Dragon Knights have to have their ladies."

"I think she'll like that. So, we're gonna be the big, damn heroes?" Jimmy asks, quoting Firefly.

Tim grins back at him. "Big, damn heroes engaging in thrilling heroics!"

Abby laughs at both of them, enjoying their excitement.

* * *

Seven AM. Normally they don't leave for work until 7:23, but she wants to get in a bit early today. Has to get in a bit early. Needs to be the first one in.

So, she hands Kelly to Heather, who takes her with a smile, grabs her bag, kisses Kelly one more time, exhales deeply, and heads with Tim to the car.

He squeezes her hand as he pulls out of the driveway.

"It's gonna be fine."

She bites her lip. "I know."

"It really is. Only thing you've got to worry about now is getting into the house before I do so you can get your snuggle on first."

She glares at him.

"Just kidding. I know you get first snuggles today."

"Today?"

"She's my baby, too. I've got just as much dibs on snuggle time as you do."

Abby snorted at that, and he wasn't sure if that was a laugh or a dismissal, but she wasn't, either…

* * *

First one in. Exactly the way she had hoped. Abby took the poster she had rolled up and tucked into her bag, and opened it, taping it to the shelf over the monitors on the main computers. (She'll put it somewhere less in the way, later.)

NCIS Lab Priorities:

Terror Threat

Kidnapping

Terror Attack

Murder

Everything Else

She saw Benedict take a look at is as he came in, but he didn't say anything, and started getting his station ready. She waited until Zelaz and Corwin were in as well and gathered them 'round.

"From everything I've been seeing, you three are doing a find job on the evidence. Your technical skills are top notch. You're doing the job exactly the way it's supposed to be done.

"Organizational skills are a different matter. We're not just working on Afloat cases where the perps are all stuck in one place, can't get away, and time sensitivity isn't such a big deal.

"From now on, this is how we handle evidence. Protecting and saving living victims come first. Terror threat is a whole bunch of living victims, so it goes on top. We get a credible terror threat and everything else that does not contribute to stopping it goes by the wayside.

"Kidnappings come next. The only thing that trumps a kidnapping is a terror threat. Someone goes missing, all hands go on deck and we work until we get 'em back.

"Then comes a finished terror attack. Lots of dead people don't outweigh one alive one. But if it looks like figuring out what happened'll stop another on, this gets bumped up to preventing a terror attack.

"After that comes assaults/rapes. Fortunately we don't get a lot of those.

"Dead bodies come next. When we're working a murder we're there for the survivors.

"Everything else comes later. I do not want to see any of you working on any evidence for anything that isn't one of the above until everything we've got on the top five is processed or processing. I don't care how time sensitive or embarrassing a theft or fraud or whatever is. It doesn't get taken care of until anything that belongs to one of the above is cooking.

"Got it?"

Three nods. "Good. Okay, they tell me you've got a smoother system for checking and processing evidence. Show me what you're doing and let's get this lab moving the way it's supposed to."


	13. One Year

"Have a good nap?" Gibbs asks.

Tim looks through the car window with muzzy eyes, rubs them for a moment, and stares at the factory in front of them.

"Yeah, actually. Thanks for letting me rest. Kelly's making sure neither of us gets a lot of sleep." Neither he, nor Abby, nor Heather knows what's going on, but for the last three days she's decided that 3:30 AM is party time, and they're having a devil of a time getting her to go back to sleep. She's not hungry, or gassy, or poopy, or… anything. But whatever it is, she wants to be up and playing.

He and Abby have been doing their best impression of Zombies for two days now, and are looking for anything they can think of to get their child back to sleeping from one to seven, the way she had been doing and the way they had been appreciating greatly.

Gibbs has been nodding away at that. (His own veteran parenting technique for this worked something like this: 'Waking up for no good reason?' 'Yep.' 'Crying?' 'Nope, just wants to hang out with us.' 'Call Jimmy.' He knows when he's out of his depths.) "Babies do that. Nothing going on right now. But you fall asleep when you're on watch, and you're toast."

"Got it, Boss. So, how long was that?"

"Three hours."

"Thank you." He stretches as well as he can in the car and rubs his eyes. "Okay, I'm up. No one's moved?"

"Nope."

"You wanna crash?" It's a bit after two in the morning, good time to crash if you don't want your entire schedule upside down. Since he and Tony got the day shift on the last stakeout, they got the night shift on this one, and since Gibbs is officially back on 'light duty', he's capable of sitting in a car and making note of who goes into and out of a brownstone just as well as Tim and Tony can, so he's taking some of the night shifts, too.

"I'm going to get us more coffee first, then sure." Gibbs gets out of the car and heads down the street.

Tim stares at the building in front of them. Okay, in front of them and one street over. They've got a view through an empty lot. Nothing's going on, so he keeps his eyes moving. Three doors, two access roads, six windows. He keeps them all in view. Sure, no one's likely to go repelling off the roof into one of those windows, but he's also sure that if he just stares at the house he'll be asleep in a matter of minutes, and that would be a very not good thing.

Gibbs gets back a few minutes later, while Tim's noting the license plate of every car that's parked out front. Yes, he's sure Gibbs has already done that, but redundancy is good, and if it helps to keep him awake…

He takes the coffee from Gibbs and gulps it. "Okay, starting to feel like a human again."

Gibbs smiles, shakes his head a little, after all, it's decaf, takes a sip of his, and then settles back into his seat, relaxing, eyes closed. Crashing for a few hours sounds like a really good plan right about now.

Tim watches the house, and then watches Gibbs, seeing how even getting ready to snooze he's still awfully alert.

So, he decides to ask Gibbs something he's been thinking about for a while. Since he blew his knee out and had to take that time off. When he and Tony started talking some about what the hell to do when Gibbs hangs up his cuffs the idea started to crystalize.

He's already talked to Abby about it, and she thought it was a good idea. Thought it was worth the risk, assuming Jethro and Leon were on board.

"Jethro?"

"Yeah." He doesn't open his eyes.

"You aren't ready to be done with this, are you?"

"I'm ready for this stakeout to be done."

"Not what I mean. January 15th, that's supposed to be your last day, right?"

"Yeah."

"What if it didn't have to be?"

That gets Gibbs' eyes open. "You got someone who'll change the mandatory retirement age for field agents?"

"No." Tim stares at Gibbs, really looking at his face, thinking about what he could do, what people might be willing to believe. If only he hadn't enlisted the minute he turned eighteen.

"Say the word and you were born in 1960."

"Tim?" He looks startled by that.

"One year. I can cut a year off your age. People will believe that. Anyone asks, you lied and enlisted at seventeen."

"Vance knows how old I am."

"Yeah, but he won't say anything about it. Keep his best team running smooth for another year? Let Draga really settle in before adding in another Probie? He'll go for it."

"Five on a team?" True, that'll be awkward, but Tim's fairly sure it also won't be true all that much longer.

Tim shakes his head. "Jenner's on his third call back with IBM. Can't imagine I'll finish out the year on the MCRT. You want me to do it?"

He can see it in Gibbs' eyes, hope, that he can pull it off. Doubt, that he won't be able to do it. Little bit of fear, not wanting to get his hopes up if this can't be done. Lot of fear, what happens after retirement. Relief, he may not have just tossed the drowning man the lifesaver, but he's noticed he's there and has told him he's going to find one.

"What would you have to do?" He can see the _how illegal is this?_ in Gibbs' eyes as he asks the question.

"Nothing much." _Yeah, it's pretty damn illegal. I won't get caught._ "Just, don't screw it up. After it's done, you've got to act it. Don't start collecting social security a year 'early.' Stuff like that."

"I can do that."

"Okay. I'll take care of it and have a chat with Vance. If he's not cool with it, I'll put everything back the way it was."

"Thank you."

He shrugs.

"No. Really, Tim. Thank you."

"Let's see if I can actually pull it off before you thank me."

* * *

Tim made an appointment with Vance a week later, as September was easing into October, and wasn't surprised to see he got a chance to talk to him less than four hours later.

"Agent McGee, what can I do for you?" Vance was assuming this was going to be another update on his continuing Cybercrime investigation. And there was some of that. He'd been looking through the HR files and coming to the distressing conclusion that Jenner was good at hiring, but working at NCIS was sucking all the life and talent out of these people.

On the upside, it was easier to change the environment than it was to change people. So… hopefully he can get the morale switched around and start beating them into shape.

"I was talking to Jethro a few days ago, and something came up."

Vance was giving him the 'get to it' look, because this wasn't what he was expecting and chit chatting about Jethro isn't on his to do list for today.

"Did you know he lied about his age to enlist early?" But, Jethro was what Tim was up here to talk about, so they were going to talk about him.

"No. I did not know that." The subtext being, _I did not know that because it didn't happen, so why are you bugging me about it?_

"Yeah, besides you and I, and Jethro, of course, almost no one knows that."

"Fascinating." Vance was giving Tim his _get to the point_ look.

"It just seems like it'd be a shame to lose such a good agent because of forty-year-old lie."

"Uh huh…" Vance was looking remarkably unimpressed that Tim would even try this on him. "McGee, has anyone ever told you how bad of a liar you are?"

He nodded. Unlike Tony, he didn't have a reputation for being any good at lying. "Several times. There's a reason why I almost never go undercover. Of course, as someone once said to me, there are two ways to follow someone, one way is so they never see you, and the other way is so they see nothing but you. Likewise, there are a lot of ways to lie."

Vance seemed interested in that, interested in the idea that McGee might have more than just his word for it, but still cool. "Uh huh. So, this forty-year-old lie, is there anything to suggest it might not be a lie?"

"Well, someone might wonder why Jethro started kindergarten at four, but there is a note in his file from his kindergarten teacher about how smart of a child he was, and everyone knew his mother was sick at the time, so having him out of the house for a few hours a day helped. And someone might wonder why his social security number is one from 1959, but the records show it was assigned in 1960, and as we all know, SS numbers can be a little wonky. And if someone were to check his birth certificate, or the baptism records at Stillwater First Episcopal, they'd find that he was born in 1960. He's something of a pack rat, you know? Still has all of that, still has his first driver's license, and that has his birth year as 1960."

"Uh huh." Leon's respect for Tim's lying skills, or at least his forging skills, appeared to be increasing. Technically, Tim handled the computer work and the 'rewriting' part of the forging detail. (Literally, rewriting, he's better at matching someone else's handwriting than Abby is.) Having someone with a masters in chemistry around made it a whole lot easier to come up with "blank" documents to rewrite, along with chemically correct inks to do the rewriting with. So Abby handled that. Short of carbon dating, Jethro's "new" documents were perfect.

Tim was seeing the way Leon was looking at him and was wondering if he was going to be getting some interesting off-the-books assignments in the not wildly distant future.

"Yeah. It'd just be unfortunate to make him retire because of that."

"Uh huh. What about actual living people?"

"LJ'd tell you he was born in 1960. Most of the time. LJ's been telling that lie about 1959 for a long time, too, so he might answer wrong on automatic. So, he might need some reminding about why he's telling the truth. But once he knows he's not covering anymore, he'll tell you about how Jackson didn't want Jethro to join the Marines, how they were fighting all the time, so LJ stepped up and suggested he go in early. Off they went to the next town over. His Godfather, a distinguished veteran, vouched for his age. Jethro got in." All of that was complete and utter bullshit, but LJ knew the 'real story' and was willing to swear on it. He actually rather liked that version of it. And because Stillwater didn't have a Marine recruiting station, Gibbs did have to go to the next town over, Meadville, to enlist.

"I'll see what I can do."

"Good."

It wasn't until he walked out, got back to the bullpen, and nodded to Gibbs that he realized that just possibly mentioning this plan, to their actual team leader, before putting it in action, may have been a good plan.


	14. Always Team Gibbs

Tony sees the nod. Sees the way Gibbs is looking at McGee, follows that glance, sees McGee nod, and sees Gibbs… not smile, but he's looking very, very satisfied.

Then he sees McGee notice he's watching the exchange and go white.

And suddenly Tony's thinking something just went very, very wrong.

Ziva and Draga are out, grabbing a suspect, which means, right now, they have the time to get into whatever the hell just happened.

"Okay, both of you, my office."

McGee and Gibbs both glance at each other. Tony doesn't have an office, and as of this point, he hasn't had any need to have a private conference, at work, with either of them that couldn't wait to get home. Which means he's talking about Gibbs' office. Except that it's Tony's, right? Not Gibbs', not anymore, because Gibbs isn't supposed to be having the sort of conferences that require an office. Because that's Tony's job.

Or, at least, it's supposed to be.

Tony feels his stomach drop even further when Gibbs suddenly looks guilty and then shakes his head. "Coffee run. Someone'll want to use the elevator sooner or later."

Tony's eyes go wide. "What the hell did you two do?" he asks while herding them toward the elevator. His office, Gibbs' office, whatever, it's the only nearby space they can talk in private.

McGee glances at Gibbs and says, "It's not in the bag, yet. Leon's looking into it."

 _Great. Whatever it is those two have got running, they've got Vance in on, too._ "Looking into _what,_ McBackstabber?" When Tim doesn't immediately flip out about the backstabber thing Tony feels even worse. By that point they are in the elevator, and he flips it off and says, "McGee, what the fuck did you do?"

"Bought me another year."

Tony stares at both of them, feeling the steam getting ready to come out of his ears. _Another year? Without even saying anything to me? Reset my whole team without my permission?_ Then he slams the off switch, hit the button for the bullpen, and stands there, silent, vibrating with anger, and when the doors open, he points at McGee and says one word. "Out."

McGee doesn't look like he wants to leave. Tony's not sure if he wants to stay and protect Gibbs, or stay and have Gibbs protect him, but either way, he doesn't budge until Gibbs gave him a quick nod. _Doesn't move until his Boss gives him permission._ Tony closes his eyes and winces as McGee heads back to his desk to do… Right now, Tony's so pissed he doesn't care what McGee does.

As soon as the doors slide shut he bites out, "You didn't think it was worth mentioning this to me before doing it?"

"Eighteen."

He's flat out glaring at Gibbs. "Fuck eighteen! Eighteen is crap. Eighteen is something you pull on strangers you don't care about because doing whatever the hell it is you want is way more important to you than how they feel about it. So fuck eighteen. I am not a stranger. I am your partner! Hey, maybe you've got a rule or something about that. _Technically_ , I am your _boss_. And above and beyond all of that, I am someone who has earned the basic common courtesy, if not the respect, of you telling me what the fuck you are doing!

"And more than that, because if fifteen years of having your six, backing every play you've ever run, and saving your life more often than any other man on earth doesn't do it, you are not the team leader! It is _my_ team, and you and McGee don't get to run off and pull crap like this on your own."

Gibbs doesn't say anything. He's not sorry about doing it. Tim's right, he wants this. He needs it. Another year is like being able to breathe again; it's like getting to step off the ledge, or hearing the crack of the bullet as it whizzes by your head, but the fact that he's not sorry doesn't mean that he doesn't get why Tony is pissed.

Or that, as he's thinking about it, that he's not sorry about how they did it.

And he gets, standing there, watching Tony vibrate with anger, that there are levels of this. A lot more of them than he would have guessed if he'd thought about it, beyond the rush of hope at getting another year.

The first is that punched-in-the-gut, feeling betrayed that came from them not telling Tony.

It hadn't even occurred to him to do it. Secrets work best the fewer the people who know about them. And he didn't know if Tim and Abby really could pull it off, and if they couldn't…

Obviously, if it worked, he'd have to say something about it, because the whole family knows that January is coming, but…

But it didn't hit him to say something to Tony because it's _his_ team and he doesn't have to answer questions about what he's doing to anyone. He certainly doesn't have to explain what he's doing. He does his thing; they follow and back _his_ play, and that's how it works.

Except, of course, it's not _his_ team.

And that's the second, deeper, real level. Tony is never going to be his Boss. He just… can't. And sure, he'll take Tony's orders, back his plays, run whatever game he wants run, but Tony isn't his Boss.

Same as that minute he always spent thinking about it whenever he called Mike Franks back in. Franks would help; Franks always helped, but he was never in charge of Franks.

_This is a fine mess you've gotten yourself into, Probie._

_Ya think, Mike?_

He can feel the nod Mike would have given him at that. What he doesn't feel is a way to get out of this, at least, not a way that doesn't feel like setting himself on fire.

He feels Tony's anger on another level, a related one. Tony isn't Tim's Boss, either. Few more months and Tim'll outrank Tony, and they both know it.

Which means, as long as both of them are there, it's not really Tony's team. Can't be. And Tony knows that, but was willing to put up with it because it's temporary. And because they'd both been playing their roles, allowing for the illusion of it being his team.

Sort of. Tim's already broken it once.

And this broke the illusion again, and not just in a quick, temporary sort of way. That's why Tony winced when Tim waited for his nod to leave. Just another mark of it not being _his_ team.

And the only saving grace of this is that it happened when Draga wasn't in the office.

Gibbs leans against the wall of the elevator, the back of his head hitting with a dull thunk, as he looks up and licks his lips.

"You want me to go?"

"You are too old for this!"

"Not what I asked."

"Your vision is shot. Your knee is fucked. The only reason you're still here is because we've got a five man team and can take up the slack. You are too old!"

"I passed my last physical. My vision is within specs, even without glasses, but I can wear them full time if that's the issue. I've got to get through physical therapy and then pass another physical to get back to full duty. If I can't pass it, I won't stay. You know that.

"Until I blew my knee out, I was hitting the gym every day. I dropped sixteen pounds between February and July and took a minute twelve off my time on the mile. Until the warehouse, I was in the best shape I've been in for five years." He leaves unsaid that right now (knee aside) he's in about the same shape Tony is, maybe slightly better, and better shape (stronger, better wind, faster) than Tim was for most of the years he's been here.

"Besides, you know the retirement age is about money. You were here when they dropped it from sixty-two to fifty-seven." NCIS, like a lot of the Federal Government, paid by years of experience, and cutting that five years off saved literally tens of millions of dollars a year for NCIS in wages and pension outlays. And it was true that if you had less than twenty years of service it was very easy to get the fifty-seven mandatory retirement age waived, (it's so common there's actually a form for it) but back in '13 that stopped being an out for Gibbs. "FBI and the Marines would let me hang around until sixty-two."

"Marines would have booted you for too many years a decade ago." Which was true, also. As a Gunny, they would have booted him at twenty-four years. If he'd hit Master Gunnery Sergeant, they would have booted him at thirty years. Well, not booted, he would have been able to serve out his term, but they don't let you re-enlist after that many years of service. And like NCIS, but on a much larger scale, cutting those years saved lots of money. A Gunny with thirty years in made fifteen thousand dollars a year more than a Gunny with twenty years, and did the same job. Gibbs' twenty two years at NCIS meant he was getting paid eleven thousand dollars a year more than Tony, who was, at this point, literally doing the same job. "And you know just as well as I do that it's not just about money. It's also about making sure guys like me can move up before we get put out to pasture."

That's true, too. Upper-middle rungs never mind when the top level gets sent off, because they fill those positions. And as long as he's there, Tony can't really move up. "Do you want me to go?"

Tony glares at him, and he knows what that means. He's asking Tony to cut his head off, and Tony, no matter how pissed he may be about this, doesn't want to drop that blow. It's one thing for him to age out, it's a whole other thing for Tony to tell him to leave.

"It's kinda like dying. I guess." Gibbs says, quietly. "Not really, but… There's that day on the calendar, staring at me, and after it… What? Sit around, drink, build boats? Remember the Reynolds case?" Tony looks alarmed, so obviously he did remember the Commander who killed himself rather than face retirement and the emptiness that went with it. "It's not that bad, not even close, but… January 15th is like jumping off a cliff. He threw me a lifeline, so I took it, and I'm not sorry about that." And it's a low blow, because he knows that'll make it even harder for Tony to boot him out, but it is like dying, and he doesn't know what the hell he's going to do on January 16th, and right now, he'll take almost any out he can get.

"I'm sorry we didn't tell you. Should have done that. I'm sorry it screws with your team. And if you need or want me to go, I will. I've got my twenty plus in, my pension's vested. If you need me to be done, I can be done." And that's true, too. If Tony draws the line for him, he won't give him any trouble. He'll make drawing that line as hard as he can, but if Tony does it, he'll abide, and he'll leave, and he'll never mention it again, and, eventually, he won't hold it against him. Everything ends, and his run as NCIS can't be exempt from that, no matter how much he wishes it was.

"But you're not done," Tony says with a deep sigh.

"No. I'm not. I'm not ready to be done with this. I'm… I'm not ready for whatever comes next."

"You will pass the physical, and then you'll pass my physical and it will be a hell of a lot harder, and if it looks like you're lagging or anything…"

Gibbs holds up his hands in a gesture of peace. "Your team, you pick."

Tony shakes his head, muttering, "Like fuck it's mine. You know I can't shoot my own dog, and you're taking advantage of it."

Jethro nods. "Yes."

They're closer to the first floor than the bullpen, so Tony flicks the elevator back on, let it go down, and got out. "I'll be in the gym. Send him down."

Gibbs almost opens his mouth to say something like it was all his idea, or that Tim was acting under orders or… But he knows Tony won't buy it and given how the last month's been doing, that Tim wouldn't want it. So he nods and hit the up button.


	15. "Conversation"

Tim's not at his desk when Gibbs gets back up. Ziva is. Draga's not.

She's looking pretty calm, so either she doesn't know what's going on, or it's not bothering her. Probably doesn't know.

"He give you any trouble?" Gibbs asks about the suspect.

Ziva flashes Gibbs her, _no not at all, don't be silly_ look.

Gibbs nods at that. Good to know collecting the suspect went well. And since they tracked him through tech stuff that Tim and Draga handled, they were probably interrogating him.

"Draga and Tim in interrogation?"

"Yes. Where is Tony?"

"In the gym."

Now she's sending him her curious look. Tony's not been setting any records of physical fitness lately, and during the middle of an active case didn't seem like a particularly natural time to start.

"Why is Tony in the gym?"

Gibbs holds his phone so she can see he's texting on it. He sent a quick message to Tony as to where Tim was, and another to Tim about where he's supposed to be going. He finishes that and just sort of looks at her, not sure what to say.

"Gibbs?" Now she's starting to look a bit worried and nervous.

So he starts at the beginning. They're in the bullpen in the middle of the office, so he tells the 'official' version, but she knows well enough to know that's bullshit and why he's lying, and the bit where he mentions how McGee was 'helping him find the right documents' to prove how old he really is lets her know exactly what happened.

He looks fairly sheepish as he gets done with the telling, and he can see she's torn. Half-pissed at him for not treating Tony with more respect, half-understanding that desperate need to be useful and to save lives and do the job.

Of all of them, she's the one who gets that need the most. She's the one, like him, with the dark red blood on her ledger, trying to erase it one solved crime at a time. It never washes out, and what Ari did wasn't her fault, any more than what happened to Shannon and Kelly was his, but in the end, that doesn't matter, the red is still there, and only one thing eases the ache of it.

"Why didn't you go to him? He would have been fine with it if you had just told him."

Gibbs isn't entirely sure of that, but he does know that Tony would have been a whole hell of a lot better with it if they had asked him.

"Honestly didn't think to."

"Because you're the Boss and the Boss doesn't ask."

"Yeah."

She mutters something, low and quiet, and possibly not English, while shaking her head. Then says in her normal tone, "And he's planning on having a discussion, in the gym, with McGee about him also not mentioning anything while he 'helped you locate' the documents you needed."

"Yes."

"And, let me guess, he's the one who suggested you go find those documents in the first place?"

"Yeah."

"So, this will be a very _intense_ discussion."

"I'd imagine." They've been tense the last six weeks, and this was probably just tossing a match into the room filled with gasoline fumes.

"Gibbs…"

He looks over to her.

"You cannot stay if he's not the Boss. A few months isn't a problem. A year is."

"Thirty-eight," he says quietly.

"No Gibbs. Your lead, your case, no." She shakes her head. "No your rules. It's his and it gets done his way and he runs it how he likes, and if you are going to stay, you need to show the proper respect for that."

"And you'd know something about that?" he asks, realizing at some point Ziva must have had this conversation with herself, must have made the decision that Tony could be her husband and her boss.

"Yes. I would. So, can you do that, or do you have to go? We know McGee has to go. He's ready for his own team, and they are both stepping on each other's feet. Especially after this last month... But that will happen, sooner than later."

Gibbs nods, he wants to say that he can do it, that he can jump in and surrender the team and whatever it is he needs to do to stay, but… But he realizes he needs to really think about it. Three leaders on one team is two too many, but two isn't much better, and certainly isn't fair to Tony.

"I'll know soon."

"Good enough. Maybe… you might talk to Rachel about it?"

They tend to skirt around the fact that he sees her, just like they don't much talk about the marriage counseling that Tony and Ziva are doing, but he nods nonetheless. Talking to Rachel about it probably is a good idea.

* * *

Tim felt his phone buzz. Just once. Probably Gibbs or Tony letting him know he was up. He doesn't check his phone. In interrogation get buzzed twice and that means pull it out and look, once means get 'round to it when you can.

Draga's taking lead on this interrogation, not his first time, but he likely hasn't hit ten yet, either. Tim's chilling in the corner, staring down at Ralph Mason, intentionally looking bored, making sure Ralph feels like they've got him dead to rights and this is just about getting the paperwork filled out. (Which, as far as Ralph is concerned, is true. Who he was working for is another story, one they want a conclusion to.)

Draga's asking about the technical specs of what Ralph was doing. (He cloned the VA's website interface for doctors, stole their info, then used it to order extra medical devices from several companies. VA never got the devices, but the companies that made them got paid. Not their usual sort of case, but the last murder they handled involved an artificial knee that they traced by the manufacturer number, and found that said knee joint had been sold four times… Solved the murder two days ago, but decided this stunk to high heaven and needed to be checked out.) Tim's enjoying getting to be the guy who hangs out in the corner. In the past, he's always had to write up notes that were too deep for Tony, Gibbs, or Ziva to do the questioning, so they didn't. They hung out and looked menacing and he asked the questions.

So, Draga's working him over, laying the verbal trap to get the names of who actually set this up. His voice is calm, the questions are lulling, he's even adding a sort of Robin Hood angle into it, making Ralph look like some sort of hero, after all, times are hard, and those 'extra' orders kept a bunch of people employed, and no one got hurt, really… so…

About three words too late, Ralph figured out what was happening and froze, demanding a lawyer.

And a quick change of track, the 'come on, you don't really need one, only guilty people need lawyers' didn't get Ralph's tongue to loosen again. And as Draga's aiming for another run at that, Tim ends things, gently pulling him out without making it obvious he's doing it.

So, they head back out of interrogation. Tim pulls out his cell, sees the note from Jethro, and feels a thrill of… he's not sure, and right now isn't a great moment for introspection. He says to Draga, "Okay, give him a few minutes in there, then take him down to processing, they'll handle the details."

"Got it."

He tucks his cell back into his pocket. "Also, next time, once they ask for a lawyer, you've gotta stop. If you get the wrong judge or the right lawyer, anything he says after he's asked for one'll get tossed, and anything we find based on anything he says after he's asked for one'll get tossed, too."

"Okay. What'll you be doing?"

"Having a chat with Tony."

"You two okay?" Draga doesn't look like he's sure he's allowed to ask that, but he does, anyway.

"Nothing you need to worry about."

"Just, you've been really… tense the last month or so."

"Trust me, we both know."

"You know, if you want to talk or something…"

Tim smiles at Draga, appreciating the offer. "Even if I did, it wouldn't be appropriate. He's your Boss."

Draga thinks about that. "But he's not yours, is he?"

"No."

"Is that the problem?"

"One of 'em." Tim glances around, they're the only ones in the hallway outside of interrogation, but he pitches his voice low, anyway. "Look, we're not talking about it yet, but, yes, your interview question about why are we replacing Gibbs with you was right. We're not replacing Gibbs with you, we're replacing me. When Jenner leaves, I'm taking Cybercrime. Cybercrime does not know this, yet. Jenner does not know this. Jenner's second-in-command _really_ does not know this, and I do not want him to find out from anyone but me, got it?"

Draga nods. "No scuttlebutt."

"Good."

"But Gibbs is a few months away from fifty-seven."

Tim doesn't comment on that.

"So, he should be leaving, right?"

"That's the question."

"So, is Gibbs not leaving?"

"That's what I'm going to be talking to Tony about."

"Why would _you_ be talking to him about it?"

"Because if Gibbs isn't leaving, it'll be my fault."

Draga looks perplexed by that answer.

Tim shakes his head. "Look, I know you're a cop. I know getting to the bottom of mysteries is part of the job, part of the mindset that does this job, but let this one lie."

"You guys ever going to tell me what's up?"

"Some of it, eventually. It's work stuff and family stuff and a lot of history that's biting both of us right now, and that gets messy. One way or another, it'll get better soon."

"Okay." He thinks about it. "That a long enough wait for…" he tilts his head toward the interrogation room.

"Actually, yeah, that was. Take him to processing, then head back to the Bullpen. Ziva or Gibbs'll have something for you."

* * *

The hand-lettered sign on the door to the gym read CLOSED. Tony's handwriting. That's one way to get a private "conversation."

Tim's immensely unsurprised to find the door unlocked when he tries it. He is surprised at how eager he is to go in there and have said "conversation."

Tony's standing next to the boxing ring, leaning against one of posts the ropes are anchored to. Jacket's off, but he's still in dress slacks, button down, tie, and loafers. Tim takes it in, the posture, defensive, his arms are crossed over his chest, the clothing, still buttoned up, the location, at the ring but not in it. A fight is on the table, but not, apparently, committed to, not yet.

"Report?"

"Mason lawyered up. Draga handled the interrogation, got enough out that we've got him dead. Realized he was in danger of incriminating whoever's hiring him, and shut up."

"See who's paying for the lawyer. If he is, he should roll pretty easy for the reduced sentence. If one of the companies is, we'll see if we can put pressure on him for conflict of interest."

Tim nods slowly, annoyed. "That's the play." He doesn't need to be told that. He's not Draga. He's not just been round this block before, he's done it often enough to sketch it from memory, describe it in perfect detail in one of his books, and walk the damn thing blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back. He knows this, and knowing it, he feels his own anger, stupid, blind, nothing to really do with this, totally out of proportion to what Tony's just said, build.

"Yep," Tony says, looking him up and down, and Tim knows he's testing him, looking to see if a fight is a good idea, if he can win, so Tim keeps his posture loose and open. Part of him hopes Tony'll try. Part of him, a big part, wants to beat Tony, wants this to get to fists and feet, to blood and pain. Part of him wants to pick Tony up off the floor of the ring, force him to acknowledge him as an equal if not a better.

And part of him knows that this doesn't have to happen, and that it might be better if it doesn't.

Part of him wonders that maybe it does.

And a big part of him knows that not going to Tony was disrespectful, and that Tony's got every right to be pissed, and that if Tim's thinking this seriously about fighting him, feeling this pissed at a stupid throw-away line, that he's really not done a good job of dealing with the fall-out from their last fight.

Neither forgotten nor forgiven, just tucked back, out of the way, and ignored.

Until now.

And it must be clear on his face because the next thing Tony says is, "You're still so pissed at me you'll fuck my team without saying anything." Tony's voice is quiet, angry, and sad.

"Who says it's about pissed?"

_Cut the crap_ is on Tony's face. "You did, when you didn't tell me. I get that he can't think of me as his Boss, and he's not in practice telling anyone about anything. And I get why he's going for it. Nine years from now, give me the same shot, and I'll take it. So, I get him. I'm pissed, but I get it, probably should have expected it. But you… I mean, what? You're fucking me for kicks on this one? Screaming at me and calling me a cunt wasn't enough?"

"It's not about you, Tony. The universe, in general, and I, in specific, don't revolve around you. It's about him."

"Bullshit. If it was about him, and keeping him on the job, and making sure he doesn't have to face life post-job too soon, you would have told me. You would have made sure I was okay with it. Back in June, you would have run it by me first. And I would have thought about it and had a long talk with him, and then probably said fine, go for it.

"But it's not June anymore. You've run the team, answered to no one but Vance, and you're getting ready for more of that. Apparently you like it. And you're angry at me, fine. And you want to make it abundantly clear that I am not your Boss and you don't take orders from me, message received, McCybercrime." Tony's loosening his tie, unknotting it, slipping it off.

"But it is _my_ team. And you just fucked it and me without saying a word. You went to Leon, not me. Which means he's knows, too, that it's not really mine. Because if it was _mine_ and I was cool with more Gibbs, I'd be the one going to him. So, not only are you making sure that I'm stuck in not-quite-Boss limbo for another year, you've also made sure that my Boss knows it. And you want me to think this isn't about me and it's not about you being pissed?"

Tim shrugs. Maybe it is about him being pissed. He's certainly not feeling any desire to apologize, explain himself, or try to defend what he did on any level. And he's certainly not thinking that Tony's wrong or overreacting. So, while he hadn't been thinking of it as a thing-to-do-to-screw-Tony, it certainly worked that way. And Tony's dead on right, he would have told him about it back in June.

"I can't change the past, Tim, I can't take those years of pranks and crap back, but here's the thing, it's over. It's been over for years. And after today it will be OVER. So either you forgive me and let it go, or we fight it out here and now and then you forgive me and let it go, but this passive aggressive crap, this trying to get your own back, it ends today."

Tim shrugs again, not sure what to do with that. He doesn't want to forgive. He does want to fight, but he's fairly sure fighting won't fix it. Say he did beat the hell out of Tony, because, at least right now, he's feeling pretty sure he'd win the fight. He's ten years younger, has been training with Ziva for half a year, weighs thirty pounds less than Tony now, and he can feel the rage of all those years of Tony showing him up and making him look like a fool bubbling in the back of his mind. Yeah, he can win this, easy. But then what? Might feel good, but it won't make it better, won't take those years of bullying back, won't fix what he just did with Gibbs, and it really won't make Tony feel more secure in his position of Team Leader.

He does notice, as he's thinking through this, that he's shrugging off his jacket and toeing off one of his shoes, too.

Looks like his body wants the fight. He intentionally puts the shoe back on again. Brain's in charge, not his body.

"What if I don't want to forgive? Ten years is a damn long time and you want me to get over it in one night?"

Tony shakes his head. "Too fucking bad. In June, you were over it, and you need to get back there. I'll let you beat it out if you need to, but you've got to forgive or I will put you on administrative leave until Vance sends you to Cybercrime, because you cannot be on my team like this."

"I'm doing the job just fine."

"Doing the job isn't enough, and you know it! We're a team, we support each other, cover for each other, work with each other, and if you can't do that, you can't be here. It's that simple."

Tim laughs mirthlessly and hears his jacket hit the floor. "All those years, you had my back? You watching out for me when I had to peel my face off my desk? Is that how you understood that? You covering for me and supporting me when you were making up the imaginary woman for me to fall in love with?" He feels the cool of the floor on feet just in socks, and realizes there isn't a good way to back away from this, and for that matter that he doesn't much want to.

Tony doesn't say anything, just takes off his watch, and tucks it into his jacket, hanging from the corner post of the boxing ring.

"You're going to _let_ me beat it out?"

"I don't know what else to do, Tim! It's been six weeks, you're still mad, you're still walking on eggshells around me, and I can't breathe around you, constantly scared I'm going to say something that sets you off, and you just pulled a shit load of crap on me with Gibbs. So what the fuck's left? Next step is I fire your ass, which we both know won't work because I can't fire you, so have at it! Maybe if you hit me enough, you'll get over it."

Tim can feel his hand in a fist and his stance shifting, his focus slowing, narrowing to just Tony, and Tony's on edge, ready to jump, ready to strike, keeping his eyes on Tim's arms and shoulders, expecting the first shot to come from his arms, because that's how he'd start the fight.

He can see it in his mind, one fast kick swipe and Tony'd be down. Wouldn't even see it coming because he's watching his left hand, waiting for the strike from his dominant side. Wouldn't even be very satisfying, because no matter how pissed he is, no matter how out of control or irrational this is, he's not going to keep kicking Tony after he goes down.

So, what, fifteen seconds of fight? Ten of which will be Tony getting back up?

Tony's still watching left, waiting for him to move, if he whips into him with his right elbow it'd keep going long enough to make it worthwhile.

Maybe. Except what'd be the value of it? Would it help? Breaking those beakers didn't help. Just made hurting worse. But bull rushing Tony when they were trapped in that stakeout and he was bitching about the damn eggs did. Some bruises and Gibbs yanking them apart made everything a whole lot better because the annoyed and pissed got burned off.

Because bodies are designed to run or fight.

And because ten years of not running and not fighting has caught up with him.

And Tony's offering.

So, while it's true that Tony does know what hit him (Tim) he wasn't expecting the foot/elbow combination that left him on the floor in one hit.

Tim gave him a hand up. "I've got sweats in the locker room. You got anything to change into?"

Tony nods.

"Good. Five minutes. You're right this is too long and I'm too angry and I don't know what to do with it and maybe it'll help."

* * *

He didn't take long to get changed, and didn't see Tony in the locker room, doesn't care if he's just picked a different locker bay, or if by something to get changed into he means he's got his go bag and that's got clean clothing in it for after.

He does know that last time Gibbs did pull them apart before they had a chance to really hurt each other, and that was a good thing.

And he knows that right now, Gibbs wading into the fight probably isn't a good plan.

So he sends the text to Jimmy. _Can you be down in the gym in seven minutes?_

_Sure. Why?_

_Make sure I don't kill Tony._

_Oh God, what are you two doing?_

_Hopefully working some things out._

_By fighting?_

_That appears to be the plan._

_This is stupid._

_Yep. But it probably won't make things worse and might make them better._

He can feel Jimmy rolling his eyes. But a second later, _Seven minutes, starting now._ popped up on his phone.

* * *

"What a shock, your gym clothes are clean," Tony says, triggering memories of walking into the interrogation observation room in the only clean clothing he had. And just like that time, Tony laughs. But this time Tim doesn't look like a big dork in gray shorts and a sleeveless-t, socks pulled up too high, badge tucked onto his waistband.

This time, in just a pair of gray drawstring sweats and a wrist cuff, he's sure he's looking pretty dangerous.

Tony apparently hadn't had anything else for fighting in. He'd taken off the dress shirt and his shoes and socks and belt, leaving him in an undershirt and dress slacks, standing in the ring, waiting for him.

"At least I've got some." And in that he's been training with Ziva for a few months now, he's not wearing all of his gym clothing. He left his usual workout t-shirt in his locker. When he's training with Jimmy or Ziva he wears a shirt, because… well, because they aren't fighting for real, and he doesn't care much about the potential hand holds that Ziva or Jimmy might use his shirt for. In fact, to a certain degree, letting them grapple him, and then breaking those holds is useful, after all, if he's fighting for real, he's unlikely to be shirtless.

But this is real and he's not giving Tony an inch when it comes to making it any easier. He slips between the ropes, saw that Tony's giving him the _come and get me_ look, and from there things merged into a slow blur of speed, force, jarring pain, and rushing endorphins.

* * *

Jimmy heads down a bit early. He knows, from talking to both Tim and Tony that they're been stuck in this sort of fragile trying not to piss each other… trying not to piss Tim off space. Sort of. Tim's been trying to not do anything that makes Tony crack some sort of cutting joke, and Tony's been feeling awfully guilty and trying not to make that sort of joke and they're both… okay… ish.

It could be a whole lot worse.

Maybe.

As he steps into the gym and sees Tim absolutely pounding the crap out of Tony, he's feeling pretty confident in the assessment that they have indeed located a whole lot worse and are currently rolling around in it like two dogs in a pile of poo.

He heads to the ropes, climbs up, leaning against them and calls time, regular voice, and neither of them stop fighting.

Jimmy yells the second time, and that time Tony notices him, but Tim doesn't.

Which meant Jimmy had to actually wade into the fray, and physically pull Tim off of Tony. And doing so was probably a good thing. Tim's shaken, and breathing hard, and hurt, but Tony looks like a piece of meat that just got tenderized with a hammer.

"Did you even try to fight?" Jimmy asks Tony once he got Tim in his own corner and calmed down enough to not go after Tony again. Black eyes, split lip, bruised arms and shoulders, and he can't see Tony's legs or torso, but he knows exactly how hard Tim can kick when he means it. He puts an arm around Tony, letting him lean onto him, and got him out of the ring and into the locker room.

He half turns to Tim as he's getting Tony out of there. "You stay put!"

Tim nods, looking like he's coming back to himself.

"What on earth made you think that was a good idea?" Jimmy asks once he's got Tony sitting on the little bench in the changing area right in front of each shower, while he turns the water on cold.

"He's really fast when he's angry," Tony says, sounding pretty stunned about what just happened to him.

"Yeah, I know that." He helps Tony strip out of his clothing.

"I didn't. Didn't know he was that much better than last time."

"So, you thought, what? He'd punch you a few times and that'd be it? You'd dodge a little, take a few, let him win, then you'd hug, and it'd be better?"

"That was kind of the idea." Tony's staring at the bruises all over his body.

"Oh, God, Tony. He hasn't been that big, awkward, dork you could run that play with in a long time." Jimmy gently palpates his orbital bones, and Tony winces. "Not broken. Arms up. Deep breath. Does it hurt when you breathe?"

"Bit."

More gentle palpation. "Your ribs are all in one piece, too. Hands." Jimmy checks over Tony's fingers and wrists. "Looks like he didn't try that thumb lock Ziva's been teaching us."

"No."

"Good. She says it'll dislocate your thumb and wrist in one move."

"Wonderful."

"Water's cold. In you go. Stay in there until I come back for you. Where's your go bag?"

"At my desk," Tony says as he gingerly stands and steps into the shower. Jimmy doesn't hear the word that eases from between his lips as the water hits him, but he's not having a hard time imagining it.

"I'll go get it."

"Jimmy?" Tony says, after swishing the water around his mouth, and spitting out a gush of blood.

"Yeah."

"Why are you here?"

"Because he texted me ahead of time to make sure I'd show up and pull him off before he killed you." Jimmy closes the shower curtain feeling pretty sure that Tony can stay standing upright in there.

"Oh."

"Yeah. He set time at seven minutes, I got in at five, and right now I'm wishing I had shown up at four."

"Would have been a good idea."

* * *

Tim's sitting, back against the ropes, staring at his hands when Jimmy got out of the locker room.

"Did it help?"

He looks up from the split knuckles and the bruised fingers. "Yeah."

Jimmy heads into the ring, kneels in front of him, and puts one hand onto each shoulder. "That's your only freebie. This cannot happen again. And I'm _highly_ recommending you start going to counseling, in a I'm going to bug you about it every free minute I've got for a week and if you don't have an appointment by the end of the week I'm kidnapping you and you're going whether you want to or not, sort of way. You can't be this angry, and you can't be beating the shit out of Tony over it. It's not good for either of you."

"It's over."

"Really?"

Tim closes his eyes, he looks embarrassed, tired, sad, but not angry, not anymore. "Yeah. He hurt?"

"You didn't break anything."

"Good. Wasn't trying to."

"Great. Seriously, Tim, this can't ever happen again. It's one thing when we're working out together. Whole other story if you're pounding someone you're angry at. This happens again, you go to jail, so it can't happen again."

"I know. I do."

"Okay. I'm going to get his go bag."

"It's in the bottom right desk drawer. The big one."

"Okay."

* * *

Tim takes another minute of sitting in the ring, looking at the blood on his hands and the drops of it on the canvas. Most of it is Tony's. Little bit of it is his. He stands up slowly, not hurting yet, still too high on the endorphins for it, but he knows the crash is coming.

But right now, there's calm, and clarity, and peace.

And Tony was right, he needed to fight it out. Needed to get his own back for every single one of those damn jokes.

And it was probably overkill. Because letting crap like that stew for a decade isn't a good plan.

But whatever it was, he's not angry, not about Tony, not anymore.

Which means there's a shot of actually fixing this. At least, Sane Tim's driving the bus again, so… that's good, right?

* * *

Tony's still standing under the water. Only shower on, so Tim doesn't have a hard time finding it. He stays on the dry side of the shower curtain.

"Hey."

"McGee."

He sits on the little bench. "I'm sorry I fucked you over with Vance, and I'm sorry I'm screwing your team. It's not done yet. I can still take it back."

"It's done. Unless he can't pass the physical, it's done. Taking it away from him is like shooting my dad. I can't do that. He's Gibbs. I can't make him leave, not if he can still do the job."

"He can still do the job. And he'll pass the physical. Fight Club wasn't wrong, this gets you in good hard, shape."

"Yeah. I'm noticing," Tony says with sarcasm sharp enough to peel the paint off the walls.

"Tony, I know it's been years. And I know you're doing better. And I know I'm not… stable on this right now, and I probably should be talking to someone about it. But you were right, it helped, and I'm not angry anymore. And… I forgive you, for all the crap and the pranks and the shit you pulled on me."

"Good."

"And I'm sorry I had to beat the angry out."

"You and me both."

"And I hope you forgive me for all the crazy this last month."

"I do."

"So, we okay?"

"Yeah. If you are. You're not gonna get all weird again?"

"I don't know. I don't think so. You gonna superglue me to something anytime soon?"

"God, no. You'll kill me."

Tony can't see the way Tim shrugs at that, recognizing that it's not literally true, but it's true enough. The goal of not taking shit from anyone's morphed into being the guy who's dangerous enough that he doesn't get shit tossed on him in the first place.

* * *

Tony was still in the shower, still letting the cold water wash over everything and help with the swelling and bruising when Jimmy got back. Tim had already taken a few minutes to take stock of himself, and yeah, he aches, and he's sporting a few bruises, but really, he's not that bad.

Actually, he's kind of embarrassingly not that bad.

Like, this looks like a painfully one-sided fight. And he honestly doesn't know if Tony was intentionally taking it easy on him, or if five years since he's done any real time in the gym is catching up to him.

"Jimmy."

He's not paying attention to Tim, he's putting Tony's go bag, and a lot of bags of ice, on the little bench. "Hmmm…"

When he gets done Tim pulls him further aside. "Hit me a few times."

"What the hell is wrong with you today?"

"He looks like he was run over by a truck, right? I don't. If I've got a good split lip and a black eye to go with it, it's not going to look so one sided."

"So?"

"No one needs to know I won the fight. No one needs to know you had to pull me off of him. And Draga and Ziva and Vance really don't need to know that. Few more bruises'll help him save face, and right now, that matters."

"You could just have him hit you a few more times."

"Too condescending. Here, let me stand still so you can hit me and make it look like you won. Just, come on, fast, before he gets out and hears it."

Jimmy rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

"I can't get the angle right to do it for myself—" Jimmy got him fast, two quick punches and once with his elbow.

Tim shook his head slightly, as if that could somehow shut down the ringing in his ears, tasting blood, and yeah, that hurt like fuck. "That should do it."

"Yes, it should. Don't ever be this stupid again."

"I'm working on it."

"Get in the shower, before he sees you. You want him to think he did that damage, right?"

"Yeah."

"Run the water, hot, have a good soak. It'll make the bruising worse."

"Thanks."

"You two gonna be okay?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"You better be. You make an appointment with Rachel yet?"

"It's been six minutes."

"I know, and this is exactly what I mean by I am going to ride your ass on it for a week and then take you myself."

"What time is it?"

Jimmy checks his watch. "3:05."

"I'll have one by 4:00. Probably with Wolf, not Rachel."

"Okay. Just do it."

Tim nods, heading into his own shower stall.

* * *

If Tony noticed that there was steam wafting out of Tim's shower, he didn't say anything. He did, once he got out, dry off very gingerly, carefully put on his clothing, let Jimmy apply butterfly Band-Aids to the cuts on his eye, cheek, and hands, dry swallowed the four Advil Jimmy handed him, and then said to Tim, "Go through those companies' financials again. Bring in the bookkeepers if necessary, someone okayed the payments to Mason. Go find them."

"On it." And ten minutes later, when he was sure Tony was out of the locker room, he did get out, get dressed, let Jimmy bandage him up, and while Jimmy was sitting there, made an appointment to talk to Wolf in three days, and then headed to the Lab to work on one of their computers.

When he explained to Abby why he looked the way he did, (Via sign, all three of her assistants were listening in intently while trying to look like they were minding their own business.) and why he was snagging her computer for the afternoon, she understood, and was very pleased that Jimmy had made sure he got an appointment with Wolf.

The LabRats kept shooting him curious looks as he worked next to Abby. Not everyday their boss's husband shows up beaten to hell and gone and then decides to commandeer a lab computer. But neither of them said anything about it to them. So they didn't ask.

She was less pleased, when three hours later, he'd found what he considered the best possible shot of breaking this open. Not because he'd found the lead, but because the lead was in Pennsylvania, and this time of day he couldn't get there and back in less than ten hours.

"Let me guess, you aren't going to wait until tomorrow to fetch him?"

"Got a lot of brownie points I need to earn back."

She kissed his temple. (Lip was too busted up for a kiss. Jimmy's got a really mean right hook.) "See you tomorrow, then?"

"Yeah. Give Kelly an extra-long snuggle for me."

"Okay."

He was already up and talking to Draga on his cell, "Yeah, get a car. We're going to Pennsylvania. One of the companies he was doing this for is awfully small. Six people on staff, and I'm pretty sure the bookkeeper doesn't want to go to jail for this."


	16. Gibbs, NCIS

Ziva, Draga, and Gibbs all watched Tony head through the bullpen (slowly) to his desk.

He sat down, drug his chair into the center, and said, "Report."

All three of them sat there, still staring at him.

"Is there a problem?"

"No, Boss," Draga said, scooting into the center, Ziva and Gibbs following a second later.

"Are you okay?" Ziva asked.

"I'm fine."

She and Gibbs nodded, looking at each other, tucking that away for things to be talked about later. Because when you leave healthy and in one piece to have a "conversation" and come back an hour and a half later in an entirely different outfit, wet hair, two black eyes, a split lip, busted hands, and you're limping, _obviously_ , you're just fine and all is right with the world.

But they also know that right now is not the time to ask about it.

So, Tony, having declared himself "fine" and requesting a report, Draga launched into pretty much the same report Tim had. Then Ziva added what she had found going through the VA joint registry, and how there were close to 5000 artificial joints that had been purchased multiple times, and God alone knew what else. Joints, pins, heart valves, things that go and stay inside bodies have serial numbers, but literally thousands of other devices get used on a daily basis by the VA, and without physically going to the warehouses and hospitals and counting up inventories to go with purchase orders, there's just no way to tell if the amount of stuff purchased is even remotely like the amount of stuff in the stores.

Gibbs explained that he had overseen Mason's processing and that his lawyer was due in tomorrow morning, and as of this point said lawyer appeared to be paid for by Mason, (he found him in the phone book) but that he'd get on checking that out. (Okay, he's actually already checked that out, but he's waiting to be told to do it to produce said information. Another hour or so and he'll volunteer that Meyers, Briggs, and Meyers is, as best as he can tell, in no way related to any of the companies they're investigating.)

"McGee's rechecking the financials, looking for an actual person who paid Mason," Tony said, not looking toward McGee's desk, not expecting him to come near unless he had a breakthrough.

The other three nodded at that. The problem with these companies is that they're huge. Somehow, somewhere an invoice shows up for services rendered by Mason, and someone in Accounts Payable handles it, but when you're talking about a company with five hundred employees it's awfully hard to find exactly who is making sure things like this happens.

"Until we've got more to go on, finish up the paperwork on the Finely case."

They nodded at that, too, and went back to work.

* * *

Half an hour into that Tony felt the familiar call of his bladder and started the long, tortuous process of getting back up again.

Yesterday, if you had told him McGee could beat him so badly his hair would ache, he would have laughed, and then laughed a bit more, inhaled long and deep, and then laughed a little longer.

Sure, McGeek's good with a gun. They all know that. And yeah, he was pissed, probably more pissed than he'd ever been, and Tony knows something about how that effects a man's fight. He was even aware of the idea that McGee'd been training with Ziva and Palmer, watched it some (though mostly his eyes were on Jimmy, when he narrated it for Ed), but somehow that didn't all connect. McGee's body is just the thing that lugs that huge brain around. Itty-bitty muscles, lots of heart, huge brains, right?

He's really not laughing now. He's also not sure he's got enough fine motor control in his hands to actually get his fly open. Now that he's not fighting, not icing himself, not moving, everything is stiffening up.

He's never been more glad to see Ziva appear in the men's room than he was just then.

"You are not fine."

He let himself show how badly he was hurting. "I know," slipped out, sounding dangerously close to a whimper.

"Do you need help?"

He held up his swollen and bruised fingers. "Yes. Can't work a zipper or button right now."

"Okay." She helped him, literally, out, and he took care of it from there while she politely ignored him. A minute later, she helped him get dressed properly. "Shall we talk about it?"

"Yes. Not here."

"Jimmy got your bag. Did he check you over, too?" She's critically assessing the parts of him she can see, holding his right hand in hers, checking over the damage.

"Yeah. He pulled Tim off of me, checked me out, made sure nothing's broken."

"Internal bleeding?"

"No. Shouldn't be. He stayed away from the soft parts."

"Good."

"Yeah, splendid." He can see she has questions, like why was Palmer pulling McGee off, where McGee is, did this do anything besides break his skin, is the problem dealt with? All of that's on her face right now. He gave her a lopsided (and painful, smiling split his lip again, and he saw her jump for a paper towel to mop up the blood) smile. "Quitting time is five. We're going home then. You're going to put me in the tub, fill it with ice, and we'll talk."

"And you just have to make it through the day?"

"And tomorrow, too. And then I'm not moving again until Monday morning."

* * *

By five, they knew that Mason's lawyer would probably take a plea. So, that was one silver lining to this massive cloud.

DiNozzo, Ziva, and Gibbs headed off. Draga was still wading through his paperwork. He was still new enough he had to actually read the forms, see what they were asking, and then fill them out accordingly.

The rest of the crew can do it on automatic.

Of course, the rest of the crew can do the work on automatic, and they're also probably spending a bit less time wondering about what the hell is going on. Because, of course, they're all in on the loop, and sure, Ziva and Gibbs didn't look like they expected Tony to show up quite that pounded, but they didn't seem particularly surprised that he was bleeding, either.

Draga's not a stranger to injuries. Yes, hand to hand combat is not the number one skill for Navy Pilots, but he did Basic just like everyone else, and he knows exactly how badly Tony's got to be hurting right now.

That's not quite true. He's got a pretty good idea, because he's never been beaten that badly, but between Basic and a few bar fights, he's got an idea of what that probably feels like.

He's worried about McGee. He had that gleeful, gonna-go-do-something-stupid look on his face when he headed off for his "conversation" with Tony. And yeah, he'd bet McGee's faster, but DiNozzo looks like he's been at it longer, seen everything, and knows all the tricks.

Draga wouldn't get into a fight with DiNozzo for the same reason he wouldn't try Gibbs, either. Sure, he's stronger and faster, but he's pretty sure he's not trickier. And, really, nothing hurts worse than getting clocked by a guy old enough to be your dad.

He was just wrapping up the last form, hoping DiNozzo didn't actually kill McGee, when his phone chirped. McGee's number. "McGee?"

"Yeah, get a car. We're going to Pennsylvania. One of the companies he was doing this for is awfully small. Six people on staff, and I'm pretty sure the bookkeeper doesn't want to go to jail for this."

"Slow down, back up," he says as he stands up, grabbing his go bag.

"Digging through the financials. One of the companies is a little firm that makes titanium bone screws. It's in… Downingtown, Pennsylvania, and we're going up there to have a chat with their bookkeeper and finding out who precisely set this up."

"Okay… Um… Are you… I mean…"

"Just get the car. I'll meet you in the motor pool."

"Sure."

* * *

Woodworking and bourbon was always good for clarity in the past. But, as he's carefully stroking the first layer of the maple stain onto Anna Palmer's crib, Gibbs isn't feeling particularly calm or clear.

Been a long time since he's been so torn between what he wants and 'the right thing to do.' Last time he felt this torn between want and right, he was looking at his new redheaded probie thinking about at least half a dozen x-rated things he wanted to do with and to her.

At least then he _knew_ it wasn't right.

This time he's not nearly so sure.

He knows he can do the job.

He knows he can do it way better than anyone else Tony can get to replace him. That's just a given. No fresh-out-of-FLETC, wet-behind-the-ears, newbie (that's what Tim calls them, right?) can match his twenty plus years on the job.

He just can't.

And honestly, anyone who'd be willing to transfer into their team, even with experience, won't be as good. Not bad, certainly. Different, of course. But he clears more cases, more quickly, with a higher conviction rate than anyone else in NCIS.

That's his team, working his rules, doing it his way…

Except it's not. Not anymore.

Because it's Tony's team, and letting him run it is the right thing to do. He's ready for his own team. He can run it. He's good at his job and knows the way to make it work. He's ready.

And he doesn't need Gibbs staring over his shoulder.

And it's not selfish to want his own team. It's not bad or wrong or anything else. And Gibbs knows he's got to go for it to really be Tony's.

Because that's just the way it is.

But if he goes, people will die. Cases won't get solved as quick. Tony's good, he's solid, his instincts are sound, but he doesn't have Gibbs' gut. He just doesn't. And soon, Tony and Ziva will have two probies, and that's a lot of untested, un-experienced, un… everything, to have on your team and watching your back.

Which means some of those people who may die may be Tony or Ziva, because he won't be there, watching their backs, and anyone who replaces him won't be as good.

He hears his front door open, followed by heavy, quick steps, searching the upstairs from the sound of it. Not Tony, he's too pissed, and honestly, too hurt, to chat tonight. Too heavy to be Jimmy, who might want to have a chat with him, touch base and see what's up. Not Draga, Draga doesn't come here, not yet. Ducky would have headed straight to the basement, so not him. Likewise, Fornell would have headed straight down, too.

He catches a faint scent of coffee and whatever that cologne Leon wears is.

"In the basement, Leon."

A second later, he hears the first step on his stairs. "Do you even use the rest of the house?"

"On occasion."

Leon looks over the crib and smiles. "Newest baby Palmer?"

"Anna. She's supposed to be on the outside middle of December. Want to get this done by Halloween."

"Good plan." He faces Gibbs, leaning against the workbench. "So… What's this bull McGee's telling me about you being born in 1960?"

Gibbs stares at the ceiling and sighs. "Probably a bad idea."

"Uh huh," Vance says in that exceptionally understated way of his. "I understand DiNozzo and McGee had a conference this afternoon as to the suitability of this plan, and worked on reinforcing proper respect regarding the chain of command?"

"Something like that."

"And is the chain of command in place?" Leon asks, pointedly.

"I think so." (He'd checked in with Abby before heading out, making sure Tim was in fact in one piece. He was fairly sure he would be, he knows how much better Tim is at fighting now, but he did want to make sure. It sounded, from her, that things were… better… between the boys. But none of them will really know until they see Tim and Tony together.)

"Good." Leon took a form out of his jacket pocket and unfolded it on Gibbs workbench, then poured himself a drink. "1087 B. It's filled out and signed."

Gibbs looked at it, the form that allows for exceptions to the mandatory retirement age.

"No need for McGee to go and perjure himself to get you another year."

"Thanks, Leon."

Leon shook his head. "There's a whole ball of strings attached to that, Jethro."

"I know."

"Do you?"

"I do now."

Leon took another sip of his drink. "Is DiNozzo ready? You two just pulled the rug out from under him, and he didn't have a clue until after. And not to put too fine a point on it, but literally beating McGee into submission isn't precisely the level of leadership skills I expect out of my premier team."

"He's ready. That fight's been brewing for years. Needed to happen."

Vance looks intrigued by that. DiNozzo pounding McGee at least on a metaphorical level seemed to happen fairly often, why there'd be any need for physical reinforcement was curious. Brewing for months could be fallout of Tim running the team while Tony was out. Years meant something else was up. "Needed to happen?"

Gibbs shakes his head. "More personal than work."

"So you're saying I probably shouldn't go and watch the surveillance footage of the gym from this afternoon."

"I think if they had wanted you to see, they would have invited you."

Vance nods. He taps the form. "If he's ready…" _You don't need to stick around_ is loud and clear.

"I know. He can do it. He'll do it well. But…"

Vance nods at that, too. He's fifty. He knows that as Director his job doesn't have a get-out-of-town date attached to it, but he also knows that in the next five years he's going to start getting hints along those lines. "Date on the form is October 15th. Don't need it back until then. Take it. Think. Talk to him."

Gibbs nods.

"Jethro, there's more to NCIS than just hot cases. We need recruiters. We need instructors. We have a whole team going through cold cases in DC alone. We need translators. You speak what, four languages?"

"More."

"You wanna run classes on sniper skills or tactical assessment or interrogation technique; I'll set you up for it. Things are still unstable in Crimea, you want to head to the Black Sea, find a nice port city, hang out, read newspapers, and keep your ear to the ground, I'll send you."

"Spying mission on my own?"

"Passive intel gathering. Just feet on the ground seeing what's going on, but yeah, I'll send you. You do speak Russian, right?"

"Da."

"Wouldn't be like your cloak and dagger days. More like retired tourist keeping an eye on things, but, you want it, we can do it."

Gibbs looks at the crib and shakes his head. "I need to be closer to home. A week or two, fine, but I can't miss my girls for too long."

Leon smiles at that. "Know that feeling." He takes one more sip. "Even if January is the end of your days as Team Leader, it doesn't have to be the end of your days being useful."

Gibbs shrugs at that. "Pushing paper doesn't do it, ya know?"

"Yeah. I know." It had taken a full half year for Leon to get used to not jumping up to handle field assignments. "But it's not useless, either. And we do need talent scouts, and we do need people who have been there and done that to teach the younger ones."

Gibbs just looks at Leon, getting across exactly how much that's not what he wants to be doing.

Leon nods at that, he gets it. "So, let me see these newly discovered documents. I poked around on the computer records he built you, and they're clean."

Gibbs led Leon upstairs, and showed him his "new" birth certificate, first driver's license, first report card, and a few other odds and ends.

Leon studied them carefully. "Good work. Where'd he get the paper?"

"They're the originals. Abby lifted the old ink and made new ink to match it. Tim's better at copying handwriting, and owns the typewriter for the rest."

"Yes, I know how good he is at copying other people's handwriting. Especially DiNozzo's and yours."

"Thinking of an assignment for him?"

"Not right now. We've got people who do this when I want it official. But it's good to know that if I ever don't want it official, I've got someone who can do this."

"According to Abby, unless the exact right bit of the paper gets carbon dated, there's no way to tell it's forged."

Leon nods, then stands up. "You get some quiet time tomorrow, head over to HR and take a look at what all we've got going on that you don't need to be under fifty-seven for."

"Okay."

* * *

"When you said McGee was really coming along, I didn't realize you meant you were turning him into a ninja." Tony was sitting on the edge of their bathtub.

"When we were talking about that, I didn't realize you were intending to get into a fist fight with him." Ziva turned off the cold water tap to their tub, and then poured two bags of ice into it. "In you go."

Tony very gingerly slipped his body into the icy water, hissing and cursing as he eased into it.

She sat on the edge of their tub, soaking a washcloth in the frigid water to make a cool compress for his face. "Are you going to tell me about it?"

"What's there to tell? Papa Smurf is scared. Brainy Smurf is pissed. Put the two of them together, and I get screwed."

"Tony." She smiles sadly at him.

"I think I've got McGee handled. He says he's not angry anymore. Says he forgives me. Once this blew up, I knew we'd get here. I told him then that if he needed to beat it out, we'd do it. There's only so much angry a person can hold without fighting it out so, this isn't a surprise." He gestured to his current state, though honestly he didn't think Tim would have been able to hurt him this bad. Jimmy was right, he had a mental image of Tim that was probably a few years out of date, especially when it came to stuff like this. "I mean, we all knew yelling didn't do it for him. But… God the thing with Gibbs is such a mess. I didn't think he was so pissed he'd pull a full on scorched-earth policy on me."

She smiles gently at that, too. "This is fixable."

He shakes his head. "Not by me. I can't spend another year working for him, and I can't cut his head off. 'It's like dying,' he actually said that to me. How am I supposed to make him leave after that?"

Ziva shrugs, she doesn't know how he can do it. She does know that he needs to do it, because he's right, he can't work for Gibbs for another year. "We talked a little. I told him he can't stay unless you really are the Boss, and he thought about it. Didn't jump in and give me an immediate I-can-do-it answer."

"I guess that's progress."

She wrung out the washcloth, folded it into thirds, and gently draped it over his eyes.

"I need to talk to Vance in the morning."

"Why?"

"Tell him I'm keeping Gibbs."

She winced slightly at that. He takes the cloth off and looks at her, wondering what that silence meant.

"Too little, too late?"

She nods. "Perhaps something along the lines of you've got your mutineers in hand and are in control again and that anything that doesn't go through you is to be immediately reported to you and that you'll handle it?"

He slumps into the water a little further, hissing again as the back of the tub dug into his shoulder. "How did he even get the back of my shoulder? I don't remember having my back turned at any point."

"It's an arm lock that—"

"Rhetorical question. I was there. I remember."

* * *

Draga took one look at Tim and said, "So, I'm driving, huh?"

Draga's looking him over intently, seeing exactly how beat up he is. Doing so, it's occurring to Tim that while his face looks awful, and yes, his arms, shoulders, and chest hurt like hell, the rest of him is pretty much fine, and he's moving like it's fine, too.

"Sure, if you want."

They get into the car, and Tim programs the GPS while Draga pulls out.

"So, all your teeth present and accounted for?"

Tim almost flashed him a big, wide smile, but he felt the pull on the barely holding together flesh of his lip before he got very far into that gesture. So, he changed it into a nod.

"And are you and DiNozzo, okay?"

"I think so. Better than we were this morning."

"Okay… That's… You guys don't do this usually, right?"

"You mean, did you somehow manage to sign up to join a group so dysfunctional they have to routinely beat the hell out of each other to get along?"

Draga nods.

"Second time in fourteen years. First time we'd been on stakeout for three days, and it wasn't this bad." Tim settled back into his seat, looking for a fairly comfortable position, most of his bruises are on his face and hands, but there's a really tender one from his shoulder to his chest, and finding a position where the seatbelt wasn't as issue was tricky. "I don't think it's going to happen again."

"Good."

A few more miles passed in silence.

"So, is Gibbs staying?"

"I don't know. We just got us worked out. Gibbs is another story."

* * *

Gibbs stared at the form on the workbench.

"It's kinda like dying."

He probably shouldn't have said that to Tony. That was beyond a low blow. But…

But it's also the most honest thing he's said about retiring. It's not _like_ dying. It is dying. 'Leroy Jethro Gibbs, NCIS.' 'Gibbs, NCIS'

He doesn't spend time doing cop things. He _is_ a cop. That's… not his whole life, but it's so damn close. At least ten hours a day, five days a week, and most weeks it's probably closer to nine hours six days. He thinks of cases when he's not working them, he works them until he drops or solves them, he hasn't taken a vacation since his last honeymoon. Hasn't taken a break since he left with Franks, and even with that, he was driving Franks buggy, fixing everything that wasn't nailed down.

He's a cop. He's been a cop for twenty-two years, twenty-three years four days before he retires. If he retires. He touches the form again. Another year. Three hundred and sixty five more days until he has to… become something else.

If he can.

He knows retired military. He knows retired doctors and lawyers and farmers and accountants and… and just about everything.

But he doesn't know a lot of retired cops. Because the ones he made friends with, the ones he liked, they lived the job. It was their end all and be all and when they weren't on the job, there wasn't anything else.

And when they retired, they died, and not in the metaphorical sense of the men they used to be shriveled up and vanished, but in the literal within a year their wives/kids stuck them in a box and buried them sense.

The guys he knows that are still around are like Mike; they burned out on it. They left by choice. They didn't get booted out. The ones who were forced out, they didn't do so well.

Because when your whole life is the job, you just don't keep going when it's gone.

So, his whole life can't be the job.

His fingers trace over the form. The right thing to do. What he wants to do. The right thing for him, or the right thing in general. He can remember the version of him Mike showed him, the one who did the 'right thing' and let Hernandez go. That broken shell of a man, living on bourbon and hate.

But that was the 'right thing.' Just not the right thing _for him_.

But this time it's not just about the right thing for him. It's the right thing for Tony, and by extension, Ziva, too. It's the right thing for his kids.

But it feels like throwing himself on his own funeral pyre.

* * *

Gibbs knocked on the door to Tony and Ziva's place. It's… not late, but given how badly pounded Tony was, he's thinking Tony's not staying up late.

Ziva opened it a few seconds later, and looked mildly surprised to see him.

"Can I see him?"

"I'll check."

She headed off to their bedroom, and he heard quiet voices. Two minutes later she was back, and nodded again. But he can see she's wary, so he smiles a little at her, letting her know that Tony won't regret this.

Tony's in the tub, lounging amid the ice cubes, and from the looks of it, they're helping, but he's got to be hurting fiercely.

He doesn't let it show, much. But between having been hurt like that, and being able to read Tony better than almost anyone on earth, Gibbs knows.

"Gibbs."

He held up the form. "1087 B, filled out by Vance. He's given me until the 15th to hand it back in." Gibbs turned his back to Tony, so he can't see his face, can't see the pain of this. Then he ripped the form into little pieces, dropped them into the toilet, and flushed. He swallowed once, and then twice, opened his mouth, and then closed it, not sure if his voice would hold.

Two more seconds, the only sound the rushing of the water. Then he was sure he could hold for it. "January 15th. That'll be my last day."

Tony nods at that, and Gibbs heads out, he doesn't want to talk, and he doesn't think Tony does either.

Ziva hugs him as he gets ready to head off, holds him close for a long minute, then reaches up on her tip toes to kiss his forehead.

He burrows his face against her shoulder, and stands close to her, not sure what happens next, but eventually he pulls back and head out of their home back toward his own, feeling hollow, aching from the sense of nothing left to do.

The fact that it's the right thing doesn't make it any easier.

In the end, though, as he told Penny, he doesn't need Rachel to tell him how to be a good Dad to his boys. That's still true, no matter how much he wants the job. But he's feeling very sure he is going to need her help when it comes to not falling apart over this.


	17. Embracing The End

When he gets home, he opens up his computer, not really sure what he wants to do.

Not true.

Not really comfortable with what he wants to do.

What he wants to do is call Rachel up and just talk to her. Well, what he'd really like to do is actually see her, share a cup of coffee, and talk to her. But he knows that's a bad plan. They are, as she made very clear, not dating. Technically, she's not actually a friend. He can't just call her up at 8:53 on a Thursday night just to talk because he had a bad day.

But, God, he wants to. She'd sip her coffee, listen attentively, ask good questions, help him sort out his head in a way that woodworking just doesn't.

In a way that isn't lonely.

But he can't ask her to come over. Can't suggest going to her. This little fantasy of talking to her, her on his sofa, listening to him, is already dangerously close to over the line, and actually seeking her out would be way over the line.

So he won't.

But he can email, and ask to shift this week's assignment. In that it's October and his thirty-sixth wedding anniversary is creeping up on him, he's supposed to be coming up with a plan for what he's going to do to mark the day.

He can ask to put that off, right? That's within bounds, right?

So, he opens his email account, and begins to hit the compose button when he looks to his contact list on the left and sees the little green dot next to Rachel Cranston.

He's aware of those dots. Noticed them before. But he doesn't know what they mean.

He pulls out his phone and flashes a text to Tim. _What's the little green dot next to someone's name on gmail mean?_

Three minutes later he gets back _I'm fine, too. Thanks for asking. How are you?_

He rolls his eyes. Apparently Tony didn't beat the sass out of Tim. _Frustrated. I don't know what the green dot means. Abby said you were okay._

_It means the person's online._

_So if I send an email they'll get it immediately?_

_Yeah. Or you can chat with them._

_How's that work?_

_Double click on the name, little box pops up, type. Who you talking to? Tony?_

_No. Already talked to Tony._

_How's he doing?_

_Better than he was two hours ago._

_?_

_Tomorrow or the next day._

_How's he doing physically?_

_In the tub, soaking in ice water, looks like you hit him with a wrecking ball. Abby said you're fine. Really?_

_Sore, bruised, lot better than he is. Can't wait to get out of this car. Seat belt hurts like hell. Should have had Jimmy check my collar bone, wondering if he cracked it._

_Why are you in a car? Getting x-rays?_

_No. It's cracked or not, treatment's the same either way. Not worth the trip to the emergency room. Tracked down a lead in PA. Snagged Draga, heading north. Traffic on the beltway means we're just hitting the middle of Maryland right now._

Gibbs is glad to hear he's got a lead, more happy yet that he's following it, but then something else hits him. _Did you tell Tony you found a lead?_

There's a minute where nothing comes up on his phone, and then one word flashes up. _Shit._ Two minutes later: _Done. Have gotten permission to go to PA and hunt down lead. I wouldn't mind if he thought I worked this late in the lab and just left._

Gibbs shakes his head. Ziva's right, Tim needs to go. He's beyond ready. There's taking initiative, and then there's you're in charge on your own. He knows he wouldn't be thrilled if Tim just ran off, snagging another agent, on his watch without at least a heads up as to what's going on.

 _Good plan._ He types. Tony doesn't need to know, this soon after the two of them blowing up, that Tim's on his own.

_So, who you want to chat with?_

_Tomorrow. Dinner. Your place. They're not going to be hosting Shabbos. Hate texting._

_No problem. See you then._

He double clicks on Rachel's name and a little box did appear in the lower right corner of his screen. Sort of like texting then, but at least for this he's got a real keyboard.

So… how do you start this?

_Hi_

He's feeling stupidly off balance waiting for the response. Half-afraid that he's intruding on her, half-nervous that she just won't respond, but mostly feeling foolish that he's so out of sorts he can't wait until Monday and just talk to her then.

_Hello Jethro._

He feels like he can hear her voice as those words pop up on his screen.

Now what?

_Can I change my assignment for this week?_

_Having trouble?_

_No… Not like that. Lot happened this week. Wanna talk about it._

_That's not a problem. How about you send me an email, get me up to date, and we can hit the ground running on Monday?_

_That sounds good._

The screen stays blank and he's not sure how to sign off for this.

He types _goodnight_ but deletes it before hitting enter.

 _I'll have it in your inbox by tomorrow._ That he does hit enter for.

And a few seconds later he gets back. _Looking forward to it. See you Monday._

* * *

It took him close to three hours to get it all out and it's probably the most… real… thing he's ever tried to put into words.

It's rambling, and doesn't make a ton of sense, but the swings are there, that resignation he had before Tim gave him the out, the elation of getting another year, the desperate grab for more time, feeling like shit for pulling it on Tony, guilt for that, ripping it up, burning the bridge, and now this just sort of numb, terrified hopelessness.

Not knowing what to do, what comes, next.

Being scared by that, too.

How he's afraid he needs more than just the kids and grandkids. How he's afraid that until he finds it, he'll be clinging to them so hard they'll get sick of him. That he's afraid there isn't more, not for him.

That he doesn't know who he is if he's not a cop.

That getting booted out is so fucking unfair. It'd be one thing if he couldn't do the job anymore, but he's getting shelved because he's… inconvenient and expensive. And he's angry at it. Angry at Tony right now, even though he probably shouldn't be. Tony's more than within his rights to want his job, he's earned it, he's put the time in, and Gibbs' clock has almost zeroed out so suddenly adding more time wasn't fair, either.

But running out when you can still do it… He's good at his job. He's probably one of the best at his job, but being the best, or near best, doesn't matter, because it's not a meritocracy. That makes him want to rage.

But mostly, through all of it, is scared. For almost twenty-three years he's always known what he was going to do the next day. He was going to get up, grab a shower, throw on some clean clothing, and then do the job. And maybe nothing else would be stable, or make sense, or make him feel good, but that's always been there.

And come January 16th, it won't be.

But sitting in front of his computer won't solve it. Nothing'll solve it. The clock won't go backwards, and it keeps running forward, closer to tomorrow. So he heads to bed. Might as well try to get some sleep.

* * *

It's not like he usually springs out of bed with a song in his heart and joy in his soul. It's more like he sort of grumbles his way out. His team… he sighs… Tony's team, knows he's about as much fun as splinter under your fingernail until he's got some coffee in him, and stomping out of his nice comfortable bed, and usually fairly pleasant dreams, does nothing to make that any better.

But he's fairly reliable about wake up, get up, get showered, get dressed, eat, and out the house. He doesn't laze around in bed. He doesn't linger in the shower. He's a Marine, and Marines are up, in, out, and done. (Shannon used to have a rather off-color joke about that, one he had appreciated greatly. Though back in those days, he didn't go sprinting out of bed right after waking up if he didn't have work. In fact, before Kelly, on several occasions, they didn't make it out of bed for anything but food and the bathroom. He misses those days.)

He doesn't have an alarm.

Doesn't need one.

His body knows when to get up, and it doesn't matter when he went to bed, he's up when he needs to be.

But this morning, he's just… laying there, not really feeling like it's worth getting up.

And the little mental pep talk (bad guys to get, people to arrest, lives to save) isn't exactly revving his engine. He finally wills himself out of bed by the sheer fact that if he's late to work and doesn't give them a reason for it, they'll send out the Mounties to go find him.

And lying in bed in a bad mood is nothing he wants to expound on, let alone why he's in the bad mood.

* * *

He gets in after Tony and Ziva, and if anything, Tony looks even worse today than he did yesterday. Every bruise that was still hiding, or chased into the background by cold water and ice is on vivid display this morning.

He'd sipped his coffee, put the cup down, opened his mouth to say, "Go home, Tony," and then shut up.

He's not the Boss. He doesn't get to decide if Tony stays or not, and right now, feeling like he's holding onto Leader by his fingernails, doing anything to undermine that is a bad plan.

"We got Mason and his lawyer in?" comes out instead.

Tony nods toward Ziva who is reading up on Tim and Draga's notes. "They'll be in a ten. McGeek and TechSupport Mark II are both grilling Eva Flanders, the bookkeeper at Herden's Titanium Works. Should get a report back in an hour or so about them moving up the food chain. Ziva's playing catch up for talking with Mason and his lawyer. You're going to go in there with her, look menacing, and if any of her questions get to him, make a note of it. We'll send McGee and Draga in on the second run."

"I can do that."

And he did. Because he loves the job. Because doing it feels right. And even if he's not the Boss, the rhythms of a case, of paperwork, of puzzles to solve and people to save are his life.

He's sitting next to Ziva, keeping a close eye on Mason, and as he does it he feels his silence coming back. Not that he'd ever gotten particularly talky at work, but the shield of no words will help keep fear and sorrow, not tamed down, but hidden.

It'll help get the job done, and if he can only do it for two and half more months, he'll do it as much, as fully, and as well as he can.

But he can't talk about it, because if he does, it'll show through his voice.

The end is near, and he can't pretend any more that it isn't.


	18. Deeper Than It Looks

"So, where are we going?" Draga asked as they pulled onto I-495 and traffic came to a dead stop.

"Downingtown, PA."

"Where's that?"

"North."

Draga's answering look was a pretty clear, _that was amazingly useful, thank you oh so much._

Tim shrugged back at him. "I did a quick google. It's six hours from here. Bit outside of Philadelphia."

"I take it this isn't uncommon?" Draga asked, staring at the parking lot of cars in front of them.

"I've lived here for more than a decade and the entire time some part of the 95 interchange has been under construction and mucking up the rest of it."

"Wonderful."

"Yeah, there's a reason to live inside DC if you can possibly afford it."

"Or don't have kids living with you."

Tim thought about that for a second and made the connection between Draga and his son. "There are some really great private schools."

"Uh huh."

Tim thought back and remembered what Draga was making these days. "Kevin's starting kindergarten next year?"

"Yeah."

"Maryland's got great schools, but not right next to DC. Supposed to be some good charters near DC."

"But you get into them by lottery, and the Virginia side has great schools, but I can't afford it." Draga sighed. "His mom's lawyer's harping on the fact that where she is the schools are better."

"Don't they have programs in DC for cops and schoolteachers and nurses and stuff, try to get them into better neighborhoods?"

"They do. I don't qualify because I'm a Fed and make too much money."

"That sucks."

"Yeah."

"Ziva and I used to live in Silver Springs. Schools were okay there."

"Okay. Not great. Not terrible. Anywhere in the areas I can afford, I've got to be able to come up with tuition to one of the private schools to get a better education than he can get where he's living now."

"And tuition is too much."

"At the places I've checked. They all say financial aid is available, but I can't apply for him if I don't have custody, and I can't get custody because I can't prove that I can get him adequate schooling. At least, that's where the argument is right now."

"I'm really sorry."

"Me, too. On the upside, her lawyer is offering summers, Christmas, and spring break, so that's him bending to some degree. Before it was just every other weekend, and if I couldn't get down there for him, too bad."

"You gonna take it?"

"Right now, I'm thinking I am. Trying to get my lawyer to make sure there's something in there about revisiting the agreement in three years."

Tim nodded, he got that. In three years, Draga will be up three levels and making enough to afford a better place to live or tuition.

* * *

"So, what's going on with you and DiNozzo? I mean… Okay, you're working this out by beating the shit out of each other, but… What's the actual problem?" Draga asked a few minutes later as they sat in gridlock, staring at cars just sitting still.

Tim shrugged and shook his head. "Like I said, lot of it's personal. Professional bit you know about."

"You gonna be working in the lab forever?"

"No. Just, you know, sometimes it's a good plan to make yourself scarce for a bit."

"Yeah, I know that. Gibbs sticking around?"

"I don't know. Probably not."

That surprised Draga.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Thought if anyone would know, it'd be you."

"It probably would be. I'll lay odds on him not staying. You ever get caught between what you want and the right thing to do?"

"You mean like not kidnapping my son?"

Tim glanced over and saw that Draga may be playing that for a joke, he wasn't nearly joking as much as he should be. Granted, Tim was feeling a bit edgy on the idea of one, maybe two, nights without seeing Kelly, so the idea of only seeing her summers and at Christmas would drive him insane.

Draga saw Tim get it, and Tim nodded back at him. "Actually, yes, probably a lot like that. It'd be good for you, but probably not for him, not in the long run. Same thing with Gibbs and Tony. Gibbs sticks around another year, that's good for Gibbs, bad for Tony."

"But Tony's Team Leader, why is Gibbs there a problem?"

"It's like the difference between driving with whoever taught you how to drive in the seat next to you, and driving on your own."

Draga seemed to understand that. "New team for Tony?" he asked, still brainstorming.

Tim sort of squinted at Draga, (and stopped that fast, his eye aching) honestly shocked that he'd ask that. "Think they have leaderless teams just hanging around waiting for a new person? You get a team by being around when the old leader leaves. But say there was one, what happens to you and Ziva in a year when Gibbs leaves? Or say you and Ziva go with him, where does Gibbs go? Just like there's no new team hanging out waiting for Tony, there really isn't one for Gibbs. We haven't put any new field teams on the ground since…2008? I don't remember, but they did offer Tony the one they were forming in Rota and he didn't take it."

"So, you're saying it's going to be a damn long time before I hit Senior Agent?"

"He'll age out in ten years. And who knows, if Russia makes a move on Estonia, maybe we'll start building up in Europe again, and end up with more teams to handle increased boots on the ground, but… You might be the low guy on the totem pole for a while. It's not a bad thing. You still get raises every year, or few years once you've been in for a bit, you still move up, Vance is good about making sure talent doesn't just sit there-"

"Hence your lateral move?"

"Technically it's lateral and quite a bit up. I got offered Okinawa back in '10. That was the last new Cybercrime team. Field agent still worked better for me than desk jockey back then, so I declined. Asked for Cybercrime DC and got okayed for it back in… March? So my move's been on the books for a while. But, I'm still here because I can't go there until Jenner heads off, and he's taking his sweet time looking for his perfect next job. The only reason I can shift into head of Cybercrime is because I'm better than the second and third in commands and happen to be the guy the Director calls in for all of his personal hacking. Otherwise I'd be stuck until they opened a new team. It's like any other business, can't move up unless someone moves out, or they expand or reorganize forces. None of that's happening right now."

"So, really, damn long time?"

Tim shrugged. "Technically, I was a Senior Agent for less than four months. Ziva's never been a Senior Agent. Few more months, I'll run my own department. Excellence counts for a lot here. Be better at your job than anyone has any right to expect you to be, and Vance will work with you to make sure you're properly taken care of."

* * *

The sun had set and they were well out of DC when Tim felt his phone buzz. Text from Jethro asking, of all things, how gmail worked.

Why not? He shook his head slightly and started talking him through it, idly wondering who Jethro wanted to chat with.

 _Did you tell Tony you found a lead?_ Popped up on his phone after he explained where he was and why.

He stared at that text and cursed under his breath. Then he texted what he said. Then he started quickly texting Tony, getting him up to date. He didn't ask permission to go. It's written as an update. Here's what I found, I'm on the lead, taking Draga along, will send more when I know more, sort of thing.

A few seconds later, he got one back saying that Tony wanted updates as fast as he had them and that Mason and his lawyer were due in in the morning, and if he had it cracked before they came in, they'd appreciate that.

 _On it._ he typed back to Tony, and then got back to texting Jethro.

Once that was wrapped up, he said to Draga. "Just remembered to let Tony know where we are."

"Isn't there a rule about that?"

"Number three, never be unreachable." He held up his phone. "Obviously, I'm reachable. And Abby knew where we were going."

"But Tony didn't."

"Did you tell him?" Tim asked.

"When would I have? During the fifty seconds between 'get a car we're going to Pennsylvania' and getting the car, or the minute between that and you popping up next to the car?"

"Good point. He does now."

"He's really not your Boss, is he?"

"Apparently not."

* * *

Zero for two on being a good team player. _Wonderful._ He used to be good at this. He used to be the most reliable one of the three of them on the not just wandering off and doing his own thing aspect of this job.

When did that change? When he took over the team or when Tony moved up?

Both things happened so close together he couldn't really tell. He'd only been working for Tony two days when Tony got hurt and he took over for two weeks.

Was it that he couldn't see Tony as his Boss, so he was just on his own, doing his own thing, or did running the whole show shift how he saw his job?

Tim didn't know, didn't care. Either way, this had to change. Okay, fine, Tony wasn't his Boss, (even if, right now, he technically was) but he was the Team Leader, and he needed to know where the whole team was and what they're doing at any time. So he could, you know, lead the damn team.

Or put this way, eventually Tim'll have a pile of computer techs working for him, did he want them just going their own way without at least a heads up?

Actually… that was a good question.

He mulled over it. What level of I-know-exactly-what-you're-doing did he want? He wasn't a micro manager. He knew that. He didn't want hourly updates from everyone about precisely what they're doing.

Ultimately… maybe… set the task with daily check ins… Let him know if there was a big break… That sounded decent. Given what he knew about his soon to be employees (not all that much) that might work. Of course, given the current quality of the work they were doing… more frequent check-ins may be necessary.

He'd seen their resumes, so he knew that once upon a time there was talent in Cybercrime, it just seemed to have drained out of the people down there.

But, eventually, he wanted to be able to give them a task, and have them handle it, and report in only when they came up with something he needed to know. Kind of like how Vance handled Gibbs.

Like Vance… that wasn't a bad template… Maybe…

Teams. 'Like Vance' worked better if he had teams. Each problem comes in, assign a team to it, foursomes… web specialist, database specialist, code wizard, hacker… Whoever had the most specialties on whatever it was got the leader position, and he'd check in with Tim. Swap 'em around so everyone got some leadership time…

"McGee…"

"Mmm…"

"What's up? Lots of texting and then you went dead silent."

"Oh… Nothing. Just thinking of how to reorganize Cybercrime."

"Oh."

"Yeah… Kind of a mess down there. And, haven't done a whole lot of running the show. So, gotta figure out how to do that."

"It'd be nice to not be completely clueless on day one."

"Something like that."

* * *

They were in Northern Maryland, getting gas and "dinner." Tim was fueling up the car while Draga foraged for food and drinks from the Wawa.

"So, how does this work. We get one room, two?" Draga asked when he came back, setting a bag with subs and two sodas on top of the car.

Tim picked up the soda and held it to his left side of his face, eye to lip, making a quick mental note to get a bag of ice. With each additional mile they drove his shoulder ached more and more, and his eye was throbbing. "They let us expense up to seventy-five dollars for food and lodging per-diem. So, usually one of us gets the room, and the other gets the food, and that way everything gets covered. But, if you want your own room it's not a problem. I'm good either way."

"Okay."

He put the soda down and began googling away while Draga started unwrapping his dinner. "Least expensive thing I can find is ninety a night."

"One star roach motel?"

Tim flipped his phone around and showed Draga the picture.

"Wonderful. I'd prefer not getting bedbugs. What's the least expensive three star place?"

Tim changed his parameters. "One twenty-three."

"How's that work?"

"Form E-458-B, we pool all of the receipts and expenses, and they cut one of us a check, and then we split it."

"Lovely. One good thing about an aircraft carrier, your bunk goes with you."

"We can sleep in the car."

"I'm thinking no on that," Draga said, shaking his head.

"Good. I hate sleeping in cars." And right now, the idea of trying, with as bad as he was hurting sounded like the torments of the damned.

* * *

It was well after 1:00 when they got to the Fairfield Inn in Exton. (If there are hotels in Downingtown proper, they either cost too much to hit Tim's search, or aren't online. Either way, they're in the next town over.) It was a basic, no frills, hello-business-traveler-on-a-tight-expense-account kind of place.

It was clean. Smelled decent. Not too hot, not too cold. They had a room with two beds. Bathroom was functional. There was a coffee maker. Wi-fi worked. It was good enough, and better than some of the rat traps Gibbs had picked for them over the years.

Way better than Afghanistan, not as nice as the place they were in in Lejeune.

By all rights, Tim should be able to chug a few Advil, brush his teeth, slip into his pajama pants, burrow under the ice packs they picked up at the Walgreens, and crash, not moving until the alarm kicked him out of bed six hours from now.

But he wasn't having an easy time settling, feeling edgy, and apparently Draga noticed.

"First full night away since she was born?"

"Yeah." Tim nodded, lying down, shuffling the ice around. He hated feeling cold, hated the way he ached more, hated the way he'd be stiff as concrete if he didn't ice down even more than that. "Feels weird to not at least touch her every day."

"I know. You thinking we'll be home tomorrow?"

"I really hope so."

"Okay. Gonna get a swim," they had to walk past the indoor pool to get to their room, "blow off some of the drive."

"You have swim trunks in your go bag?" Talk about non-standard equipment.

"It's one in the morning. Who's gonna notice I'm in boxers?"

"Good point."

* * *

1:53, he was still awake. Starting to really wonder if Tony did crack his collarbone. Felt like he had a tooth ache in there, that hot, swollen, sick, slow throb of an ache. Too soft mattress, too cold from the ice, too hurt to take it off, tired but edgy. Add in no Abby next to him, and he hadn't seen Kelly, and yeah, all of the things that say SLEEP, NOW weren't firing, because they weren't here.

Granted, there was a fairly… easy… solution to this issue. Well maybe not solution. It'd probably work. He'd never tried it when he was this hurt. But it usually solved not sleeping pretty well.

Of course, with as much as his hands were aching right now, that particular not sleeping solution might be a bit more complicated to work than usual. Plus he was really not a fan of doing it when he was sharing a room.

They'd all done it, (Okay, Tony and he had done it. He was honestly not sure about Gibbs, and didn't need or want to know.) at least once, especially when it was day three or four of the case, and they all ignored it, but… still, it wasn't anything he ever got particularly comfortable with. The whole someone might wander in and interrupt things tended to put him off his stride, so to say.

But Draga was still off swimming.

Not like he was looking to really work himself over, just wanted to blow off enough tension to fall asleep. Assuming his hands cooperated, it wouldn't take more than five minutes.

He sat back up, snagged his phone, and headed for the bathroom. Rule one of jerking off when you're sharing a room: Always use the bathroom. You do not jerk off in bed when you're sharing a room; you just don't. (You really, _really_ , REALLY don't if the other guy is in the room with you.) Even Tony, who was not exactly discrete in his habits, knew this.

The bathroom had those lights that turn the fan on as well, so no shot of whomever else is in the room hearing what was going on in there, which was nice. He locked the door, because… well, because between boarding school or the Marines, neither Tony nor Gibbs really got the idea that you don't just walk in to use the head/brush your teeth if another guy was in there. And he didn't think Draga was likely to be any more sensitive to the idea of closed door meant don't come in than either of them.

He opened up some good pictures of Abby on his phone, went for the ones of her tied up from their honeymoon… very, very good pictures… they set the right mood very quickly. (And reminded him of how long it'd been since he tied her up. Way too damn long!) He sent her a cock shot to perk up her morning. Along with the caption, _Thinking of you_.

It was about ten seconds short of the worst possible time when phone vibrated to let him know he had a text. He practically dropped it, so startled by that, and then had to decide if he was going to finish first or read the text.

It was from Abby. That made him stop, and check it out.

_Having a good time?_

_I was._

_Bad timing?_

_Yeah._

_Don't let me stop you. Maybe a bit of one handed texting?_

_XO. Love you. Completely fried. Hands not working well enough for one-handed texting._ He can text or jerk off, not both, not today.

_Love you, too. See you tomorrow?_

_I hope so._

_Well, get back to your good time. I'll tell you about mine tomorrow._

_I'll be thinking about it._

_XOXO_

And yeah, it didn't take more than another minute, ramping back up again, especially with good pictures and images in his mind, wasn't time consuming, but he was feeling awfully loose and relaxed by the time he hit the bed again. (Plus an orgasm was a way better pain killer than Advil, for, well, the minute or so he was high from it.)

He was just about asleep when he started to wonder if Draga actually was getting a swim, or if "getting a swim" meant taking advantage of the likely to be completely empty locker room.

He smirked at that, and fell asleep.

* * *

Eva Flanders, long-term bookkeeper for the Herden Titanium Works, lived in a pleasant, little house on a suburban street lined with other pleasant, little houses and large maple trees, blazing scarlet in the October sunshine. They all looked like they were built around the end of World War II and the effect of the whole thing could be described as "quaint."

Draga knocked. Tim already had his ID out.

If Betty White had a twin sister, she was standing in front of them, looking mildly confused at the two men on her doorstep at 8:00 in the morning.

"Hello?" She stared at them for a second, apparently seeing Draga first, and then her eyes settled on Tim, and she shrieked, slammed the door, and bolted it.

"Ma'am, we're with NCIS. We just want to talk to you," Draga said politely.

Footsteps scampering away from the door met those words.

"I'm calling the cops!"

"We are cops!" Tim said loudly, holding his badge in front of the peephole on her door. Draga flashed his up a few seconds later.

She opened the door a crack, chain still in place, and glared up at Tim. "What sort of cop shows up looking like he rolled out of the drunk tank all beaten to hell up?"

Okay, yeah, he wasn't going to be winning any beauty contests today, but he didn't think he looked _that_ bad. Plus his hair was neat, his clothing tidy, yes, he did have on jeans and boots, but he also had on a nice button down and a jacket.

Of course, Draga was in a suit.

He crossed his arms over his chest. "The kind of cop who actually runs into bad guys on occasion and has to make them decide to go to jail."

"Bad guy did that to you?" She said, scrutinizing his face.

He nodded.

"You should have shot him."

"I'll tell that to his defense attorney when he goes up for assaulting an officer."

She squinted up at Draga. "Why weren't you watching his back? You're partners, right?"

Draga glanced over at Tim, not exactly enjoying the way Mrs. Flanders was staring at him like he was completely incompetent. "I shot him."

"Okay, then!" She perked right up. "Come on in. I didn't get your names."

Tim flipped open his ID, and Draga got out his. "Tim McGee," he nodded to Draga, "Eric Draga, we're with NCIS and we'd like to talk to you."

"NC—what?"

"Naval Criminal Investigative Services." Tim said.

"But… I'm not in the Navy."

"No ma'am, we didn't think you were." Tim glares at Draga for that.

"We investigate crimes involving Naval personnel, their families, and Marines," Tim explained.

"You're a bit late on that fellas, Bob died back in '92."

Tim and Draga just glanced at each other.

"Ma'am?" Draga asked, as she opened the door and let them in.

"Bob Flanders, my husband. He died back in '92."

"Was he Navy ma'am?" Draga asked.

"Marine."

"Ah… And… was he murdered?"

"Lord, no." She looked appalled by that idea. "Died in his sleep."

"Okay…" Draga was staring at Tim _now what?_ on his face.

"Was there a crime involving your husband ma'am?" Tim asked.

"No."

"Ahhh… Okay." He smiled brightly at her, deciding to get to the point. "We were hoping to talk to you about your job with Herden Titanium Work."

"Why on earth would you want to talk about that? We make medical devices, bone screws, stuff like that, we don't make things for the Navy."

"Could you just tell us about some invoices?" Tim asked, taking copies of the Herden bank statements from his pocket.

"Maybe." She saw the papers. "Let me get my glasses, back in a jiff."

He nodded at Draga, letting him know to keep an eye on her. Yeah, it wasn't likely that she was about to run off, or call someone at Herden, but this not-all-there-thing might be an act, and he wasn't about to get caught sleeping on this.

So Draga looked like he was checking out the pictures on the wall, keeping her in view, as unobtrusively as a guy who was 6'2" with bright red hair could.

She shuffled back in a few seconds later, glasses on, and sat down next to Tim. "So, what do you want me to look at?"

"We found that your company was paying Ralph Mason six thousand dollars a month for web design, and we wanted to know who hired him."

She squinted at the bank records and saw the transfers to Mason Web Consulting. "Oh, gosh. Tommy does all of that. I just make sure the books balance and the checks get sent out. You'd have to talk to him."

"And who is Tommy, ma'am?" Draga asked.

She stood up and headed over to one of the pictures on the wall. It was some sort of company picnic shot, from the look of it everyone who worked for Herden was in it. She pointed to a man with brown hair and eyes, tan skin, happy looking smile. "Tommy. He took over about two years ago when Bill died." She pointed out an older version of Tommy, standing behind Tommy, hand on his shoulder.

"So, Tommy Herden?" Draga asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Do you have any idea where he'd be right about now?" Tim asked.

"He usually gets into work about noon. Stays until eight or nine. He handles second shift."

"Thank you very much Ma'am." Tim said, getting ready to head off.

* * *

"So…" Draga said as he got into the car. "We gonna get him at home, or wait for him to head into work."

"We're going to his place. Eva may be cute and sweet, but she may also decide to give Tommy a call, and if she does that, and if we're waiting at work, he may never show up."

"Okay. You want me to text Tony, let him know what's up?"

"Yes, good idea." And once again that hadn't occurred to him at all. And yes, it was a good idea.

* * *

Another modest house in a neighborhood filled with modest homes.

Draga was staring at them, shaking his head as they cruised on through, looking for Tommy's address. "I'd figure you'd be living higher on the hog if you were going to screw the government."

"He was only pulling off about 500K a month. Wasn't making a whole lot of money on their other accounts."

"So, you're saying he was only stealing enough to stay in business."

"Sounds dumb as hell, but yeah. I mean, unless he's got a whole other account or something we haven't found."

Draga shook his head as he pulled into Herden's driveway.

"So, what's the plan?"

Tim scanned the house. Then quickly looked it up on google maps. "There's a backdoor."

"Okay."

Tim thought about it. He wasn't in fighting prime right now, but he also had a hell of a lot more experience when it came to dealing with skittish perps. So… go in and take the lead, and hope Draga was ready for good back up, or let Draga take the lead and hope this went the way he wanted it to.

"I'm going to the back door. Anything goes hinky, you yell, and I've got him."

Draga looked really excited by the prospect of taking the lead. He was grinning as he said, "Let's do this!"

* * *

Tim got to the back door, and decided to just check. He turned, quietly, the doorknob, and found that it was unlocked. He opened it just far enough to unlatch it. If he needed to get in fast, all he had to do was give it a quick kick.

Tim waited at the back door, just out of sight, gun out and held down. He heard knocking, eventual sounds of footsteps and grumbling, followed up by the steps stopping dead, the sound of someone running, Draga yelling, "McGee" and then he kicked open the door, gun up, pointed at the head of Tommy Herden, who stopped dead, hands out and open.

There were certain experiences Tim just hadn't had. A man staring at him, and then starting to cry and beg him, "Please, please, please, don't kill me, please don't kill me, please, I didn't hurt anyone, please, I won't do it again, please," as his knees buckled and he fell to the floor was definitely one of them.

Draga got Herden cuffed and into the car with no problems.

"Don't even know why he bothered to run if he was going to do that."

Tim shook his head slowly. Apparently looking like you're an extra from Fight Club while holding a gun is an awfully scary combination.

"Now what?"

"We go see if the local LEOs will let us borrow their interrogation room. I want him broken and confessed before we drag him back to DC."

* * *

Tommy Herden was not what they were expecting.

Well, maybe he was.

The ten minutes of self-serving 'I'm not a bad guy, I'm just trying to keep my business going, I'm getting screwed by the ACA, really, we're not taking all that much, it's less than we're paying in taxes, everyone who works for me is family, what would you do to keep your family working…'

Blah, blah, blah.

It wasn't that Tim was unsympathetic. The waves of panic arcing off of Herden seemed genuine. He did sound like a guy with his back legitimately up against a wall trying to make things as right as he can. And as he got into the he-had-to-do-everything-he-could-to-stay-in-business-because-if-he-shut-his-doors-there-would-be-shortages-of-the-bone-screws, Tim quickly glanced at Draga, sent him a little, _give this guy a shot to be a hero_ look.

Draga nodded. Reading Tim's look, or just understanding Herden enough to know how to play this.

"Tommy, I know things are going hard for you right now, but you don't have to get sent out to dry. You're a tiny little fish here. Hell, the kind of money you were taking in wouldn't even be a rounding error by the way the Government does things.

"But you've got a shot to help us find someone bigger. You tell us how you found Mason, and I'm sure we can find a way to make things go easier for you."

And that was all Herden needed to hear. He started to sing.

* * *

He got the text from Tony, an update as to what Mason wanted, namely immunity or almost immunity for the name of the guy he was working for while he was running down the final paperwork to get Herden transferred to DC.

_Don't take it. Got everything out of Herden already. Just finishing up transfer papers. Draga's getting a warrant. More in a minute._

His next text to Tony read: _Henry Bing, Bowie Maryland, going to get him._

* * *

The problem with traveling with the guy you just arrested in the back seat was that you have to listen to him. And Herden won't shut up. He went on and on about he was totally getting screwed by the government, and how since the ACA went into effect they can't make enough money on the things they sell to even stay in business. Apparently Draga had done such a good job on building rapport that Herden had gotten the idea that he really felt for him.

Finally, two hours into the details of the Medical Device Manufacturer Tax, (Which, okay, yeah, if it worked the way Herden said it did, Tim could understand why he was annoyed. He was starting to get annoyed on Herden's behalf. Still didn't excuse defrauding the VA.) Draga had enough and snapped at him, "Do either of us look like a defense attorney to you? Shut up until you're paying someone to listen to you."

Herden glared, suddenly realizing his audience wasn't quite a sympathetic as he thought they were, and shut up.

* * *

When they got to Bing's place in Bowie, MD, Tim got out of the car, opened the back door, saw Herden flinch back from him, grabbed his hands, uncuffed the left hand, and then closed the cuff around the post that kept the headrest attached to the seat, then stepped out, closed the door, and locked it behind him.

"Think that'll hold him?"

"Hope so. At the very least, we'll hear it if he tries to run."

"Same routine as last time?" Draga asked.

"Sure."

"Okay. I'll give you a minute to get set and knock."

Bing wasn't home. From the looks of it, Bing left in a hurry. Several computers, all still working, were arrayed on a desk set up in the front room. Cup of coffee, stone cold, was still sitting next to the computer along with a half-eaten sandwich.

"So…" Draga asked.

"Herden still in the car?"

Draga looked out of the window.

"Yep. I don't think he's going anywhere. I'm fairly sure when you kicked down his door like the Avenging Angel of Doom you scared him into submission."

Tim smiled briefly at that, and once again remembered why the hell that was a bad plan as pain arced through his face. He turned on the monitor and got to work while Draga kept poking around. Didn't take him too long to find what he was looking for. Bing had a fairly specialized search running, still, on his computers. From what he could tell it checked the booking data of basically every law enforcement agency in the US. And apparently it sent Bing an update as soon as one of his guys got booked.

Mason's name was up and flagged. Time stamp was yesterday afternoon. Bing had twenty hours on them. Herden's name had just popped up less than an hour ago. He was tracking everyone he worked with.

Tim was reaching for his phone, getting ready to call Tony when he noticed exactly how many names Bing's search was running.

Close to eight hundred.

He took several more minutes to go hunting through his computer. Bing was in charge of… a talent agency for guys who ran scams on the government.

"Draga."

"Yeah."

"Take a look at this." He started scrolling through the information, piles and piles of it. Social security fraud. IRS fraud. Medicare and Medicaid fraud. WIC fraud. If it was government agency that had money, Bing had someone in his files who specialized in bilking them.

"Good Lord," Draga said, shaking his head, starting to dig into the data.

"Yeah."

"We don't have jurisdiction on this, do we?"

"Nope." Tim lifted his phone, hit Fornell's contact number.

A few seconds later, "McGee? Gibbs in trouble again?"

"No. What if I told you I've got the computer of someone who's got the goods on literally hundreds of guys who are scamming the government?"

"Sounds too good to be true. You handing it over because it's hot?"

"I've even got a search warrant to go with it."

"I'd say thank you."

"You're welcome. I'm at 365 Blowder Dr., Bowie, Maryland. How fast can you get guys here?"

"An hour."

"It's got some strings attached.

Fornell sounded wary. "What sorts of strings?"

"The sort where you'll probably have to hand this over to the IRS at some point."

He heard the sound of Fornell putting the phone down and muffled cursing. Then the phone picked back up. "You didn't call her, did you?"

"I don't have her number. Not like we're buddies."

He could feel Fornell glare.

"One hour."

"See you then."

"Who was that?" Draga asked.

"Our FBI contact."

"Do they have jurisdiction?"

"They've got a hell of a lot more of it than we do. And I don't want to be the guy who hands this over to IRS."

* * *

Tim made copies of everything on all the computers. Using up all of his thumb drives and Draga's.

"I see what you mean by you go through them like gum."

"Yep. Get 'em in bulk at Costco, keep em at home."

"How're you feeling?"

"Not bad." Getting into the case and the data was distracting him, but as he thought about it, Tim decided to steal a paper towel and some ice from Bing for some more ice packs. He knew that as soon as he wasn't distracted, everything was going to start hurting again.

They set a BOLO on Bing's car. Draga checked to see if he had any other modes of transportation registered in his name. Nope. Tim grabbed his lap top and began to get permissions in place for his credit cards and the like. Wouldn't be done by the time the FBI got there, but it'd be a start.

They were sitting in Bing's house, looking around, taking pictures of everything, keeping an eye out for Bing should he decide to come home suddenly.

"You know, this makes me think of Heat," Draga said.

Tim looked up from the stacks of books on Government Aid Programs. "Heat?"

"Yeah, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Val—"

"This is probably a conversation for Tony."

"Okay, I won't bore you with the details. Anyway, it's about a heist that starts to go wrong. The thieves all have this, 'don't keep hold of anything you aren't willing to leave in 30 seconds flat' motto. Whatever it is, just walk away."

Tim nodded. The tracking program Bing had running on everyone he was working with, and the fact that he left it up and running certainly indicated that. Coffee on the desk. Car missing.

He saw Mason's name come up and ran.

And, judging by who he was working with, he probably had some damn good fake travel documents and aliases. Probably pile of money hidden somewhere, too.

* * *

"Good Lord, Chucky! What the hell happened to you?" Diane was looking him over, appalled at the bruises and admiring the body under them. It occurred to him that they hadn't seen each other since October of '13, and he was looking quite a bit trimmer these days.

"Hi Diane."

"You get hit by a truck?"

Tim stared at Fornell, not answering Diane's question, and asking his own with a look. Fornell shrugged. "Figured since it was inevitable, I'd share the wealth. So, did you get hit by a truck?"

Tim turned from Diane and Tobias to Draga. "Diane Sterling, Tobias Fornell, this is Eric Draga, newest member of our team."

They shook hands. "We met briefly during the Ender case," Draga said, reminding Tim that Tobias had been around for a moment on that one.

Diane was looking Draga up and down, approving calculation in her eyes. "But we haven't. It's a pleasure."

Draga didn't seem to mind Diane's attention, and smiled warmly at her. "Yes it is."

Tim elbowed him. "Draga, how about you get the custody papers from Fornell."

Fornell seemed to think that was a splendid idea, snagging Draga by the arm and pulling him to his car.

"Besides the bruises, you're looking fit, Chucky."

"Thanks."

"Married life agreeing with you?"

That got a genuine smile out of Tim, along with a wince. Really, he had to remember to keep his face neutral.

"Wanna see something?"

"Sure."

He pulled out his phone and showed her pictures of Kelly. She was cooing at them, and then got to the shot of Kelly napping on Jethro. She stopped at that one, eyes soft, and sighed.

"He looks really happy."

"Yeah, he is."

"So, really, what happened? You okay?"

"I'm fine. Enough. You know how it works, sometimes they don't just lie down and let you arrest them."

She nodded at that and decided to get to work. "So, what's all this you've got for us?"

He gestured into the door. "You'll love this…"

* * *

They were a few miles out of the Navy Yard when Draga asked, "So, what's the story with Diane?"

"No." Tim shook his head vehemently. "Don't even think about it."

"Why not?" Draga sounded honestly curious. Sassy, smoking hot redhead giving him the eye. He wasn't bugged by that idea at all. Not like he was married, or dating anyone really.

"You remember, Fourth of July party, Fornell's daughter?"

"Pretty redhead?"

"Yep. That's her mom."

"Oh." Okay, the idea of dating Fornell's ex seemed to cool Draga down a bit.

"She's also Gibbs' ex."

"Eww…" And from cool to frozen he went. "How old is she?"

Tim started to shrug, felt his shoulder scream and stopped that. "Forty-fiveish? No idea. I do know she's got a thing for Feds."

"Is this where you tell me she slept with DiNozzo back in the day?"

"Not Tony."

Eric's head snapped away from traffic to look at Tim. "Oh, God, McGee!"

"We just slept! And talked!"

"Uh huh. Just slept, huh?"

"Just slept." He nodded definitively.

"Bet she was a comfy pillow," Draga said with a sly grin.

Tim rolled his eyes and smirked.

"Are we talking about that hot lady cop?" Herden asked, reminding them he was in the backseat.

"Shut up, Herden!"

* * *

"God, McGee, you look like shit," Tony said as Tim headed into the bullpen twenty minutes later.

Tim cracked half-a-smile, raised his eyebrow a fraction of an inch, (Which hurt like hell, Jimmy's a righty, so he got all of it on the left side of his face.) looked him dead in the eye, and said, dryly, "You should see the other guy."

Judging by how people have been looking at him all day, he did look like shit. Diane might have been the first to say it, but he saw Fornell's eyes go wide at the sight of him, too. Bob, who ran the metal detector downstairs, muttered, "Good Lord" as he went through. And Seth at the coffee cart gave him a cup filled with ice without him asking for one.

Of course, there was looking like shit, and there was looking like Tony, who was in even worse shape than Tim. Tim found that oddly satisfying. Probably didn't bare thinking about too hard.

The case was closed. He had it in the tank. So, looking like shit or not, he was feeling pretty good, well-nigh giddy on the lack of sleep mixed with exactly how easily today's dominoes fell.

Tony half nodded. "What do you have?"

"I've got a confession. I've got evidence. Draga's got Herden in processing. I've got how they got hooked up with Mason. I've got the name and address of the guy who set the whole thing up. I've got eleven other companies who were also using Mason's services. The one thing I don't have is the guy who set it up. Henry Bing apparently started running as soon as we grabbed Mason. So, he's got twenty hours on us, but they'll find him."

"How does Bing even work into this?" Tony asked. He'd gotten Tim's somewhat cryptic text, but let it be, trusting that he knew what he was doing.

"Talent broker, basically. He hooked up companies with guys like Mason. From what we found at Bing's place, he was doing it for all sorts of companies and all sorts of government agencies. Say you sell something that Medicaid would pay for. Bing's the guy who hooks you up with another guy to handle defrauding Medicaid for you. You pay him ten grand, next thing you know you've got a guy who'll keep the government money flowing in."

Tony looked at Tim's desk, where Tim was not sitting at a computer, hunting away for Bing. " _They'll_ find him?"

"Once I saw how many agencies Bing was working on, I gave him to FBI. It's their turf. They've got the accountants and analysts to take care of him, and we don't."

Tony did not look pleased by that.

"We've got Mason; we've got the companies he was working with; we can get full sentences on all of them because we've got hard evidence; all of that is… kind of… our jurisdiction. But only because that artificial knee was located in a Marine. We've got no standing, at all, for going after someone who's ripping off Social Security."

That was true, but didn't touch on how it should have been Tony's decision to call in the FBI.

It took a second before Tim got why Tony was glaring at him, and he sighed, and said quietly, "Zero for three."

Curious gets added to annoyed on Tony's face.

Tim shook his head. "Few more months at most."

"Great."

"We really don't have the personnel for it."

"Not the point."

"I know. If it makes you feel any better, FBI called in IRS… I'm sure we've got at least one more confab with all three of our organizations."

Tony thought about that and began to crack a smile. Given all the shit he'd gotten from Gibbs lately, he was looking forward to the idea of making him deal with Fornell and Diane.

Tim saw the smile and added, "She really likes the look of Draga."

That got a very brief laugh, and Tim can see Tony planning to enjoy whatever happened on Monday.

"You mind if I head down and say hi to Abby."

"No." Tony looked in the direction of the stairs. "Write it all up for me, and then I'll send in Draga and Gibbs to take care of Mason and his lawyer.

"On it."

"McGee."

"Yeah?"

"Once it's written up, head home, get some sleep."

"Okay."

* * *

Relying on habit was often a sign of sleep deprivation. So, while it was true that Tim bopped pretty happily down to the Lab, it was also true that the part of his mind that was aware that someone other than Abby worked there hadn't reported for duty.

So, in he bopped, and not immediately seeing anyone else, he pulled her into what was going to be a very sexy hello kiss (that unfortunately lasted about a tenth of a second because his lip started to scream as soon as any pressure landed on it) and turned into an enthusiastic hug.

Which was when he heard, from behind him, Zelaz talking to Corwin and then stop dead mid-sentence.

It occurred to him, Abby's husband or not, her co-workers probably did not expect to see her being groped in the lab.

She was giggling softly as he stepped back. "Hello to you, too." She looked past his shoulder to Corwin. "I'm taking a ten minute break. Back soon." And then took Tim by the hands and led him to ballistics.

"I take it today went well?" she asked as soon as the door shut.

He was smiling at her, took her by the hips, lifted her to the counter they load the guns on, and snuggled in close, unbruised side of his face pressed to her throat, holding onto her for a long second before saying, "Yeah, it did."

He told her about it, holding her, smelling her skin and feeling her pulse thrum against his temple. It had been a while, since the day after Kelly was born, since he'd gone a night without any snuggle time with her. And, at least that night, he was in the same room and able to hold her hand if not be in the bed with her.

He pulled back after a few minutes, and she skirted her fingers, very gently, over the bruises on his face. "How are these?"

"Sore. I think they look a whole lot worse than they are."

"How about the rest of you?"

He laid her hand, gently on his right shoulder became chest. "He got me really good there." He pulled up his right sleeve and showed her the mottled yellow-green-purple bruises. "Other than that, I'm in fairly good shape."

"So, other than no kisses, you'd be up for something tonight?"

He grinned, flashed his eyebrow at her, smiled, (totally worth the pain that time) "Maybe tonight Lord McGee gets his revenge. Maybe he's in charge." He traced his fingers over her lips. "Maybe he's fought his way out, gotten free, and has now captured Lady Skye. And maybe Lady Skye has to earn the right to a kiss."

Abby smiled back at that. "And what would she have to do to get that kiss?"

"Good question. Gabriel'll be thinking about that. But until he figures it out, all she'll get is fingers."

"No cock?"

"That'll probably be on the menu, too."

"Good." They were both grinning at each other. "You're goofy today. How much caffeine have you had?"

"Significantly less than it would have been this time last year."

"Okay, how much sugar?"

He smiled a little. "You probably don't want to know."

She looked at him curiously and he shook his head. "No, really, not that much. I can feel it, this is that stupid so tired, everything is funny and good with a pile of everything in the case went just right."

"And let me guess, you're gonna crash in about three hours?"

"If not sooner. Gabe and Skye'll actually probably be tomorrow. Gotta write this up for Tony, then I'm going home, giving Kelly a huge hug, and probably sleeping… Or not, Jethro's coming over for dinner."

Abby looked at the clock, already 3:30. "Go fast you can get a nap."

"I'll be wrecked if I do that."

"Finish up, go home, get some food and rest. Gibbs can come over both nights. He can hang out with Kelly and I tonight, and get some time with you tomorrow."

He thought about it, and was leaning in to nuzzle against her, maybe give her throat a gentle lick (after all, lips might be split, but his tongue still worked just fine) when Benedict knocked on the door to ballistics.

Abby rolled her eyes and shook her head. Tim stepped back so she could slip down from the counter. She quickly signed to him, _when I get home, I expect to find you in bed, asleep. If you are, I'll wake you up nicely tomorrow morning._

He smiled at that and headed out of ballistics to write up that report.

* * *

"Benedict?" Abby asked, sounding annoyed.

"Got the results back from the mass spectrometer." He had a pretty sheepish look on his face, and it was awfully clear that the three of them had just been looking for an excuse to snoop on their new boss and her hubby.

"And…" she said archly.

"And it's exactly what you thought."

"Uh huh." Abby said, holding Benedict by the arm and dragging him into the main room of the lab. "All three of you, front and center: rule number twenty-two, 'Don't bother Abby in ballistics.'"

"Okay, what are rules number one through twenty-two?" Corwin asked.

"Rule number one is don't lie to Abby. Number nine is always have a spare. The rest you'll learn as I make them up. But the next time someone bothers me in ballistics, unless the world is about to end or the lab is on fire, especially if I'm having any sort of private conference in there, _very bad things_ will happen."

"Why isn't 'Don't bother Abby in Ballistics' rule number two?" Zelaz asked.

Abby sighed at them, wanted to glare, but didn't; they didn't know, and she wasn't exactly feeling like explaining. "It's just not. So, world isn't about to end, don't bug me in ballistics. I won't ever be in there for more than half an hour, so, are we good?"

"Can we use ballistics for conferences, too?" Corwin asked.

"I don't see why not. As long as the work gets done."

Three nods followed that pronouncement.

* * *

"Oh my god! Tim! Are you… What… Can I get you some ice packs?" Heather was leaping off the sofa to tend to him when he got home.

He held up a hand. "It's part of the job. I'll be fine. Kelly napping?"

"Yes."

"Okay, I'm going to head up and…" Well, watch her sleep for a little bit and maybe rest a hand on her tummy, but saying that felt weird so he didn't.

"Okay. Really, ice packs?"

"Sure, if you want to. I'll be down in a bit."

Getting used to having a nanny in the house has been kind of… weird. First of all there was this extra person in their house twelve hours a day, which was just… yeah, weird. Second of all, while it was true that Heather's there twelve hours a day right now, it was also true that Kelly sleeps for six of them, so, she keeps doing stuff… and who knew, maybe this was normal nanny stuff, but neither he nor Abby had put it on the list of things they expected Heather to do, but it kept happening and it did make things easier, but still, it felt, kind of, just… odd.

Like she did the shopping, which was cool, and a week into it she started asking what they wanted to have for dinner. She didn't cook the dinner. They never know exactly when they would get home, so getting it ready and hot was something of a challenge, but if they tell her what they intend to eat, when they came home all the ingredients would be prepped, whatever it was may be marinating, the table would be set, and all of the things they would use to cook the dinner would be laid out and ready to go.

(And if it was a slow cooker meal, it would be in there, bubbling away.)

And like, she did the laundry. They expected her to do Kelly's laundry, just can't keep a baby in enough clean clothing in you weren't doing laundry at least once a day. But she did their laundry, too. They'd find it sitting on the bed, in nicely-folded, sorted piles. Stuff that goes on hangers would be in the closet, (his shirts and Abby's skirts ironed) but she didn't put anything that goes into drawers back because… he guessed… that going into their drawers was too private.

He knew she cleaned. House was a whole lot tidier than it ever was. For example, he knew he hadn't personally dusted or vacuumed anything since Heather joined them, and he was fairly sure that Abby hasn't, either, but the dust bunnies were not freely roaming about his office, so, obviously, someone was taking care of it, and he was awfully sure it wasn't Kelly.

So, he wasn't saying he didn't like it. Having someone else do that stuff was really convenient. It just felt a little weird to have someone else do it. It was like having someone else carry your bag, yeah, it was nice, but he didn't feel like the kind of guy who had other people do stuff like that for him.

And all of that was a moot point as he eased open the door to Kelly's room, took the three (very quiet) steps to her crib, and stood there, watching her, lying on her back, snoozing away.

Almost four months old. The little brownish blond fuzz she was born with had been falling out, so right now she was almost bald on top, with a little ring of dark blond hair around the back of her head. (Pediatrician said it was normal. Penny said Tim was born with dark brown, almost red hair that all fell out by the time he was four months old, and he didn't have visible hair again until he was almost one.) If her eyes were open, he'd be able to see how they're just starting to edge toward green. And if she didn't have the pacifier in her mouth, he'd be able to see how her lips are the same shape as his. He could see that her face was shaped like Abby's (or will be as she grows).

Her eyes fluttered, and she sucked enthusiastically on the pacifier. Dreaming baby dreams of nursing, probably.

He knelt down, resting his arm on the edge of her crib and his face against his arm, and then placed his finger tips on her chest and stomach, feeling her breathe.

"Hey, baby," he whispered. "I'm home."

* * *

Watching Kelly sleep seemed to trigger his 'time to crash' mechanism, so by the time he got downstairs he was dragging (and hurting, his body hadn't bothered him much over the course of the day, but right now it was making up for that with a vengeance) and the ice packs Heather had set for him, along with the sandwich and iced-tea sitting next to them were very welcome.

He sat at the kitchen table, one pack held to his face other balanced on his shoulder as he chewed. "Thank you."

"No problem. Looks like you had an exciting day. Bad guys all put away?"

"Bad guys are in jail. NCIS, FBI, and from the looks of it the IRS are all about to have a massive field day."

"Wow."

"Yeah. Good day."

She was staring at his face. "Is this… normal?"

"Not really. Maybe once a year, once every other year, I get pounded by work, but it's usually not this bad."

She was looking at him with very wide eyes, and while he knew she was older than he was when he started at NCIS, he felt like she was very, very young. "Have you ever been shot?"

He shook his head. "Well, not without a vest. I have been blown up, twice, mauled by a dog, exposed to black plague, irradiated, fights like this… the thing in Somalia…" (Which probably qualified as torture, but he doesn't call it that, even in his own head, because he knows what they did to Ziva there.) "and frozen but, I'm the tech guy, so believe it or not, I've got the least dangerous job."

"Yeah, sounds really safe." Kind of nice to see she had some sarcasm in there.

He smiled, tiredly. "Found a guy who ran a ring that's probably defrauded the government to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more. Put away a guy who was doing it in the ten million range. Got on that case by helping to solve the murder of a Marine. I do stuff that's more important than safe."

"I guess."

"How'd today go with Kelly?"

He listened to her talk about taking Kelly shopping and for a walk, and about how she seemed to like seeing the Jack-o'-lanterns that were starting to pop up all over the neighborhood. She asked if they had any plans for Halloween, and off the top of his head, he doesn't.

The second time she asked something and he just sort of blanked out on it, she looked at him and said, "You should probably go to bed."

And by that point, he just nodded slowly and headed back up to his bed.


	19. Family Saturday

He got the text from Abby as he was leaving Wolf. It'd been an… interesting? conversation. Maybe.

He'd report back to Jimmy that he went, and that's what mattered on this. At least, for right now. (Though he has a feeling that Jimmy's under the impression that this is supposed to be doing more than just keeping him of Tim's back. And maybe, eventually, it would.)

Actually, no, right now what matters is a text that says, _Gibbs coming for dinner. Down to last bottle of Angry Orchard. Pick up a few six packs, two onions, and sub rolls?_

_Sure._ He texts back.

He crashed pretty hard the night before, but at one point he was vaguely aware of the sound of voices from downstairs, and in the morning, after Abby did indeed wake him up nicely, she mentioned that Gibbs had been over for dinner and that he was likely coming again tonight. Maybe the Palmers too.

_Jimmy and Breena?_

_Just Jimmy and Molly. Breena's mom's not feeling so hot, so she's running the front of the house today._

_Serious?_

_Don't think so. Breena didn't say. Post-church Sunday dinner is still on as of now._

_Okay. Back in an hour or so._

* * *

Chatting with Abby about Jeannie being sick means that it's in his mind, so as he passes the 'Flu Shots Here' sign he decides to sign up for that as well. It'd be nice not to spend a week wishing he was dead.

_You need me home soon?_ He texts to Abby.

_Nah._

_Okay, gonna get a flu shot, too._

_Good!  
_

They take his information, have him fill out some forms, and tell him it'll be a twenty minute wait.

He nods and heads off, figuring he'll wander around, get his shopping done, and that'll be that.

* * *

Somehow, between now and the last time he was at Target, all of the Halloween stuff had come out. Which is making him think it may have been a while since he last went shopping.

Oh well. He's here now.

And faced with a lot of really cute stuff.

Really cute.

Like, he'd been somewhat vaguely aware this time last year of the possibility that Halloween with a baby might be a whole lot more fun that Halloween with just grown-ups. (Or at least a very different flavor of fun. He and Abby have had some awfully good Halloweens.)

But, it's hitting him, as he's walking more and more slowly past the baby Halloween costumes, coming to a complete stop, looking at them, instead of heading to the grocery department, that, well, Kelly really needs some Halloween costumes.

Multiple ones. (After all, what tiny baby doesn't need multiple Halloween costumes?)

Because, God, they're just so damn cute.

And, before his brain even got involved in the conversation, he was holding a little green dragon (with shiny purple wings!) a tiny jack-o-lantern (God, it's so cute!), and the tiniest little black cat costume he'd ever imagined owning.

And somehow a little pair of shoes (after all, just because you can't, you know, walk, or for that matter, you spend the vast majority of your time swaddled, doesn't mean you don't need shoes, right?) tiny, tiny little shoes in black with little silver and purple bats on them, also ended up in the cart, next to the Halloween themed onesies. (Because, come on, obviously Kelly needs way more skull oriented baby gear, it's not like she doesn't have enough of that, right?)

Tim was muttering quietly to himself about how they shouldn't let him out of the house with a credit card, blaming the flu shot for him even being in this part of the Target, as he put several of the onesies back and snagged yet another tiny pair of shoes and the Halloween themed pacifiers. (After all, she's got to have the pumpkin and bat and black cat pacifiers to go with the costume, right?)

_Okay, out of here, now, before you buy the whole damn section._

* * *

Retrieving the stuff he actually went to Target to get went pretty quick, and he was in line, not really paying attention to much of anything when the idea of the dragon costume reminded him that he'd… promised… (he's not sure if he promised, he's awfully sure he mentioned it, though) Abby some sort of game tonight.

But, just because his memory of saying something to her about playing with Gabe and Skye again is kind of vague doesn't mean he didn't make that promise.

Had been an awfully long time since he's tied her or done much of anything along those lines…

He steps out of line and heads for the scarves.

Gabe's a dragon/magic user/knight sort of thing. (He's been playing with the character a bit getting more ideas of him and jotting bits down.) So… he told Abby something about Gabe being in charge tonight... That'd mean some sort of magical binding, right. So… imaginary. More just the image to keep the idea in mind than any sort of real binding.

He perused the scarves and found a few in light marbled gray. Very thin, very light, he's not loving the texture. They aren't silk, some sort of poly blend, but all he wants is something to tie to her wrists and ankles. Doesn't have to be strong, just has to suggest magic.

They'll do.

He snagged them and headed back to the line.

* * *

"Halloween's a big deal at your house, isn't it?" the cashier asks.

"Yep. Favorite holiday, and the day after's our wedding anniversary. It's a big deal."

She nods, packing up his purchases. "Hope you have a lot of fun."

"I think we will."

He was in his car before, _the day after's our wedding anniversary_ filtered through his brain enough to realize that the week before Halloween was their anniversary, the day after is their wedding anniversary, and he's got nothing planned, no presents purchased, and no good ideas for what he wants to do. And in that it's October, 3rd, he's only got twenty days to figure it out.

"Shit."

* * *

He gets home and finds Kelly and Abby on the back porch. (In the shade.) It really is a lovely day, mid-seventies, bright blue sky, leaves starting to turn color.

Kelly's getting some tummy time on her blanket, mostly doing what four month olds do, namely laying around trying to get her hands to go where she's aiming them. (Abby had set a few pacifiers in her reach, and she's sort of flailing in their general direction. Apparently picking things up is a learned skill.)

Abby was half sitting, half laying on the chaise, reading, keeping an eye on their daughter, and listening to music.

She looks up at him, smiles, sees the bags and says, "Successful shopping trip then?"

He smiles, little sheepish, little excited, and then sat next to Kelly, picking her up, and settling her in his lap, back against his tummy.

"Look, Kelly. Halloween goodies." He shows her all of her new finery, which didn't impress her much. But Abby seems to approve, she's smiling, and after a few seconds sits down next to them to get a closer look.

* * *

Late afternoon, post-lunch, pre-dinner, Kelly decided it was naptime. Abby seconded that plan, and headed up to grab a bit of a snooze as well. (This was when it occurred to Tim that if he goes heading off on an assignment Abby's on her own with Kelly all night, and while they've got a routine for that, not only did he head off on what should have been his night for getting the 1:00 feed, it's also a lot harder to relax when you're the only one on duty.)

"Sorry," he says, having gotten to that realization when Abby was three quarters of the way up the stairs, heading to nap time.

"Huh?"

"Heading off didn't work that well for you, did it?"

"It was a long night. And for some reason I don't bounce back so fast now," she says with a half-rueful smile.

"Yeah. I know that feeling. It just hit me that I should have asked—"

"You're a cop. I know you're gonna have nights where the job wins. I am, too. Don't have to ask to do your job. And I don't, either."

He nods at that.

"What if it's calling both of us?" he asks, realizing that they didn't have a back-up plan for that, yet.

"Rock, paper, scissors?"

"Hope Heather can stay late?"

"Or that Breena can take another baby for a night?"

He shakes his head at that. Breena's the absolute last person they call, at least, for the next few years. "Wouldn't want to do that. If it's that level of all hands on deck, that means Jimmy'll be working, too. Two babies under two and six months pregnant, alone?"

Abby winces at that, she knows she doesn't want to take that on if she doesn't have to. "Penny or Sarah, then."

"That works."

Kelly made an impatient noise.

"Okay, little girl." Abby pats her bum, continuing her trip up the stairs. "Let's get some sleep."

* * *

The addition of the LabRats to Abby's domain under NCIS brought about several changes, one of which was the removal of the fuzzy lambskin rugs. The weekend before Corwin, Zelaz, and Brandt joined them, Tim took them out of the closet they hid in, lugged them to the car, and back home they and the pillows went.

The futon stayed, it's good to have a place for tired people to crash, but the lambskin rugs are just for them, and the kind of thing they do on the rugs is really unlikely to happen now that three other people work in the lab.

Which means those rugs now live in the attic.

Part of the reason this house was so attractive to them was that upstairs there are four bedrooms. Obviously, one for them, and one for a child, one for guests, and one for, hopefully, another child at some point.

Right now, the room that would (hopefully) belong to another little McGee, is empty. They don't use it for storage much, because Abby's the kind of person who wants things where they belong, and temporary storage makes her itchy. So, even though it's been pointed out to her (by Tim) that this room is a more convenient place to put things than their attic or basement, stuff ends up in the attic or basement because that's going to be its final resting place.

However, as his girls are napping, and he's thinking about tonight's game, the fact that they've got this basically empty room just sitting there is seeming awfully nice.

By the time he hears Gibb's car pull up, he had the lambskin rugs on the floor, scarves tucked under the edges, waiting to be pulled out, L.E.D. candles on the window sills, and his laptop in the corner, "music" picked out.

* * *

Saturday dinner, Tim's manning the grill. Not that it's taking too much manning. This is a pretty simple dinner. Brats on the flames, onions and apples sliced thin and simmering in hard cider. Pretty much it's just a good excuse to sit on the back porch, suck up the early autumn evening, share a drink with Jethro.

He's half-way through his own cider. (Abby brought the first six-pack home last week, and he promptly decided that beer was highly overrated and hard cider was now his low-alcoholic beverage of choice.) But for the moment, he has his pressed to cheek, letting the cold numb his bruises.

"Those any good?" Gibbs asks. He's already finished his first beer.

Tim hands one to Jethro who just stares at it (hard cider with elderflower flavoring) for a second before cracking it open. He looks mildly surprised at how it tastes. "Thought it'd be sweet."

Tim shakes his head. "Nope." Has the flavors of apples and elderflowers without the sugar. He really likes it. "Good?"

Gibbs nods, looking thoughtful, taking another drink. "How's your face?"

"Healing."

Gibbs looks him over more carefully. First time they've really had any time together since before the fight. "Why'd you have Jimmy hit you?"

Tim laughs at that. Nothing gets by Gibbs. "Didn't want it to look too one-sided. No one who wasn't there needs to know how it went."

Gibbs nods. "He doesn't know?"

Tim has no trouble following that in this case he means Tony. "No idea. I don't know how he focuses when he fights. If he can remember how he hit, then he probably knows he didn't get me hard enough to do this. Hasn't said anything about it, other than I looked like shit."

Gibbs looks at Tim critically. Tim rolls up his sleeve and pulls the collar of his t-shirt wide, showing off bruises that're from Tony. "Got some on my right leg, too."

"He taking it easy on you, or getting slow?"

Tim shakes his head. "Wasn't with it enough to know. Both maybe? Jimmy saw the last minute. He might have a better idea." Tim gestures to the bruises on his face. "How do you know?"

"Jimmy's hands are a good inch narrower than Tony's."

Tim nods at that. Gibbs looks at one of the lounge chairs on the porch and then takes the tongs out of Tim's hands. So he goes and sits, relaxing.

"How's your collarbone?"

"Still sore. Aches." He looks at the bruises, and those are still black and swollen, and moves the beer to his shoulder. Though that reminds him of what else he and Gibbs were talking about besides his collar as they texted. "So, who were you chatting with?" Tim asks, wondering again why Gibbs wanted to know how to gchat.

"Rachel."

Tim raises an eyebrow, there's something edgy about how Gibbs says that. "Professional chatting with Rachel?"

Gibbs glares at him, while flipping the brats. "What else?"

"Not saying there is anything else, just asking."

"Why would you be asking?"

"All of the hairs on your body hopped up all at once when I asked and you started to growl, so I figured I hit a nerve."

The look Gibbs gives him says _lay off_ but his words say, "Been talking about Shannon, wanted to talk about this last week."

"So, just giving her a heads up?"

"Yeah."

"Nothing else?" Tim's not feeling like digging too deep, but he doesn't exactly want to lay off, either. He's not sure if Gibbs is touchy because this is counseling or touchy because it's Rachel, and he's curious.

That gets another glare.

"And how is this last week going?"

"You're covered in bruises, Tony's not coming over today because he's spending the weekend soaking in an ice bath and shooting down as many pain killers as he can take, and I told Vance yesterday that January fifteenth was definitely my last day. I'd say between the two of us, we've had better ideas and better weeks."

Tim nods at that. This week wasn't either of their crowning glories. "So, January's really it?"

"Yeah…" Jethro doesn't look at him when he says that, but Tim hears the distress in his voice.

He remembers Gibbs saying that Tony was better after the two of them talked. "And that's why Tony was better than he was?"

"Yep."

"Sorry."

He shakes his head, dismissing it. "Everything ends, right?"

"Yep."

"I had twenty-three years, that's a good long run."

"But not long enough."

"No, not long enough. It'd be… easier… if I knew what came next."

"I'd imagine. That what you're gonna talk to Rachel about?"

"Yeah, some of it at least. Last night, Abby mentioned you were gonna see Wolf today. How'd that go?"

Tim shrugged. "Like talking about yourself for an hour when you don't really want to. Let alone explain why your best friends think you need to talk to someone, with a heaping dose of having to explain where all of this is coming from. But I'm sure you know how that feels." After all, not like Gibbs went to see Rachel without an awfully hard push. "And then getting into some sensitive stuff about your relationship with one of co-worker's that you'd rather not see get put on paper because it might bite him on the ass at some point, but you can't really not talk about it and explain why it is you're sitting there covered in bruises."

Gibbs nods, getting that this is sensitive for not just Tim, but Tony, as well. "Think it helped?"

That gets a shrug, too. "Ask again when I'm pissed. Or when Tony pulls some shit on me, though… I guess right now he's probably earned a bit of it."

"He wasn't thrilled about you passing it off to Fornell without giving him a heads up. I wouldn't have gone for that, either. Wasn't your case to give away." And, as the man who was the Boss for so long, Gibbs knows Tim overstepped, badly. As a Dad, as a man who's been watching this fairly timid guy expand his goals and skills, learn to take charge of anything handed to him, and take care of it all the way through, he's proud.

And he's not sure which one of those Tim needs more right now.

But Tim half-smiles at him, seems to get both. "I know. And I know I'm not winning employee of the decade by doing stuff like that. He did seem pleased about dropping Fornell and Diane on you come Monday."

Gibbs rolls his eyes and lets that go. "You're not an employee anymore."

He shrugs. "Maybe. I'm fairly sure I'd still run major things by, say, Vance before just doing them. Maybe, I've hit the point where I'm not doing the job to make you guys happy anymore. It's more about getting it done and doing it right. It's not about the approval, especially from him."

"But it used to be?"

"I think so."

"Talking to Wolf help you figure that out?"

"Nah. When I was thinking about going completely insane on Tony and why I took it from him for so long."

That gets one of Gibbs' _I understand_ looks. "Ya still gotta work with him."

"Yep. But not for much longer. Jenner's getting really serious with IBM."

Gibbs nods, then thinks about that, thinks about several comments along those lines he's heard from Tim. "How do you know that?"

"While back I asked Leon about what sort of attacks I could do on the private computer accounts of the guys in Cybercrime. You remember that pile of paperwork everyone filled out a month ago, the new NCIS privacy standards, buried in there was permission for NCIS to raid your stuff. So… I hacked his email. I mean, I hacked or am in the process of hacking all of Cybercrime, seeing how good their personal defenses are, but I actually read some of Jenner's emails in addition to just breaking in. They're negotiating starting dates and wages now. Didn't read the details that closely, just wanted an idea of how much longer he was going to be down there."

"Oh." Gibbs was looking vaguely uncomfortable at that. Tim shrugs, he was snooping and he knew it.

They hear the sound of another car pulling into Tim's driveway, followed by the sound of doors opening and closing.

"Smells good," Jimmy says heading toward the grill from the side yard. Must have smelled the food, and headed straight to the back. Molly's riding his shoulders.

"Should be." Gibbs grabs another Angry Orchard from the cooler next to the grill, and tosses it toward Jimmy, who catches it neatly and then puts Molly down. She goes tearing off for the swing set. She's still too small to really play on it, but that has not stopped her from trying. (Tim's thinking that next spring he'll put some sort of small kid play stuff up. Should have a ton of them crawling around his backyard soon enough.)

"Where are the girls?" Jimmy asks as he leans against the deck railing and pops the top on the hard cider. (After taking a moment to read the label for the sugar content.)

"Grabbing a little shut eye right now. Abby'll be up for dinner. Kelly probably will be, too."

"You short a girl tonight?" Gibbs asks while Jimmy casts an approving eye on dinner as he takes a sip of the cider.

"Yeah, Breena's got a viewing."

"Thought her part of it was usually done by the viewing," Gibbs says.

"It is. But Jeannie's not feeling good, so either Breena takes front of the house or Ed does and…" And he doesn't need to finish that sentence, Tim and Gibbs are both well aware of how you might not want Ed Slater in charge of the grieving part of your funeral. He watches Gibbs handle the sausages, keeping them moving on the flames to prevent too much in the way of flare ups, and that got Gibbs and fire together in his head. "So, did Tim tell you about his dragons?"

Gibbs looks over at Jimmy, leaning against the porch railing where he can keep an eye on Molly easy, closes his eyes, opens them slowly, flashes his best _are you kidding me_ look at him, and Jimmy shakes his head. So he turns to Tim, who's relaxing on the chaise, and says, "Dragons?"

Tim smiles. "Dragons. Big, mean, magical warriors. Whole clan of them spread out over a few counties of some sort of ancient magical version of Ireland."

"Uh huh…" Gibbs looks… less than thrilled is probably the best way to put it. He can sense the guys are excited, but, really, dragons?

"That's the next series of books," Tim says, still grinning.

Gibbs sighs at that, and turns the sausages while saying, "Do not tell me that JL McPibbs is going to be the main dragon in this next thing."

Jimmy and Tim laugh pretty hard at that.

"Okay, I have to remember that," Tim says as he calms down. "JL McPibbs may have to be a throw away character of some sort. That's too good of a name to pass up. How about Lorcan McGee, patriarch of the McGee clan?"

Gibbs thinks about that for a moment… "I can live with that. Is Lorcan the main character?"

"This time, no."

"Your own name?" Jimmy asks.

"Not gonna write them as Tim McGee. That'd look kind of dumb."

"And when they find out your real name?" Jimmy asks.

"Come on. Ninety zillion fantasy books out there. And this is not going to be the next Game of Thrones. My mystery readers aren't going to follow me to this series. If it sells as well as most books do, about five thousand people will read it."

Jimmy keeps looking at him, _they're gonna find out,_ clear on his face.

"I'll set fire to that bridge when I come to it?"

Jimmy rolls his eyes, takes another sip of his drink, and looks away, keeping his eyes on Molly. "Got a name for me?"

"Daegan McGee? Did some googling when we were stuck in traffic on the way up to Downingtown."

"Daegan?" Jimmy's mostly just testing that name, getting a feel for it but Tim takes his question as _what does it mean_.

"Means black-haired."

Jimmy thought about that for a second, kind of liking it, and then something occurred to him, and he squints at Tim, baffled. "What color hair do you think I have?"

Tim looks at him more carefully. "It's not black?"

"Are you color blind?" Jimmy asks, Gibbs looking between them, appearing to be pretty amused by this.

"I didn't think so."

"It's dark brown."

"Huh." Tim keeps staring at Jimmy's hair. And, well, now that he's looking, yeah, it's not black at all. Dark brown, little bit of gray, less than one percent, but enough so it's visible, but mostly dark brown, some lighter brown highlights. Really, not black at all.

Jimmy's flashing his _so done with you_ back at him. "So, you're not actually getting better at naming things, you're just doing it in a different language?"

"Hey, you aren't Seamus!"

Jimmy squints at that.

"That's the Scots/Irish version of James," Tim explains. He spends another minute looking at Jimmy more carefully. "What the hell color are your eyes? Green? Brown?"

"Hazel. For a writer, you don't pay a lot of attention to detail."

"I can tell you where every mole on every visible inch of Breena, Ziva, and Abby is, and probably spend a paragraph each one their eyes, but for some reason, I haven't felt much need to pay any attention to how _you_ look."

"Good point."

"Bet you don't know what color my eyes are."

Jimmy took another drink of his cider. "Not blue, beyond that, I don't know. But I also don't write stories with you in them."

"Mine are blue. His are green. Tony's are hazel. And this is the dumbest conversation we've ever had. What's Lorcan mean?" Gibbs asks, more interested in seeing what Tim's going to do with this than he wants to admit.

"Little fierce one."

"Really?" Gibbs isn't horrified by that, but he's not loving it, either.

"Come on, you weren't an adult when you got named. If Lorcan didn't describe you as a baby, let alone as a baby dragon…"

"Okay, decent point…"

* * *

When Abby came down she did have Kelly with her, and she was in the little pumpkin costume. Jimmy looks at the two of them, smiles at Kelly, taking her from Abby and giving her a kiss and a little petting, before handing her over to Jethro, taking the tongs from him, (Unwritten but always followed rule at both the McGee and Palmer homes: the person with the baby is not the person standing over the stove/oven/grill, minding the food.) and then says, "So, which one of the two of you went insane on the Halloween costumes."

Tim raises his hand as Abby sits on his lap.

Jimmy shakes his head and smiles again.

Molly comes tearing over. "Kelly!"

Gibbs kneels on the porch so she can get a good view of her cousin. "Remember, very gentle." Molly nods seriously, and leans in to kiss Kelly. Kelly squints at her, looking confused at the noisy thing slobbering on her.

"When your baby sister comes, you're going to have to be gentle with her, too," Jethro says.

Kelly nods at that.

"But you know what?"

"What?"

"When she comes, she's gonna sleep a lot, and your mommy and daddy are going to be really tired, too, so you and me, we're gonna go out and play so everyone else can get naps. Probably take Ducky and Penny, too. That sound good?"

"Good!"

"Okay." Gibbs looks back up to Jimmy. "What's the official count now, ten more weeks?"

"December 14th, supposedly. Of course, Molly was supposed to show up February 1st, so we're not holding out a lot of hope for Anna coming before Christmas."

"What do you think, Molly, want a little baby sister for Christmas?" Abby asks.

Molly shakes her head vehemently. None of them are sure if that's yes or no, (she's shaking side to side and up and down) but they also know that both 'little sister' and 'Christmas' are really nebulous concepts for Molly, so mostly it's just about making sure she's part of the conversation.

Molly keeps looking at Kelly, and finally says, "Pumpkin?"

"Yep, it's a pumpkin costume. For Halloween. Are you and Daddy going trick or treating?"

Molly ponders Uncle Tim's question, while Jimmy nods. "Few houses around ours. Nothing big." He pokes the brats again. "These are done. We eating inside or out?"

Tim shifts Abby onto the chaise and stands up. "I'll get plates and napkins. Too nice to go in."

"There's a salad already made up in the fridge, too," she adds.

"I'll grab that, too."

* * *

Perfect evenings may be vanishingly rare. They may not even exist. But, if you were to ask him, Tim'd tell you that sitting on his back porch, as the sun slips behind the trees in his backyard, eating dinner, enjoying a very good conversation with a group of people he loves is probably about as close as a man can get.

Sure, if everyone had been there it would have been better, but this moment here, Kelly nursing, his arm around Abby, sharing a cider with her, Molly on Jimmy's lap, giving the tiny piece of bratwurst on the fork the big, hairy, eyeball, while Gibbs told them about taking his Kelly trick-or-treating the first time was awfully sweet.

But moments are just moments, and they all end.

Kelly went down for the first of her night sleeps post-nursing. And not much beyond that, Molly was starting to yawn, which meant it was time for her and Jimmy to head home.

And it's not so much that Tim wants to boot Gibbs out of their home, but he is hoping to have as much of the ten to one sleep block for playing with Abby as possible, and knows there's some pre-game prep that needs to happen that'll eat up some of this current seven to ten sleep cycle, so, as dinner's winding down, he's sending off not very subtle see-you-in-the-morning signals to Gibbs.

"Can I leave you two to clear up?" Abby asks, standing up from the table, stretching.

"Sure," Tim replies.

"Good, want to get a shower."

"We're on it." Tim says, watching Gibbs already stacking up plates. Now, normally, if say, Gibbs wasn't the third person here, he'd just sign what he wants to say to Abby, or maybe say it silently. But, of course, that doesn't work with Gibbs.

So, Tim grabs the salad bowl, follows her into the house, plunks it on the kitchen table and follows her to the bottom of the steps. As she rests her hand on the bannister, he lays his hand on hers and says very quietly, while kissing her throat (gently, his lip is still sore) just below her ear, "Get _all cleaned up_ , okay?"

She smiles brightly at that, knowing what 'all cleaned up' means. Then says, also quietly, while kissing his lips. "Yes, Lord Gabriel."

He gently pats her tush, and she heads up.

* * *

"I was thinking…" Tim says as he and Gibbs load the dishwasher.

"Yeah, I _noticed_ ," Gibbs says dryly. "I'm heading home soon."

Tim smirks and begins to scrub out the cast iron pan the apples and onions had been cooking in. "Well, yeah, thinking about that, too. _But_ I know you'd already gotten that message, so that wasn't what I was going to talk to you about."

"Okay."

"Thinking about retiring. What was Franks doing? You told me he had more irons in the fire than anyone guessed. Obviously, he wasn't just lying on the sand sucking down the cervezas. If whatever it was kept him going, maybe…"

"Maybe it'd be good enough for me?" That wasn't a bad idea. What the hell was Franks doing? 'Trust me, Probie, you're _way_ better off not knowin',' was all Franks would say about it. Gibbs knew better than to ask if it was legal, answer like that meant no, it wasn't. But it was Mike, so legal or not, it wasn't immoral.

"Or give you an idea of where to look next."

Gibbs shrugs, that wasn't an insane idea. Could talk to Amira, maybe she'd have a clue… He could head down to Mexico and have a chat with Camilla, she might be able to shed a bit of light on the story. (Or, maybe not go down to Mexico, going to Mexico might not be the best idea he's ever had.)

Could open that box, the box he'd been assuming contained every skeleton in every closet that NCIS or NIS ever built. What Franks had been doing might be in there.

Gibbs nods, not saying much, but definitely thinking.


	20. Lady McGee

After Gibbs leaves, Tim heads upstairs. Abby's still in the shower, water still on full blast, so he takes a moment to head to their toy box, snag the glass dildo she'd used last when they were playing these characters, along with the… blindfold.

It's not exactly a blindfold in the way most people mean that word. Pretty much just taking a scarf or tie or piece of fabric and tying it over someone's eyes is a really inefficient way to go about making it so they can't see.

If the fabric is narrow enough to not hide most of their face, (Which is important when it comes to sex play. It's much easier to tell if your partner likes what you're doing if you can see her face.) then it's also narrow enough to gape at the nose. He's also noticed that most fabrics don't tie well against hair. Either the hair gets caught in the knot, or the fabric slips over the hair when the person wearing the blindfold moves her head, (say if she's lying on her back and squirming, next thing you know the blindfold's round her nose or in her mouth.) and more annoying than that, a blindfold that's large enough to really block sight is a blindfold large enough to block most of the expressions on the person wearing it's face.

So, Tim doesn't much like a traditional blindfold.

But every now and again he likes to set a scene they don't happen to have on hand, and Abby being able to see where they actually are takes away from the idea of the scene he's setting.

So, about a year ago, after showing her the house for the first time, and not being very satisfied with how the blindfold he used then worked, he came across an idea, tested it out with Abby's enthusiastic cooperation, and both of them were pleased.

It's a cheap, little masquerade mask. Probably cost about three bucks. He trimmed it down a bit so it covers less of Abby's face than it would otherwise. (She never blindfolds him, he likes watching way too much for that to be fun for him.) Then he bought some soft, black felt, and lined the inside of the mask, over the eyeholes, with it.

Voila, perfect blindfold. It stays in place when she moves. Her hair doesn't get caught in it. She doesn't have an uncomfortable knot in to deal with. If the elastic ever snaps, he's got three more he can set up in a jiffy.

It's even black.

He snags it, as well as the dildo, and the lube, and heads into their extra room, making sure everything is ready to go.

* * *

He's laying on their bed, googling what sort of things Irish people wore in the 1300s, thinking about costume ideas. (Obviously not for this round, but for the story and future play. For this round, he's debating putting on a kilt or keeping on his jeans.)

Looks mostly like tunics and a cloak. No hose, so that was a plus. No kilts, a minus. Maybe it'll be magical Scotland, not like there aren't already seventy million versions of that out there…

Hell, maybe their part of the universe has denim. Yeah, they'll be cotton-baron dragons of a mythical medieval Alabama… He shakes his head and rolls his eyes. _It's fiction, and more than that, fantasy, you can set it up however you like._

The water stops running, and that pulls his attention away from costumes. A few minutes later, Abby's standing in front of the doorway, toweling off her hair.

"So, besides 'all cleaned up,' do I get any hints for tonight?"

He answers that with a question of his own. "Does Skye have a first name? Is it a title, where she's from, just something that sounds good?"

She sits on the bed and starts to smooth on her moisturizer, recognizing his lack of answer means that nope, no more hints. "Not sure. There's an Isle of Skye, right?"

"I think so. And even if there isn't one on the real world, doesn't mean there can't be one in my world."

"Good point." She thinks while he googles, then says, "Katherine. That's an old-school English name, right?"

"Think so." He looks up from his phone. "Isle of Skye. It's up in northern Scotland, just off the west coast. It's beautiful, green and craggy, no trees, or bushes, but lots of grass, rocks and sky, and water."

"So… I'm thinking Katie got bored of fish and sheep and decided to make her fortune further south."

He nods along with that and leans over to show her the picture on his phone.

"Does anyone live there?" Abby asks, the only thing that looks like human habitation on the pictures he's showing her saw its glory days in the 1500s.

"Says about nine thousand do. Apparently it's a tourist attraction." He holds out his hand. "Want me to get your back?"

"Sure." She squirts a bit of the lotion onto his palm, and he shifts to sitting behind her, rubbing it onto her skin. "Mmmm…"

"Feels good?"

"Always. Wanna go there, someday?" She continues to go through pictures of the Isle of Skye.

He shrugs. In the pictures, it's beautiful. Very green and severe, lochs and moors, sky stretching out forever, the feel of the sea even in the pictures where you can't see it. It doesn't look like anything in the United States. He would like to see it. The tenish hour flight to get there isn't rocking his world. Though commercial air travel is likely quite a bit more comfortable than the troop/equipment transports Gibbs delights in plopping them on for work.

"Find a quiet bit of grass and make love on the moors?" She turns his phone toward him, showing him a shot of very green grass broken by standing stones. Looks, honestly, kind of rough and prickly to him, but that's what picnic blankets are for.

He smiles at that. "As soon as we can drive there, I'm all for it."

She laughs. "So, you want a name. Anything else?"

He thinks as his thumbs press into her shoulders. She purrs quietly at the massage. "You've been keeping me as a pet for a few months; what kind of stuff would Gabe have learned about Skye in that time? Besides her name."

"If you'd been a pet, and really a pet, mostly how to fuck." She looks over her shoulder and grins at him.

He mock pouts. "My charms aren't enough to get you talking while drowsing post-sex?"

"You might be good in bed, but I don't think Lord Gabriel McGee of the Nightfuries is much of a spy. If you were paying attention, you might know a whole lot more about alchemy now. But, really, I think you're her boy toy, how she blows off stress at the end of the day."

He trails his fingers down the back of her neck, making the fine hairs on her skin rise. "I suppose there are a lot of ways to bring honor to the clan."

That gets a laugh. She shifts around, so she's kneeling between his legs, and gently kisses him. "How's the lip feeling?"

"It's sore." Though his tongue darts out to lick her fingertip. "This still works."

"Excellent." Her fingers trace the bruises on his face. "These?"

"Yep, sore, too."

"I know not to touch your shoulder." Her fingers go nowhere near the still black and hot bruise on his right collarbone.

"I'd appreciate that."

"Arms?"

He looks at the mottled yellow, purple, and green. As a lefty, he defends right, meaning that arm took a lot of Tony's hits. "Not too bad. Don't grab hard."

"Will I be able to grab?"

"You might be." Another smile.

"So mysterious… Legs?" He's still wearing his jeans. And while it's true that he's as likely to hit with fist or foot, Tony's a straight boxer, so his legs were fine.

"Legs and hips are fine."

"Good." She smiles while stroking his calves. "Here?" Her hands slide up the insides of his legs to rest on his crotch.

He knows she's playing. 'Wake you up nicely' meant he woke up with his dick in her mouth, so she already knows that bit of him is more than fine.

"Oh, you'll be touching there. A lot." He winks and presses his hands into hers.

Kelly's going to wake up soon, so he doesn't want to get too deep into playing, yet. Right now is just about being with each other, setting a mood, and enjoying these little, everyday intimacies. Tim takes the bottle of moisturizer, and adds another squirt to his hand, then taps the back of his knuckles lightly against her knee. She changes position again, her leg over his, and he strokes the lotion over her right leg as she did her left.

"This stuff new?" he asks, hands smoothing up her leg. "Smells different."

"Yep. You like it?"

"Not sure. It's not bad. Just not that 'you' scent."

"Turns out my last brand started testing on animals so they could sell their stuff in China, so I ditched them."

He nods at that, rubbing her thigh gently, making sure all the lotion absorbs evenly. She let him keep it up for a minute or two longer than necessary, then takes his hand away from her leg and kisses it. "Don't want to get me too revved up before I've got to feed Kelly."

"Good point." He glances at the clock. Any minute now, Kelly would wake up, and once she'd eaten they could get to really playing.

Abby stands up, slipping on one of her nursing bras. "So, costume for this?"

"Hmmm…" He ponders happily. "Were you planning on putting anything else on?"

"Robe or button down. Little too cool for naked."

"Go for the robe then."

She nods, reaching for it, and as she did, they heard the first tiny wail of their daughter looking for second dinner. Abby checks the clock. "That's the fourth night in a row that she's hit 10:04. How can she possibly be that accurate?"

He shrugs.

"Back in a bit."

He grins. "See you then, Lady Skye."

* * *

Second dinner usually clocks in at half an hour. He uses that half hour to make sure he's got his scene set. Everything looks in place. He's standing in the spare room, checking around, thinking about his own costume.

_Jeans or kilt…_

_You're a captive sex slave breaking free. Did she let you have clothing? You didn't in the first game. The keep's fallen, everything is in chaos, you're breaking out and snagging her to go with you. Did you go hunting for clothing before grabbing her or are you just grabbing her and leaving?_ He tosses off his jeans. _No way you'd take the time to go scrounge up some pants. You're grabbing her before someone else does, and getting the hell out of there._

He's naked; the room's set. Time to get in place for her. He picks up the blindfold.

Kelly's room will be dim. The night light gives just enough illumination to make sure all poop comes off during the pre-feed diaper change, and that's it. He flicks on the hall light, opens the bathroom door, turns on that light as well. He wants it bright out here, so for a few seconds she won't be able to see much.

He waits, standing, pressed against the wall, right next to Kelly's door. If this goes the way he hopes it does, she'll shut the door, he'll leap over, snag her, get the blindfold on, hoist her over his shoulder, and into the not so empty, empty room they'll go.

That's the plan at least.

* * *

He can hear her humming, the slight click of the rocking chair settling back into place as she gets up. "Sleep well, baby girl."

One step, two, three, her hand hits the doorknob.

She opens the door, blinking hard at the bright light, and he pulls her to him, fast, his hand over her mouth. "Quiet."

Abby nods.

"Your keep's fallen. Time to get you out of here, Lady Skye."

"Before I'm taken as a prize?" she whispers.

"Before you're taken as _someone else's_ prize."

"And how do you suggest we get out? You're clearly wounded, unarmed, and naked."

"I fought my way to you like this, and I'll get us out." He flashes her a cocky smile. Tim slips the blindfold over her eyes, hoists her over his left shoulder, and murmuring something he hopes sounds vaguely magick-y, he carries her into the spare room.

He'd set the room carefully. A few of the LED candles are glowing, providing him with enough light to see. He'd turned the "music" on while Abby nursed; it's the sound of waves and wind. Turning the ceiling fan on means they have a bit of a breeze. Dragging the humidifier up from the basement and running it while she was nursing means the room is slightly damp.

It feels and sounds, he hopes, a lot like they are on the ocean.

He puts her down, gently, on the fuzzy rugs. "I wouldn't stray far, Lady Skye, the water's rough, and twenty feet below us."

"I'm a good swimmer," she says, still sitting, reaching around her, feeling what's near.

"Make sure you jump far then, the rocks below us are rougher, yet."

"And will I get my vision back?"

"Eventually. You don't need it right now."

"Why? Keeping me from running off?"

"Something like that," he says as she feels around, finding the edges of the rug. "The cliff we're on only extends a few feet beyond the rugs."

"How did we get here?"

"Magic."

She stops feeling around and looks at him, exasperation on her face. "This whole time, you've been able to just leave whenever you wanted?"

"Yes." He kneels, straddling her legs, and gently strokes her lips with his fingers. "But being your amusement of choice made for a very pleasant situation. Didn't feel any need to leave until I could let my men know where I was."

She nods, starting to put the pieces together. "And did my keep fall to your men?"

"Yes. Daegan has it now. If it's any consolation, I'm sure you'll get back to it."

"You're just going to let me go?"

"That wasn't how I was envisioning this working." He sits back on his heels, next to her, slipping one of the scarves out from under the rugs, looping it over her big toe, crossing it over and over her foot, and tying it gently at her ankle. He kisses the knot and once again said something low and nonsense, magic words to work the spell. "On the off chance you can't actually swim, this will make sure you don't fall."

"And how did you envision this working?" she asks, foot still between his hands, her hands braced against the rugs, leaning back against them, robe slipping off her left shoulder.

"Did you know I have six brothers?"

"You hadn't mentioned that."

He shrugs, gently stroking her ankle, tips of his fingers skittering between the lines of the scarf. "Well, we didn't do a lot of talking. They're envious of my position as firstborn and covetous of my lands. I would find it… convenient… to have a well-fortified keep they didn't grow up in, finding all the nooks and hidden passages. A keep staffed with men who aren't loyal to my family might be nice, too. Likewise, that keep of yours is on prime land, and it's much easier to defend lands when the people attacking them do not know every river and glen."

"Uh huh." She doesn't look particularly impressed by that, understanding where he's going with this. She changes the subject. "What is this place?"

"Mine. This is my one holding that I do not have to defend from them. They see no use to it. First of seven boys, only one with a lick of magic to him. For them, this is just a cold lump of rock in the middle of the ocean. But for me… All magic is sea, sky, earth, and fire, and here, we sit on earth that was once fire, that burned until it hit the sea, cooled, became this shelf of rock, here sea beats below us, and sky dances above. Here we are fire made earth, held between sea and sky. Here is perfect."

Abby moves the edge of the rug and touches the carpet below, as if to touch the rock. "Poetic. This is your power source?"

"One of them. But, yes, this is an especially fine node. Easy to pull off of, easy to work with. I'm not, by a long margin, the first mage called to this rock, and I won't be the last. But while my heart beats, it's mine."

"Why bring me here?"

He smiles, but she can't see that. So he reaches for her hand, and places it on his chest, over his heart. Her other hand lay on the carpet below the rugs, touching what would have been bare rock. "Bringing my heart to my heart."

She tilts her head, teasing, emotional armor in place, but her voice is soft as she asks, "Are you really that fond of me, Dragon Knight?"

"I think I could become so, and I'd like that chance. I am that fond of your lands, and it's an awfully nice keep, very comfortable, hot and cold running sex available at all hours. I like it there." He smiles brightly, keeping the lightness in his voice, so she can hear it.

She smirks at that, starting to tug her hand away, but he holds her wrist firm over his heart.

"Do you think I'm that fond of you?" she asks him.

He keeps hold of her hand, lifting her wrist to his lips, kissing gently, and then biting softly, scraping his teeth over the sensitive skin where her pulse thrums. He smiles at her again. "We'll find out."

"You'll try."

"Unlike you, Lady Skye, I've got more than thick walls to keep a person near." Abby looks too amused to be properly Lady Skye, but, lack of proper indignation aside, he's very pleased to see Abby's having a good time with this. He kisses her wrist again, then licks gently up the inside of her forearm, speaking against her skin, letting the breath of his words tickle damp flesh.

"I bind you, Katie of Skye," her eyes go wide as he says that. Apparently that isn't what Abby or Skye expected him to do.

"I bind your flesh to mine." He snags another of the scarves, one that already had a small loop tied into the end, slipping it over her first finger.

"I bind you Katie of Skye, here, where earth meets air." He wraps the scarf over her hand and wrist, looping it further up her arm as his lips slip over each new word.

"I bind you, here, where sea kisses earth." He kisses the crook of her elbow with that.

"I bind you, here, where fire met water.

"I bind you, here, in the shadow of where fire leaps to air.

"I bind you, here, my woman" a kiss to her wrist, "to my magic" a kiss to her palm, "to my name." One last kiss to her lips.

He finishes tying the knot onto her arm, and then shifts his hold to her other arm, where the knot tattoo is. "I bind you, Katie of Skye, brand you with my mark, take you as my woman.

"I bind you, Katie McGee, from this day 'til our spirits return to the heavens that gave us birth.

"I bind you."

Abby's grinning widely at that, and he has no problem feeling her break character as she says, "I like that."

"Really?" That was quite a bit more one-sided than he's ever taken his playing before. After all, Skye, in character, probably wouldn't have been thrilled with the whole magically overpowered, taken captive, and married by force thing. And though he liked saying it, was in it, with the character in the moment, there is a part of him feeling a bit wary going that far. He thinks she knew he'd need a bit more reassurance to take this that far, and he appreciates getting it.

"Oh yeah!" She's nodding at him. "I think most girls like the idea of being swooped up, taken, and claimed, by the right guy. You know, as a game… Different if it's real. But, sometimes it's nice to be reminded of exactly how much bigger and stronger you are. Sometimes, it's fun to be… swept off your feet, literally."

He slips off her blindfold, (he doesn't like having a real conversation when he can't see Abby's eyes) and she quickly looks around, appreciating what he's done to set this.

"Nice."

"Thanks."

"Why are there two kitchen chairs up here?" There's a chair on either side of the rugs.

He smiles happily at her, naughty gleam in his eyes. "That binding might get a whole lot more literal. Just don't tug hard; they won't hold for much."

She's still grinning at this, and looks him in the eye and says, "Sometimes, an edge of danger is fun. Sometimes, the safeword isn't just about making sure you've got a way out, sometimes it's about allowing the illusion of lack of consent…"

That's way further than they've ever taken his Doming. He knows he's not comfortable going that far. She's never said no in a game, but he's sure, even though that's not her safeword, that it'll stop him dead.

Edge of danger, bigger, and stronger, and just taking what you want… That's also a different flavor than how they usually play. Even when he is in charge, he'll tell her what he wants, have her do it for him, but she always has the control of not following orders. He's never just _taken_ what he wants. There's a huge chasm between saying, 'Pull it out and suck' and actually grabbing a woman by the head and forcing her to do it.

He's looking at her, not quite sure how to even put what's bouncing around in his mind into words, but she's nodding at him, reassuring.

"Play with me. Trust me, I'll like it. And Skye's not from around now, she's used to a world where men decide what they want and then grab it."

"But, does she like it?"

"She does if the right guy's doing it."

"Is Gabe the right guy?"

"I have a feeling that's the main plot of book one."

"You think there's more than one book here?"

"Oh yes." She grins up at him, kisses just below his chin, where his skin is unbruised, and then slips the blindfold back over her eyes.

Tim takes a moment to shift the storyline in his head a bit, embracing a more 'taking' less 'telling' perspective. Then says, "It's not nice to tease a man."

He leans over her, snagging another scarf, whispering in her ear, "Not nice to show him something he wants, day after day, letting him see, but not touch." He bites her earlobe, and then ties her right wrist (loosely) to the leg of the chair.

"And what, poor little Knight, did you want so badly that you couldn't have?" She tugs the binding as a token complaint against being tied, but Abby's being careful not to yank too hard.

His hands stroke over her hips, unknotting the tie on her robe, pushing it off her body and up and over her arm, so it pools in a soft silk puddle up by her right hand.

"Hands and knees, Lady McGee, on your hands and knees."

Abby's wriggling in a very pleased sort of way. Completely out of character for Skye, but well, he's a guy, and an ass guy at that, and her wriggling a soft, plump ass at him in a very _come and get it_ manner hits him all sorts of all right.

He quickly ties her left ankle to the other chair, spreading her legs apart, and lays a line of kisses down her spine, then settles, kneeling between her legs, looking.

"Best view in the world," he says, hands cupping her rear, stroking gently over her skin, staying to the sides, nearer her hips than her pussy.

"Not my face?" she asks, back into Skye, looking (well, not looking, she's got the blindfold on, but turning her face to him) over her shoulder.

He pats her cheek gently. "Get to see your pretty face all the time. This treasure's usually hiding under your skirts. Shame to see it covered." He gently licks the base of her cross tattoo. "Maybe I'll do that… Take you to my home, keep you bent over all day and night, on display for my pleasure? You kept me ninety-seven days. Shall I keep you bent over for me ninety-seven days?"

"Open to your every whim?"

He growls gently at that. Many, many whims flashing through his mind. "You're teasing again."

"Maybe I like teasing. Besides, what sort of teasing is this? 'Get to see but didn't touch.' You touched me all over."

"No, Lady McGee, I didn't. You let me touch here." His hands slid down her hips and legs. "And here" he drags them up the backs of her legs, over her ass, and up her back. "Of course here." He cups her breasts gently. "And here." His fingers trail down her throat and over her arms.

He kisses her pussy lightly, just brushing his lips against hers. "Loved touching there." He slips his tongue between her lips, lapping gently at her, taking the time to savor her taste and tease her clit, working her until she's rocking against him, soft, breathy moans matching the cadence of the waves in the recording. When he felt her start to tighten, when her voice got higher and her legs began to just barely quiver, he slid further up, over her perineum, and an inch further, circling her anus then lightly flicking his tongue against it.

She jerks at that touch, gasping, sounding surprised, drawing in a little, and he's sure that's her being Skye, because he knows Abby likes that just fine and having been told to get all clean, was certainly expecting something like that to happen.

"But you didn't let me touch here." He licks his finger, making sure it's wet and slick, and then slides it over her, circling the delicate skin. "You teased, and you let me imagine, you told me how good it'd be, let me see," he grabs the glass dildo and trails it over her, "that, but you didn't let me touch." He bites the curve of her buttock, where it met her thigh, while continuing to circle her with his finger.

"No more teasing, Lady McGee, time to deliver on your promises."

She inhales fast and hard, shifting away from him as much as she can without pulling too far on the ties and tipping over the chairs.

He strokes the dildo up the insides of her legs, teasing closer and closer toward her pussy, but not touching. "No sarcastic quip for me? No more teasing?"

She shakes her head. "Not about that."

He licks gently over her, tongue trailing in a wet, silky promise. She tightens against him, squirms, partially pulling away, partially pushing back, getting more friction, and sighs. He licks again, and again, nothing demanding, no penetration, just kissing her properly, making sure everything was warm and wet, quivering in anticipation. When he pulls back he says, "Do you not like it?"

"I like what you're doing. I've… never…" She blushes prettily, and Tim's not sure if Abby's so into Skye right now she can't find the edges between them, or she's just that good of an actress. Either way, he's really liking it.

"Never?" That got another long, wet lick, and this time he points his tongue, very gently starting to press forward, wriggling against her. When she presses back against him, he stops. "Tease me like that, and you've never…"

"No."

He bites her gently again, growling, feeling a surge of lust-filled possessiveness through him. "Nothing a man likes better than virgin territory."

"That's what I'm afraid of," she says very quietly.

"Afraid I'd like it?" he asks, gently, concerned.

"Afraid of being marked by you."

That got a smirk, and another kiss, his fingers dancing over the lip print on her throat and the cuff tattoo on her arm. "Little late for that, Lady _McGee._ You're mine. Body, lands, soul. Mine." He leans up, so that his chest covers her back and his lips are near her ear. "See me." He whispers against her ear, and slips the blindfold off. She turns her face to him, and he kisses her lips. "I want you to see me do it. I want you to know it's my body. No closing your eyes, no pretending. My body, in yours. My cock, making you come."

"You're awfully sure about that."

"Ninety-seven days. That's how long you held me. Eighty-nine of them you came to me. Came for my tongue, my cock, my fingers, my body. You slept in my arms and screamed my name. I know you had other men you kept as toys, but you came back, over and over, for me."

"Maybe they were just lame fucks," she says with a smile, seeming more in control.

"Maybe. But you know I'm not." He unbinds her hand and ankle. "When I sink into you, I want you to see it. I want you watching. First man to take your ass'll be me, and I want to make sure you know it." He picks her up again and carries her into their bedroom, dropping her on the bed and quickly adjusting the mirrors in their room.

A second later, he's back again, this time with the dildo and lube. He takes a few seconds to rearrange the pillows, wants something to help keep him easily propped up, then he reclines against them, shoulders and chest off the bed, rest of him lying down.

"Hands and knees again. Over me. Want you sucking me while I play with you."

Abby nods, settling into place over him. He scoots them (and the pillows) over a few inches. "Can you see everything?"

"Yes." It's not an easy angle to get a good view of, but lots of mirrors means he can bounce the view off of one to another, so she can see him as he touches her.

"Good." He licks her slow and steady. Then notices she's not doing much licking of her own, and pushes his cock toward her lips. A second later, when she sucks him in in one long pull, he groans. "Perfect, just like that. Keep me happy, while I get you ready."

One last lick, wet and slick and lavish, lingering on her skin, making her arch against him, he'd probably like to do more, but once penetration gets involved he stops being able to kiss the rest of her, and he's got a damn good way of helping distract from the uncomfortable part of stretching out, one he needs a clean tongue for.

He reaches around, finding the lube by feel, and tossing it to her. "Slick up my fingers."

She does, using lots of lube. This is one time when extra friction isn't a good thing. He pulls her hips a bit higher up, begins to stroke her clit with his tongue, while his fingers begin to gently massage around her anus. He takes his time, slow, easy, lots of long strokes with the pads of his fingers to relax the muscles, help get everything loose and happy.

She's rocking against him, humming blissfully against his dick, mouth wet and supple on him, making it difficult to concentrate on what he's supposed to be doing, but it's the best kind of distraction.

He starts to ease his first finger in, slow, steady pressure, while he sucks on her clit, flicking it with his tongue. She's moaning against him, thrilling him with the sounds of her pleasure and the feel of it on his dick.

Once his finger's sunk in he pulls back for a second to say, "God, that's beautiful. So, hot and tight. Still watching?"

He feels her nod and starts on finger two. Slow, gentle pressure, easy stretching, making sure her body has time to adjust. Making sure to keep her just on the edge of getting off as he adds each new finger. He's reading her responses carefully, feeling the building tension in her body, the almost-there clench of her ass around his two fingers as his tongue speeds up, getting her closer and closer. He wants to feel her twitching around him as he slips the third finger in, wants to hear her coming on him.

It's there, that breathy, gasping, high-pitched moan that lets him know it's time. He speeds his tongue and slips the third finger in, fast, knowing by that point she's so turned on the burn'll feel good. And it does, or seems to, at least, her legs twitch and her body spasms around him as the third finger slides home.

He waits until she's not twitching anymore, until her breathing calms back down. She's resting against him, not sucking anymore, just lightly licking his thigh. "Still think my confidence is unfounded."

"No."

He wriggles his fingers. "Still feel good?"

"Yes."

He starts to pump them in and out, slowly. She moans again. He rises his hips toward her again. "That wasn't nearly muffled enough."

She giggles and takes him back into her mouth. He moans, then goes back to licking her, rolling her clit with his tongue in fast circles as his finger set a slow steady glide. When her mouth work starts to get sloppy, when she lets him slip out and doesn't seem to be paying much attention at all to his dick, that's his cue to move from fingers to the dildo.

He was about to press the dildo in when an idea occurs to him. An idea they haven't played with before. He's not even entirely sure how the mechanics of it would work, but he reaches back, just able to get the drawer on the nightstand open, grabs one of the condoms, and quickly covers the dildo.

Abby had been watching and is looking at him curiously. They're the only ones that use their toys, not like they need extra protection. He adds more lube to the condom and then pushes forward with one long, smooth thrust, watching her shudder and moan.

"Like it?"

"Yeah."

"How's it feel?"

"Full—" he slides it out a little and she moans again. "Hard. Unh… Slick…" She rocks back onto it, groaning again, head dropping to his thigh.

He pulls her head up by her hair. (Gently, mostly just nudging her up.) "Keep watching. Want you to see every second of this."

He bends low, licking her clit while sliding the dildo in and out, listening to each hitched breath and half moaned sigh. Again he licked until her body was tight, quivering on the edge of climax, and again he stopped.

"Fuck you, Gabe, do not leave me like this," she spit at him as he pulls back, lips, chin, and neck shiny with her juices.

"Patience, Katie. I've always gotten you there before. Tonight's not gonna be any different, love."

"Damn well better."

"Up, off of me." He sits back on the bed, still making sure the mirrors are keeping everything in easy view. He takes her hands and gets her straddling him, so she was over his cock, facing the mirrors, then holds her hips so she couldn't sink down. "Stay. Watch." He coats his cock with lube, generously, pumping his shaft with his hands as her eyes follow every motion.

Then with slick fingers, he got a hold of the dildo, slid it out, stripping off the condom, and pulled her onto him, sinking balls deep into her pussy, hissing at the feel of it. "Fuck, Katie, you feel so good." He rocks into her, feeling her rise and fall against him, and then on yet another upstroke he stopped her, pulled out, and shifted his dick back.

"Watch. Watch my cock slip into you. Watch me fuck that glorious tight little ass of yours."

She slowly lowers herself, and they both watch her body spread around him, watch as his slick flesh was enveloped by hers.

Her eyes grow heavy, and he knows they usually close when she's feeling intense pleasure. "Keep them open, Abby, want you to see me fuck you."

"Yes" slurs into a deep groan as she settles onto him.

He's kissing her shoulder and neck, reveling in the soft, tight, hot, so incredibly hot, feel of her body on his.

"Want you to touch yourself. No getting off until I say you can, but I want to see your fingers on your clit."

"Yes." She does, circling slowly, and he feels her muscles tighten against him.

His teeth worry her shoulder, nipping along the skin, as he rocks gently in and out. Can't move too much, but right now he's just adding a little friction, enjoying how this feels, her body so tight and slippery on his.

Finally he remembers he's still got the dildo in hand, and why he put a condom on it in the first place.

"Suck it. Get it good and wet." Not that it really needs it. She's so wet there's a puddle on the bed under them, but he likes to watch. And like always her perfect mouth wrapping around something dick shaped and slurping ramps him up a few more notches.

She stops licking, eyes glinting at him, knowing where this is going to go.

"Never tried this before."

"Didn't think you had. Okay?" They're both fully out of character, but it doesn't matter.

"Oh yeah. Go slow."

"I will. Keep rubbing yourself. Want you so close you're begging for it." He licks her earlobe as he says, "But no coming. Not until I say you can."

Her fingers speed up, faster pace, not flying over her skin, but moving quickly, firmly. He keeps rocking against her, building up his own speed, and then begins to rub the head of the dildo against her. Not slipping in, not yet. Just playing it over her lips, nudging between them, letting her use the head like a finger, rubbing it over her clit, then sliding back again to trail lightly over her pussy lips.

She starts rising and falling on him, fingers moving a bit faster, and she might not be begging for it, but he knows he's not going to be able to hold on all the much longer, so Abby flushed red and whimpering is close enough. He shifts his hold on the dildo, moving it a fraction of an inch, gently parting her lips with it, and holding it in place, letting her sink down on it.

She does, slowly, hissing, body tight, low, deep groan echoing from her lips. "Oh God!"

He agrees with that. 'Oh God!' is right. It feels amazing. He didn't think it'd feel that different to him, but it's more pressure, more tight, more everything, and he really likes it.

He stops rocking, knowing he can keep his hands moving or his hips, but not both, not this far gone. Abby's slipping up and down on him, fast, blowing his mind. He starts to ease the dildo up and down, different speed than her hips, and that… that's her cursing with every breath, a long half-gasped litany of delicious profanity, and him… he's got no idea, he knows he's making noise because _that,_ up-down, her body at one speed and the dildo at another, and he can feel it sliding up and down against him, but not exactly, because he's feeling it through her. It's like her, all around, but her more, where the ridge of glass pushes into her, and it's pressure and tight and friction and everything moving at once and just, _holy fucking mother of god_ gold-red-white pulsing, burning, tingling pleasure through his whole body, every nerve sizzling with it, shouting, probably as loud as he can, her body clenching and spasming and rippling and everything wet and limp and lightly twitching, collapsed on each other, so high neither of them is in any danger of coming down anytime soon.

_Waaaa…_

Or, coming down right now. _Waaaa…_ Crying baby is the proverbial wet blanket tossed on a good post orgasmic glow.

Abby's not moving at all. Tim really doesn't want to move, either. Really. Every limb of his body feels like it's made of gently twitching, very happy, cement. But not only is it his night, he also missed the last two, so really, he needs to get up and get Kelly back down again. He inches away from Abby, very much regretting not getting to nestle in close and let his body calm back down, basking in the tight gentle heat of hers as he went soft.

He's quietly muttering to himself about Kelly picking an extraordinarily inconvenient time to stop sleeping through everything, as he wipes up a bit, when he notices the clock, 1:04. Or she's just woken up at her usual time, and they played a bit too long.

He stumbles into her room. "I'm here."

The appearance of a parent (late) but no food produces what could best be called an irate look. But in a few minutes, when she's cleaned up, laying against his chest, slurping away on her bottle, she's mollified. And, by the time she's mollified, Abby's gotten cleaned up, too, and come in, sitting on the floor, head on his knee, dozing against him.

Eventually Kelly finishes eating. Eventually they go back to bed. And eventually he curls up behind her, lip pressed (very gently) to her shoulder, inhaling the post-sex scent of her skin, and falls into a deep, content sleep.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who are curious, I have started writing the adventures of Gabe and Skye. (I'm actually fantasy author, even got some titles on Amazon.) Not sure if they'll be a series of short stories, or a full novel, or full on epic, but as I get 'em together they'll end up on my blog, and eventually, once properly edited, Amazon.


	21. A New Path

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick reminder Anonymous Was A Woman happened after Shards went off the cannon. More at the end.

* * *

Gibbs thought about it the whole ride home, what had Franks been up to?

Whatever it was, he wasn't doing it when Gibbs stayed with him that one summer. Or, if he was doing it, whatever it was didn't involve doing anything for four months at a time.

But Gibbs didn't think he was doing, whatever it was, back then.

But the last few years… especially after the Doc said it was cancer… he was doing something. Wouldn't say what. And, thinking about it, Gibbs doesn't know why he thought Franks was up to something. There were no obvious tells. Mike wasn't asking him for favors or anything. But… there was something.

He knew it in his gut.

Or maybe he just knew Mike so well that he knew there had to be more to it than laying on the beach drunk all day long. Even Mike couldn't do that for a decade at a time.

So, what was he doing?

* * *

The box. (technically, boxes) Gibbs had had it for years. All of Franks' "insurance policies." Everything he ever knew about anyone that he could use for leverage.

Gibbs built the false wall behind his bookshelf, stuck the collection of stuff Franks had given him in it, and left it there. And though he added to it as Mike gave him more and more stuff, he never opened any of it.

Because, unlike Franks, he was never so much of a loose cannon that he needed to blackmail people into letting him keep doing the job. Never bent the rules so far that he'd have to keep a loaded gun to make sure that no one would smack him for it.

Well, that's not true.

Unlike Mike, he never felt like he deserved to wiggle out of getting smacked for the rules he'd bent or broken.

So, there was a sense of… trepidation as he opened the box. A sense of peeking behind curtains he never meant to touch.

On the upside, if it can be called an upside, by now most of the things he was looking at were moot. The cases were over, the people involved dead. The entire first box was filled with dead men on dead cases. Things that happened not just before his time, but in several cases, ended before his time as well.

The second box caught up to when he began at NIS. Not exactly current events, but at people he knew, cases he heard of, some he'd been on as a Probie. He refused to look into the file marked "Leon Vance," though he found the quote marks around Leon's name ominous.

And, it was true that he felt dirty by reading through them. These weren't just the skeletons in the closets; these files told the tales of the monsters that put those skeletons there. All 'greater good' arguments aside, there was some awfully shoddy work in these files and a boat load of men who deserved to sleep poorly because of it.

Worse than that, there were signs that the people he knew, respected, men who helped him to anchor himself when he was lost after Shannon and Kelly, were full of shit when it came to doing the job and doing it right.

That was probably part of not opening Leon's file. He doesn't want to know if Leon's full of shit, too. Doesn't want to know how many bodies Leon had to bury to get to where he is.

But for most of these files, and the men represented by them, they've passed to eternal sleep. And for almost all of the others, retirement has come and taken them off every case, forever.

Gibbs burnt the dead files without thinking twice. Nothing left to do with them. The ones where any of the agents were still alive, he kept, one day those cases may open again.

He looked at Leon's one last time, and tossed it on the fire, as well. Whatever was in there, he didn't need to know. Whoever Leon was, the man he is now will own up and act right if it ever comes back at him. Gibbs trusted that. Gibbs needed to trust that.

In the last box, the one Franks gave him right before he died, there are clues to something different. There are files on Coast Guard employees, on Federales and Mounties, on members of the TSA and the FAA, ICE, there are a bunch from the Border patrol, both on the Mexican and Canadian sides, there are files on high ranking officials at the Miami, Los Angeles, Philadelphia airports, and there are dossiers on people in different US Embassies.

These were all, as much as they can be, Frank's has been dead since '11, up to date. These were recent files on men still doing the job. These were also, unlike the others, which were mostly case files highlighting shoddy or flat out illegal work, straight up blackmail, lists of mistresses, gambling debts, embarrassing past activities, that sort of thing.

They're clues, but beyond the fact that everyone Franks had a file on was involved in some sort of travel or border thing… Gibbs wasn't seeing it.

"God, Mike, what the hell were you doing?"

He looked at the files in front of him again. FAA, Coast Guard, TSA, Border Patrol, ICE, airport officials…

"Smuggling?"

He looks around for a moment, willing Mike's ghost to pop up and tell him, but he doesn't. The Embassies are all in the middle east… Opium? If it meant making sure that Leyla and Amira never wanted for anything… If the payout was big, and he was dying already… Yeah, he'd do it in a heartbeat.

"Mike…"

_Not drugs. Keep thinkin', Probie, you'll figure it out._

He doesn't see Mike, but the voice is clear.

"Thinking about what?"

_Left you all the clues you need. Practically spelled it out. Just keep thinkin', you'll get there._

* * *

Thinking about it through church didn't help. The only answer he can think of, drugs, doesn't make any sense.

Actually, no, it makes perfect sense.

He can see what Mike's got set up is some sort of smuggling ring. With Mike's background in law enforcement and the military he'd have had good connections for drugs or guns.

But… he wouldn't leave that lying around for Gibbs. Mike knew there was no way he'd touch anything like that, and Mike wouldn't have given him all of this if he didn't expect him to eventually pick it up and use it.

So, it can't be drugs. Just. No. Never. Wouldn't matter how bad off their family was, how much they were hurting for cash. He'd hire out for wet work before running drugs.

Guns… Not like he couldn't think of people he wouldn't mind getting their hands on some good weapons. He was sure Franks felt the same way… (Though, given what he can see, this looked like Mike was moving something into the USA, and Gibbs really hoped he wasn't arming groups inside the US.) But… TSA? Airport officials? Immigration? Passport officials at different consulates? Guns are big, heavy, take up a lot of space. That's not who you call in for running guns.

It's who you call in to get a cover ID for someone who was running drugs…

Sort of… But… No, there isn't a document guy in the list of files Mike had. There's a list of people who you ask to turn a blind eye. Some you might ask for help. But you don't go to the US Consulate and bribe the Ambassador in an effort to get fake papers. You do that to get real ones, in a hurry.

He was distracted at Sunday dinner, still thinking through the problem, wondering. That got some minor ribbing from various Slaters, but in that he wasn't paying attention, it didn't much matter.

He's tempted to skip Bootcamp. He knows Tim's not fighting, and he can't, either, not really, and with just Ziva and Jimmy there, they might decide he needs to do some of that god-awful stretching stuff they're so fond of in an effort to get his knee back to functional.

The PT guy already has him doing a shit ton of it, and he hates it because it hurts like a son of a bitch and doesn't seem to be helping much. And with only Jimmy and Ziva able to fight, they'll probably do a few rounds and then make him stretch with them while Jimmy explains, at length, about how all of him needs to be loose and supple if he's going to really get back to fighting prime. (Sometimes having a doctor for one of your kids is highly overrated.) Then Ziva will explain how this sort of conditioning was part of her training and how it helps with fine muscle control or some other thing… (Mossad-trained former assassin isn't necessarily much better.) And… next thing he knows, they're trying to see if they can turn him into a pretzel while his hamstrings and low back scream in pain because there are some positions that guys in their fifties just shouldn't try to get into.

Ed Slater sidling over, looking at Tim, and saying, "So, really, what happened to him?" (Official story was that it's classified.) pulled him back to the real world.

"Can't tell you." Gibbs said, remembering that stretching may hurt like hell, but it was a good excuse to head off before everyone settled in to watch the game (National V. Yankees) and he ended up committed to being here for the rest of the night.

"The tech guy gets into fist fights?"

He stared at Ed, perplexed that they're still having a version of this conversation. "Tim's a field agent. He doesn't spend his days glued to a desk. His job is just as dangerous as mine."

Ed shook his head.

"What?"

"Just, hard to believe."

"Other men have thought that, too. They're dead."

That got a quick, shocked laugh out of Ed. "How about the guy who did that to him? He dead?"

"Like he's been saying, classified."

Ed nodded and glanced at the clock. "You and Jimmy heading off?"

Gibbs responded with a nod as well. Time to go.

* * *

"You're being awfully quiet," Jimmy said to him as they headed toward the Navy Yard.

Gibbs shrugged, putting his key into the ignition.

"Even for you, you're being quiet, what's up?"

Gibbs turned off the radio and told Jimmy about Tim's suggestion, and what he'd found, what he was puzzling over. He didn't tell him about the other part that was also keeping him quiet. Namely, that Ed's 'how about the guy who did that to him?' question got him thinking about Tony.

Who, of everyone he knew, could look through Franks' papers and help him figure it out.

But he didn't much want to talk to Tony right now.

He was sulking. He knew he was sulking. It was not Tony's fault that he was getting old. Not Tony's fault that he'll take over when Gibbs leaves. And it was not Tony's fault that he was not doing a good job of gracefully slipping into whatever comes next and handing the reins over.

None of that was Tony's fault.

But that didn't mean he wanted to spend an afternoon or two sitting in his living room, next to Tony, drinking a few beers, looking over a bunch of files.

That wasn't right. He wanted to get back to being the guy who enjoyed that. He needed his second-in-command's eyes on this. He wanted to bounce ideas off of Tony.

But right now, bouncing ideas off Tony meant looking the fact that he had to leave right in the face, and he didn't want to do that.

"Gibbs?"

He raised one eyebrow, he'd just sort of stopped talking, thinking about Tony and keeping his eyes on the road.

"Mouth open, words coming out," Jimmy said, while making a little talking gesture with his fingers. "I'm not psychic. I'm not the one who's good with non-verbal communication. I'm the one who spends nine hours a day with a guy who talks constantly. So, I need words, out loud, coming from you."

"Not much more to tell."

"Okay, let me remind you of this, in addition to not being psychic, I'm also not stupid."

Gibbs looked irked by that, turning his gaze from traffic to Jimmy. "You were a lot easier when I had you scared into submission."

Jimmy smiled grimly. "Would you like me to shut up and let you stew?"

"If I say yes, will you?"

He shook his head, no. "It's extremely unlikely."

Gibbs rolled his eyes and added in what he'd been thinking about Tony. Jimmy nodded at that, thinking quietly, a few miles down the road he said, "This time last week, you'd have worked out with us, gone home, given Tony and Ziva a call, tossed some steaks on the fireplace, and the three of you would have gone over it?"

"Yeah."

"So, this week, work out with us, get your shower, pick up some steaks on the way home, and then give Tony and Ziva a call."

Gibbs flashed Jimmy something that could only be called 'the stink eye.'

"Fake it until it's real again. You know you're sulking. You know it's stupid. Hiding in the basement isn't going to make it any better, and it won't solve your problem with Mike. On top of that, you know you owe Tony an olive branch and showing him that you still trust and value him does that."

That made an uncomfortable amount of sense. Fortunately he was parking the car when Jimmy said that, so he didn't have to respond immediately to it.

Unfortunately, unlike Tim and Tony who knew well enough to leave the hell alone, as soon as he was done parking, Jimmy was looking at him expectantly, waiting to hear something along the lines of… Jethro rolled his eyes and said, "Fine."

Jimmy smiled brightly at that. "Good. So, besides drugs and guns, what do people smuggle? Art? Antiques? I'm sure Ducky has a good fifteen hours on different stories of how people have been smuggling artifacts out of ancient Persia and the like."

Gibbs nodded at that. Ever since everything went haywire in the Middle East, everyone who could, had been smuggling stuff out. He doubted Mike would have any objections to something like that, especially if it did provide a pile of cash for his girls to live on comfortably.

Jimmy added, "You might use people in the consulate to provide a diplomatic pouch for something like that. Don't want your ancient statue of whatever to get checked, go bribe someone into giving you diplomatic protections."

Gibbs nodded at that, too. It felt, plausible, but not right. He was about to say something along those lines when Jimmy saw Ziva and called out to her, "You and Tony have dinner plans?"

"No."

"Good, Jethro's cooking. You two are going to his place and helping him solve a mystery."

Ziva looked very pleased by that. "What sort of mystery?"

"The sort we'll tell you about when we get changed. See you in five," Jimmy said, heading them toward the locker room.

"No chance of backing out, huh?" Gibbs said quietly.

"Nope. It'll be good for you."

"Uh huh." Gibbs didn't sound convinced as he dropped his gym bag on the floor and sat down to take his shoes off.

"Speaking of good for you, how's the knee?" Jimmy asked while opening his locker.

"Fine."

"Fine, like how you're doing with Tony, fine?" Jimmy knelt in front of him, looking at the knee in question, gently poking at it once Gibbs had the brace off. "Or," he extended Gibbs' leg and tested to see how much play was in the joint when he wiggled it, "fine, fine?"

Gibbs slapped his hands away and began to get changed. "Fine."

"Run a mile, fine?" Jimmy's expression was serious as he asked.

"Not yet."

"Walk a mile?"

"Yes."

"How's it feel?"

"Aches after that. Have to ice it down."

He nodded along with that. "Any weight on the leg curls?"

"No."

"How long can you go without the brace and not have it ache?"

"An hour."

"Stand on one leg, steady?"

"About half a minute."

Jimmy thought about that, and this time, hands hovering over Jethro's knee, waited for permission (and got it) before feeling how everything moved through a full extension of his knee. "You're healing."

"Not fast enough."

"Ducky felt that way after his heart attack."

"I know."

"How about after Ziva and I fight, we work on some targeted calf, hamstring, glutes, and quadriceps exercises?"

"Am I going to have to stretch?"

"Yep." Jimmy looked like he enjoyed this idea quite a bit more than was warranted.

"Great." Jethro did not look like he was enjoying that idea.

"More flexibility means lower chance of reinjuring yourself. More flexibility means better blood flow which means faster healing. The looser you are the more of each muscle works-"

"I know. I got it the first three times you started singing that song. We'll do it. Just don't love it."

Jimmy turned back to his locker, hanging up his jacket and quickly stripping out of his church clothing. "You don't have to love it. You've just got to do it."

Gibbs stared at Jimmy not sure he wanted to say it, but… "Why?"

"You want to be able to walk without a brace?" Jimmy wasn't sure what exactly he was asking there, and the puzzled expression on his face said that loud and clear.

"Yeah, but… big picture, what's the point? Say I set the record for fastest recovery ever, how soon will I be back on full duty?"

"Middle of December?" By which Jimmy meant first week of January, and Gibbs knew it.

"So, I'll have, at most, a month. And really, a week. What's the point?"

"Oh…" Jimmy sat down on the bench next to Gibbs, understanding that this is about more than just his knee. Unfortunately he doesn't have any good answers for Gibbs, not at first. "Getting the most out of that month that you can?"

"Yippiee." Dry, withering sarcasm, more the style of Tim than anything Jimmy expected out of Gibbs went with that.

"Being able to play on the floor with little girls?"

"Better." That got a ghost of a smile, but it's a genuine ghost.

"Finding out whatever the hell Indiana Jones stuff Franks was up to, getting your own whip and fedora, and heading off into the sunset for incredible adventures that Tim'll steal and stick in his book?"

Gibbs laughed dryly at that, but that was real, too.

Jimmy poked him gently and gave him a dirty smile. "Because six months from now, when, on said adventure, you meet Ms. Right, you want all of your different bits working so you can rock her world."

That got a genuine, unreserved laugh.

"Can't get through a proper tango, let alone pick her up and carry her off Rhett Butler style if your knee's gimping out on you."

Jethro nodded wryly, and grabbed for his shorts, tugging them on.

* * *

Fire crackling gently, savory scent of steak and potatoes cooking away, one beer in his system, Operation: Fake It Till You Feel It was about to begin.

Tony also looked a bit wary as he headed in. Wary and sore.

The Boss part of Gibbs wanted to start demanding Tony get more time in at the gym. Even if he was going easy on Tim, his defense should have been good enough to avoid getting pounded _that_ badly. Three days later, and Tim was looking rough, but Tony still looked (and was moving) like he was run over by a car.

And while it was true that Tim was a hell of a lot better than he used to be, he also shouldn't be _that_ much better than Tony. Gibbs was also aware of the fact that, given his part in the explosion with Tim, he couldn't just flat out ask Tony what the hell happened with that fight, though he did make a mental note to ask Jimmy, and, if need be, get him, as the neutral third party, to go lean on Tony about maybe working on his own physical defense skills.

It occurred to him that that plan may not be exactly embracing the spirit of not being the Boss any longer. So, he filed it under looking-out-for-his-boys, and that would cover it.

Ziva and Tony were staring at him, seeing the pile of files on his kitchen table, looking expectantly at him, waiting to get filled in. He offered beers and explained what he wanted them looking at.

For the first hour, it was pretty quiet. Sounds of eating, papers rustling, Ziva and Tony looking through the files.

"You got a map of the world?" Tony asked.

"Yeah." He headed upstairs, went searching through the books on the shelves, and found their atlas.

Tony stared at it when he came down, shaking his head. "Need McGee and the plasma."

"Or MTAC," Ziva added.

"Yeah. Spread it all out so we can see it easy." Tony squinted at the little map in front of him, shaking his head. "This isn't going to do it. Look, East Germany. It's" he opened the book's cover, "thirty years out of date."

"What were you thinking of putting on a map?" Gibbs asked.

"The Embassies… All but three are in the Middle East. Then he's got one in Jamaica, one in Mexico City, and one in The Dominican Republic. They're all US Embassies…" Tony tapped his fingers on the files in front of him. "Why? That's got to go with the border thing, somehow. You don't bribe US Borders and Customs to get things out of the US, but to get them in. They don't care about stuff going out."

"Look at what is not on this list," Ziva said. "He has no one at DEA, FBI, or ATF. That means your first two guesses, drugs or guns cannot be right."

"So, Jimmy's antiquities?" Gibbs asked.

"Maybe. But why no high ranking officials in the middle east? Everyone he's got there works for one of our Embassies. Afghanistan's a mess, but if you want to take the local Mona Lisa out, you still need some of their people to look the other way, not just ours." Tony was staring at Gibbs' mantle, looking at the pictures. There was a shot of Leyla and Amira. "Why was he doing this?"

"Money? Make sure the girls are set. Leyla never married Liam, so she doesn't get spousal benefits."

"Isn't her family rich?" Tony asked.

That was true. "Yes."

"And she and her mom are on good terms again, right?"

"Think so."

"And she is working for Homeland as a translator, correct?" Ziva added.

"Yes. Married last year, too."

"Mike would not have known that. But she has been working here since before he died. And she and her mother reconciled long before Mike died," Ziva said.

"So, not financial security for his girls," Tony says. "And he told you you were better off not knowing?"

Gibbs nodded.

"Not guns, not drugs, probably not antiques…" Tony was shaking his head. "No one on his list seems to know squat about that… Not, it can't be antiques, there's no fence on this list. Someone's got to buy and sell the damn things after he got them here. What's that leave?"

It hit Gibbs like a hammer, and he could see Mike smiling at him from behind Tony. "People. It leaves people." He turned to look at the picture of Leyla and Amira, and he knew, he felt it in his gut. "It leaves girls in a bad situation looking to get somewhere better."

All three of them stared at the folders in front of them. Then Gibbs started to close them and pack them up, quick. Illegal, very, very, _very_ illegal, but not immoral. Never immoral. Because Mike didn't care about legal, he never did. But he cared a whole lot about what was right, which was why he couldn't keep working for a government he felt had betrayed it's people.

He looked at Tony and Ziva and both of them shook their heads, a silent, _'We didn't see this, you didn't see it either, we're all blind, stupid, and deaf, and we weren't here to boot.'_

He nodded at that, finishing tucking the files back into their box.

A minute later, as Tony and Ziva were getting ready to leave, Tony glanced at him, almost as if he was going to ask what Gibbs was going to do with this, but, just like Mike wouldn't tell him, because he was a cop, Gibbs won't tell Tony. But he nodded at Tony, and Tony nodded back.

They got each other.

And as they left, Gibbs knew something else, this box was going back into the hidden wall, and it was going to stay there, for about three and a half months, and then, when he was no longer a cop, he was going to pull it out and really look it over.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I love the idea of Mike running the Afghani-girl underground railroad. That's such a wonderfully Mike sort of thing to do. I enjoyed Anonymous Was a Woman, too. Give me tons of McGee and Gibbs together and I'm happy.
> 
> But, I did not, for a second, buy the idea that Mike told Gibbs what he was up to and Gibbs didn't help.
> 
> The idea that Gibbs placed "legal" and his job over helping little girls/teens escape repeated rape and slavery did not compute. My suspension of disbelief snapped with an audible twang.
> 
> Okay, actually it snapped with an audible "No fucking way!" and while it's true that my husband doesn't curse, he agreed with my assessment of that situation.
> 
> One of the reasons we root for Gibbs is that Gibbs stands for what's right. He doesn't care about the niceties or legalities. He does the right thing at the right time for the right reasons. Add in his history with girls, let alone his go-to-the-wall-for-family ethos, and there's just absolutely no way he didn't sign those papers for Mike and get those girls on that plane.
> 
> No way!
> 
> So, I've done a bit of a rewrite here. Mike never told him. He was sensitive to who Gibbs was, and his position, and that Gibbs could get into a shit ton of trouble for this, so he didn't tell. He just, set it up so that Gibbs could, should he go through Mike's stuff, start putting some pieces together and maybe, if he found himself with some free time, a boat, and a desire to be useful, take over for him.


	22. The Details

"Good morning." He sets Rachel's coffee on her desk, and then sits on the sofa across from her.

She takes the coffee and arches an eyebrow at him. "You're in a surprisingly chipper mood. What's changed since Thursday? You and Tim come up with yet another plan to keep you on for another year?"

"No. I…" his voice trails off. In the rush of having a plan and in the mindset of you-can-tell-her-everything, the shut-the-hell-up instinct hit him a few seconds too late.

"You…" she leads looking very intrigued.

He bites his lip. "Stuff I tell you is confidential, right?"

"Mostly. Unlike, say a lawyer or a priest, the things you tell me can be subpoenaed. And should such a subpoena show up, I would have to turn my notes over. However, a thorough investigation of my notes will never reveal any illegal activities on the parts of any of my clients. I'm more interested in helping you than providing Internal Affairs with fodder for an investigation. If you're doing something that's against my own rules, I'll boot you as a client, but I won't write it down."

He finds that reassuring. "Okay."

She smiles at him, lifting her coffee, inhaling the bitter/sweet scent. He's added cream and pumpkin spice to it for her, a nice fall touch. "So, what has you in such a good mood this morning?"

"I think I found the next thing."

"Really?" She sounds intrigued by that. His email had seemed so helpless and adrift, the idea that less than a week later he had something planned out and ready to go seems incredible.

"Yeah."

"And are you going to tell me what the next thing is?"

He squints at her, fairly sure she'd be fine with it, but… Not like they've ever actually had a chat about US immigration policy. And some people really are law and order types. (But she's not. She just said she doesn't write stuff down.) Of course, some people actually agree with the idea that everyone who comes here has to go through the proper channels and that if they don't they have to leave.

And some people just don't give a shit.

And some people don't want to see anyone who's any darker than they are coming to this country.

But he's sure she's not one of them.

"How much have I told you about Mike Franks?"

Rachel looks at him, curious about what appears to be a digression. She's not following how Franks might work into any of this. She knows he's dead, so it's not like he could be doing much to help Gibbs. "He worked Shannon and Kelly's case. He got you into NCIS. He took care of you and gave you what you needed to know to go after the man who killed them."

As she says that, it hits him, she already knows he's murdered a man. Adding human trafficking to the list really isn't going to be terribly shocking compared to that. Probably. He's talking about pre-meditated, going at it cold, straight out breaking the law. This wouldn't be a crime of passion or revenge or a broken heart looking for an instant of peace.

"What do you think about that?" He sips his coffee, watching her carefully, seeing if her face matches her words.

"About which part?"

"Him giving me everything I needed to kill Hernandez."

"It's not about what I think."

The looks like standard boilerplate, but he's not sensing any condemnation. "I'm not asking for your approval. Just, trying to figure out how specific to be with the next bit."

"You want a sympathetic audience for your grand plan?"

"Doesn't everyone?"

She nods. And she knows that it's much easier to tell people what it is you intend to do if you think they'll approve. Granted, she doesn't think her approval will influence Gibbs' actions one way or another, but it will affect how free he is in the telling of what he's thinking. "You remember, the first time we met, you took me to your basement, showed me where to stand, and asked if I could feel that spot was where… that…" he senses that she doesn't have a word foul enough to describe Ari, "died?"

"Yes."

"Did I look like I had any moral qualms about that?"

"No. But it was a clean kill. He had a gun on me and was going to shoot. Ziva had every right to pull that trigger. Hernandez… I was almost a mile away. One second he was driving, the next second he wasn't. He wasn't a threat to anyone in that second. And… I had to kill him for me. If I was going to live with myself, I had to do it. But I didn't have to kill him to save or protect anyone else. And honestly, I could have shot the tires out, then shot his knees out, and brought him in. I could have made sure he stood trial. I didn't. I killed him." It feels very… freeing… to actually say it. Everyone he loves knows he did it, but this is the first time he's actually said it, said all of it, owned the fact that it was a choice, something he had to do for himself, not for honor or justice or anything like that.

"Were you right? Did he kill your girls?"

"Yes."

"Did anyone have any doubts about that?"

"No. Only reason he didn't stand trial was because he'd run across the border. Only reason he wasn't extradited was because he owned the local government there. Short of invading Mexico, we couldn't legally get him. Grabbing him to take back for trial to the US would have been illegal, too."

"Then no. I have no problem with that. What have you found? Your email sounded very lost, and you look more excited right now than I've ever seen you. Are you planning on killing someone?" It's a serious question on her part, and he can see how he walked right into that.

"No. Not killing anyone. Mike… Mike always played fast and loose with anyone else's rules. Hell, he played fast and loose with his own, too. He knew he was dying well before it happened, and started to give me his 'insurance policies…'"

"Everything you ever wanted to know about everyone at NCIS?"

"Pretty much. But there was some other stuff he gave me, too."

"What kind of other stuff?"

"Blackmail stuff. Very… specific blackmail stuff. Getting onto ten years ago now, Mike found out about his son, and his son's fiancee, Leyla, and his granddaughter, and… we smuggled her into the US when Liam, his son, died.

"Mike got it straightened out, eventually, she and Amira are legal, now…" Though it occurs to Gibbs that he doesn't actually know that for a fact. She works for Homeland, so whatever she has passed the background check. "Maybe… I'm sure her papers look really good.

"Anyway… I think… I think he kept doing it. All of the blackmail stuff, it was aimed at the kind of people you'd want to make look the other way if you were, say, smuggling people into the US. Or, some of it was the kind of stuff you'd use if you wanted someone to give you a visa."

"You think he was smuggling people into the US?"

"Girls. You don't have to do too many tours in the Middle East, especially Afghanistan, before you don't even want to look at the men there. You see a guy with a fifteen-year-old wife, and he's already got a kid or two with her, and… and the nicest thing you can say is you don't want to look at him. He's probably not a 'bad' guy. He's some farmer from the middle of nowhere just trying to keep himself and his family fed. He's not violent. He's not a terrorist. He treats her as well as any guy treats a woman back there. It's his culture, but his culture's rotten. He's got no problem fucking a little girl. No problem giving his own little girls to some other asshole. And he's one of the good guys.

"One of the cases we did was a series of bombings to destroy a school for girls. Girls reading was too horrifying for those bastards, so the school had to go. They killed the teachers. They tortured some of the girls, too. Other cases, ones we didn't work, where they barred the doors and burned the girls alive. You… You see stuff like that and all that you can feel is rage. You stop seeing the men there as individual people. Some good, some bad, some indifferent. And you start seeing predators, start seeing evil." Gibbs shakes his head. "Not supposed to do that. Makes for sloppy work. But… Can't say I don't feel it. Can say I try not to work too close with the locals in situations like that."

"And you think that Mike was the kind of guy who'd have no problem helping girls like that get to the US?"

"I know it. We smuggled Leyla in. Liam died before they could get married. It wasn't legal, at all. Her family eventually reconciled with her, but… She can tell you stories that'd make you want to bomb Iraq back into the dark ages. Just make you want to kill everyone who had a hand in it or ever turned a blind eye to it. And if she got talking to Mike, and she would have, he'd have done something about it."

"And now you're thinking of doing something about it?"

"He gave me all of his leverage. There's only one reason to do that."

She smiles gently. "I'm fine with the assumption that Mike wants you to do it. That's not what I'm asking. Are _you_ going to do something about it?"

"I'm tempted." Gibbs shakes his head. "More than tempted. I _want_ to do it. Once we put it together, it was like a light going on. I'd be good at it. Probably couldn't do a lot. But an old guy with a boat and a 'friend.' Hell, I don't care if they think I'm a pervert buying sex as long as I can get 'em on the boat and out of there."

"Afghanistan is a landlocked country."

He flashes her his _don't bother me with stupid details_ look. "Doesn't have to be Afghanistan. Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia they've all got ports."

"And they're lousy places to be a girl."

He nods. "Pakistan's not a picnic, either. India's got a lot of honor killings. Not like it'd be hard to find a place. Probably wouldn't be hard to find them on this side of the world, either."

"So, how do you find the girls? I'm assuming you're not planning on just sailing over and kidnapping some."

"I don't know. You're right, you don't just run up and grab a few. Gotta find the ones who want out. And Mike didn't leave me anything on how he found the girls. Or if he did, I haven't figured it out yet."

Rachel pulls him a bit closer to reality. " _If_ he found girls. You don't actually know that's what he was doing."

"It fits."

"And it makes you happy, gives you a sense of purpose." She's giving him that knowing look, filling in the _is this what he was doing or is this what you want him to have been doing_ with her expression.

"Yeah."

"Say you dig into this and find that Mike was doing something else. Then what?"

"I don't know. I like the idea of this. Even if I could only get one out a year…"

"If you can't do this… If you can't find someone to hook you up with girls in need of transport, then what?"

"The same problem I had before. I might find something else, but I won't be as good at it as I was at being a cop. Say I signed up to be an EMT, yes, it's useful, it'll save lives, but it's not what I'm best at. Any other EMT will do as good of a job as I could, if not better. And what I'm best at, looking at people figuring them out, solving puzzles, I won't be doing anymore."

"Cold cases?"

"Leon's offered. I'll probably take him up on them. I'll be ripping my hair out because they won't let me in the field for more than ten days a year. It'll be my job to go through the paperwork on dead cases, see if there's anything that still can be found, then tell someone else to go find it.

"If something else is people, they might let me do interrogations. Don't need fast reflexes for that, just a good brain. Or not, there're plenty of Probies who'll need practice, and it's not like there's any rush on a cold case."

"Private detective? Your friend Fornell, he'll be hitting the mandatory retirement age soon, too, right? You two could partner up."

"FBI lets team leaders stick around until 62. Tobias still has another year and if they bump him up one more level, another four because you get to hang on to 65 if you hit management. Emily'll be going to college soon. I know they've got plans for traveling and stuff like that once she's out of the nest."

"What was your original plan?"

"Have Shannon finished by now. Wake up, deal with the hangover from the retirement party, then out to sea. Float around until I got it out of my system. Come home four, six, eight months, however long, later. Maybe not come back at all."

"So, it's safe to say that plan's well out of date."

"Can't miss eight months of my girls. Eight months from now Kelly'll be unrecognizable, and Molly'll be two and a half… Anna's due in December, miss eight months with her she'll go from a bright pink peanut to… like Kelly, unrecognizable." He shakes his head. "Not heading off for more than a few weeks…" He thinks of how long it'd take to get to the middle east and back by Shannon. "Three months, tops, now."

"Which means you need to solve the problem, not run away from it."

"Yeah. And this… This solves the problem. I can pick up new languages fast. And if I could find someone to get the girls to the Black Sea… I already speak Russian, and Leon's offering me a shot to go spend some time in the Crimea, keep an eye on things."

"That sounds dangerous. Mixing those jobs."

He nods. "Be good cover though. Depends on the girl. If she's a child… Grandpa and his girl doing some touristy things. Give her some time to work on her English before hitting the States. If you start somewhere where no one else speaks English, no one will notice if hers is bad."

"What happens to her after she gets to the States? Are you planning on adopting a collection of girls?"

"No. Mike had to do something with them."

"If that's what he was doing."

"If… And if he wasn't… I could do it. I'd be good at it. I've got good connections. I don't know about either of the ends, but I can handle the middle part. I've got the boat, just have to finish it. I'm old and white and speak perfect English and I'm a retired cop and Marine, Coast Guard isn't going to look twice at me. Shannon's small enough… And… I was talking with the kids a bit about maybe finding a place on the Chesapeake, maybe the Potomac, if it had its own pier… Wouldn't have to deal with customs or docking fees or any of the rest of it. Just an old guy, maybe with a dog, on a boat. Look like I'm out for a day or two with my girl."

Rachel smiles at him. "It's a nice fantasy."

"Yes."

"What would you do about making it real?"

"Finish the damn boat. There's step one. Talk to Leyla, that'd be step two. Can't do anything if I can't find the girls."

"You think maybe she was involved?"

"I don't know. Knowing Mike, probably not. He would have wanted to keep her as out of it as he could. But she might still have a clue as to who to talk to."

"And by then, you'll have the boat finished?"

"Yeah. I don't want to be messing around with blackmailing ICE agents or the TSA guys at the airport, trying to get them to look away. I'd go old school. Boat, quiet bit of beach, blend in, just another sailor on vacation. The east coast is really big, there's got to be some bits of it no one's watching too closely."

"Or like you said, Grandad out with his girl, assuming the girl's young enough, doesn't matter if anyone is watching. You just stroll on out like it's the most normal thing ever."

"Go out enough with my own girls, get a reputation for being the old guy with the pile of kids on his boat all the time anyway. They might just assume I was out with the kids and some of their friends."

"I have a feeling that won't work for a few years at least."

"Probably not. But in a decade… Fifteen years…"

"Would you want to involve your whole family in this? Mike didn't tell you about this while he was alive for a reason, right?"

"Yeah. If he was doing it… Yeah. If he told me, it'd have put me in a bad situation."

"And if you tell your kids…"

"Same thing."

She looks at him knowingly. "It does seem like this has given you a lot to think about."

"Yeah."

"I also take it that you couldn't care less about the whole _illegal_ thing?"

He nods.

"How about channeling your energy in a more… socially acceptable direction?"

"Like what?"

"Getting involved politically. Trying to get our immigration laws changed? Trying to make it easier for girls like the ones you're talking about to get asylum?"

He shakes his head. "Rather do good than talk about good." He thinks about that for another second. "Wouldn't be good at it. No patience for bullshit. Jen was good at it. Leon's good at it. Me, I'd sit there for five minutes, until my blood pressure shot so high I could feel my pulse in my eyes, and then I'd storm out and go shoot things to blow off steam. Not my thing."

"It could be your thing."

He shakes his head. "Even if it was, we're not talking about girls who can just head over to the consulate and sign up for a visa. Someone still needs to get them out safe."

"And clandestine missions, you and a boat and the open sea, swooping in and saving the day, doing the impossible job, that's your thing?"

He nods vehemently. "That's my thing!"

"And it's very important to you to be not just good, but excellent at what you do?"

The thinks about that for a moment. "Yeah, it is."

"How are you with learning new things?"

"Usually pick things up pretty quick."

That isn't what she's trying to get him to think about so she shifts the question a little. "How are you with someone teaching you something new? Someone you don't know or respect?"

That gets a shrug. He didn't bite Tim's head off when he was setting up the computer, and he did call about the gchat thing, but it's also true that now that it's up and running he'd rather take six hours looking for help online than ask a stranger for help.

"This girl rescue idea, this doesn't require you to learn something new from someone. Not as a student. You'd have to investigate, track down leads, then find the girls, then infiltrate, sail, land somewhere, smuggle them in. You might need to spend a lot of time with Rosetta Stone picking up Farsi or Arabic, but letting someone else see that you don't know what you're doing wouldn't be part of it, right?"

He nods in concession of that.

"But, say, signing up to be an EMT, that would require you to learn someone else's system, be the low man on the totem pole, deal with another person's rules, take orders from someone else. Realistically, as an EMT, you'd be saving lives every week. Good at it or not, you'd still be there getting people to the hospital when they needed to go."

He nods at that, too.

She looks at him, sipping her coffee, not saying anything.

He sips his too, also not saying anything. She's got a very good point, but not one he wants to comment on, not right now.

She sees that, nods, allowing him time to think about it, and says, "How are things going with Tony?"

He tells her about Jimmy's fake it 'til you feel it' plan, and how he'd put it into action the night before.

"I have a feeling I'd like Jimmy."

"You haven't met him?"

She shakes her head. "Saw him in passing for a few seconds. But we've never sat down and had a conversation. So, how did faking it feel?"

"Uncomfortable. Once we got into the work, it was better. Once I figured it out, and the light flicked on, and Tony wasn't so much the… Tim's got a word for it… harbinger?" Rachel nods, that word will do. "The image of things ending, it was a lot easier. I think we were in good shape as I packed everything up and we all agreed to pretend we had no idea what Franks was up to."

"But you haven't gotten back to work, yet."

"Yeah, and today should be…" He looks up and shakes his head. Then he fills her in on how the last case went, and why he's going to have Fornell and, probably, because it's fall and it happens every fall, Diane, in his lap for the next day or two. "… Tony's looking at having me handle them as a sort of payback."

"Excellent," she says with a smile. "So… is Diane seeing anyone? Thinking about finding yourself a quiet bit of parking lot?"

He glares at her, but there's no anger in it. "I think I said something about being drunk, flirty, and at a wedding for that to happen."

Her expression says that she considered those aspects negotiable.

He shakes his head. "No. We'll snipe at each other, and…" He shakes his head again.

"I'm not saying you need to fall in love with her. But, enjoy it… Without feeling guilty about it. Take the time to see the woman who's really there, and enjoy her. Doesn't have to be romantic or sexual."

"Is this today's homework assignment?"

"Yep. You don't need my help on figuring out the mechanics of what happens next. And it sounds like you won't move in that direction for a while, yet." He nods, besides working on Shannon, getting her done, adding some less than common modifications to her interior design, he won't move on that until he's officially retired. "Meanwhile, you've got a chance to experiment with something here, namely letting yourself genuinely feel an emotional response to a woman you like. Just go with it. See where you end up. It's supposed to be fun, so let yourself have some fun."


	23. Seeing Diane

Interagency squabbling over who gets the lead is the fun part. But once that's done, and the perp's behind bars, there's the much less fun part of alphabet soup cooperation. Namely, you and all your compatriots sit down with the casework, go through all of it, and then break it down into who's got jurisdiction over what, how, why, and all the rest of it.

It's long, boring, and usually as soon as you get something worked out the prosecutors toss the whole damn thing out anyway.

But you've still got to do it.

Gibbs entirely understands why Tim is sitting there, across from Fornell and Diane in the conference room, all of them with their laptops out, working on who gets what (The answer that seems to be winning: Diane gets all of it. Don't mess with the IRS. The IRS always wins.) while Tim explains how he got them to Bing in the first place.

And given the way Fornell was glaring at Draga, and the way Diane was watching him like she wanted to pounce on him while they waited in the bullpen for Tim to grab his stuff, Gibbs gets why Draga isn't in there with them.

But, beyond amusing Tony, he's not seeing any reason why _he's_ in there. Not like his presence is enriching the discussion on any level.

So, while it's true that he's not doing anything particularly useful on a helping Tim keep a hold of any of the case. (Tim's doing as well as can be expected, namely he's losing. Diane is rapidly taking over the entire case. Apparently there is a specific level of IRS Hell reserved for violators of the ACA, and Diane is gleefully getting ready to introduce Herden to all of its torturous glories.) It's also true that there's not much he can do, so he settles in to try and do what Rachel had suggested. See and enjoy the woman who's actually there, not just his image of her.

They saw each other, very briefly, last fall. Tim and Abby were honeymooning. He was happy from the wedding. She was happy with a new boyfriend. Fornell was getting ready to propose to Wendy. All three of them were in a good place, good mood. The case went fast and smooth.

So, the last time he really talked to her, when she dropped in on him back after she got a hit called on her and Fornell, was when he told her to not hold it against Victor that he was Victor.

And now he's trying to not hold it against her that she's not Shannon. Trying to see the woman who's really there.

She's dominating the conversation. Half of that's just her. Half of it is both Tim and Fornell are well-versed in the art of dealing with her. Path of least resistance gets everyone out alive and in one piece.

The heat, that's real. That's her and something he always liked. She's spouting regulations, quoting how many violations they've got Herden on, laying out why the case is theirs, and she's all fire. Her eyes are sparking, her words fast and hot.

It's overkill. Neither of the guys are putting up much (any) fight, but that was her, too. She'd keep going until she collapsed (after going much, much, much longer than anyone thought she could) regardless of if she needed to keep going.

That's something he feels a kinship to. He'd keep going past all reason, too. But two people together like that, probably not the best idea ever. Someone's got to know when it's time to throw in the towel, and neither of them ever did.

"Oh, come on, I am not giving you their bookkeeper! You are not investgating Grandma." Tim taking a stand draws him back from musing on Diane.

"What do you mean, giving her to me? His company was ripping off the VA. She had to—"

"No. Leave her be. She's eighty-four and senile."

"You hand over those notes, Chucky!"

"NO!"

"She's in violation—"

"I don't care. You can't have her!"

"Diane, you know those laws are so complicated every company in the US is currently in violation of something in regards to them," Fornell hops in, trying to calm things down.

"That was the point, Tobias! We'd have leverage over everyone. I can't believe you guys haven't figured that out. Company gets stubborn, owner won't talk, call us in and we will find at least half a dozen ACA violations. They tell you whatever it is rather than pay the fines. It's literally impossible to be in perfect compliance. That was the point."

"Yeah, well Herden's singing," Tim says. "He already gave us Bing, and we've got everything we need on him for his own for the VA fraud, leave Granny out of it."

"Chucky…"

Tim's got that very determined look on his face, made significantly more sinister by the bruising. "You just said the whole point of it was to screw people. You're not screwing her. She was doing her job as well as she could, and from what we saw her job was literally writing checks. Leave her be."

Diane glares at Tim, but shuts up, so, hell, maybe people do change. Maybe she's finally learned to occasionally drop things. Gibbs certainly knows he has.

At that point, Gibbs notices they're getting low on coffee. (In the sense that his personal cup is about half full. Okay, they aren't even remotely low on coffee, but he wants to get out of there.) "Coffee run, who wants what?"

Tobias leaps up. "I'll help. You two keep squabbling. We'll be back in about a month." He pulls Gibbs out and they walk, slowly, (without actually having gotten any orders) toward the coffee trolley.

Gibbs is easing toward the elevator when Fornell shakes his head. "Steps. Slower."

"Can't. Bad knee."

"Oh, right." He looks at Jethro's leg, as if he could see through his pants to the knee under. "Doing better?"

"Don't need a crutch anymore. That's better, right?"

Fornell nods. The door to the elevator opens and they step in. Once in there, Fornell turns it off. "Okay, so what the hell happened to McGee and DiNozzo? When we saw McGee, he wouldn't tell us what happened to him. DiNozzo's beat the hell up, too, and he's not talking, either. What did your team get into?"

Gibbs shakes his head.

"Jethro? DiNozzo looks really hurt. Like, why isn't he on sick leave level hurt? Why all the silence? And don't give me that classified crap. Diane fell for it, because she's not really a cop. I am. And I'm more than read in on this case. What happened?"

Gibbs rolls his eyes. "It's private."

"Private? Nothing that visible is private. You want private, you take sick leave until you can cover the bruises with makeup. You walk around that beat up, you don't get private anymore."

"Not saying."

Fornell stares at him while Gibbs flips on the elevator. Then his eyes go very, very wide and his jaw drops. "Did they do that to each other?"

Gibbs doesn't say, and his face doesn't say either, but not denying it is just as much a tell as saying yes.

Fornell shuts off the elevator again. "What happened? Are they okay?"

"They're okay, enough. I'm not saying what happened, because that's between them."

"Nothing like… you know…" Fornell looks meaningfully between the two of them. The last time Fornell was as badly beaten up as Tony was, Diane was five months pregnant and Gibbs had just gotten back from his float.

"No. Not that kind of private."

Fornell's staring at him in stupefaction. "What the hell else is worth beating a man that badly for?" He remembers Tim coming to Gibbs' asking for help, worried about going to jail for beating the shit out of someone. Fornell didn't say anything then, but he was fairly sure that without a gun, Tim couldn't beat the shit out of someone. Obviously, he'd been wrong about that.

Gibbs shakes his head again, he's not saying.

"Jethro…" Gibbs knows that by not answering, Fornell's left wondering what on earth Tony could have possibly done to piss Tim off that badly, and none of the things he's coming up with are any good.

"Ask them. They want you to know; they'll tell."

"McGee really did that to him?"

Gibbs nods.

"Damn! Remind me not to piss him off."

"Don't piss McGee off. It's a bad plan."

"You told me you were training with him and Palmer. You turn Palmer into a ninja, too?"

Gibbs half smiles and rolls his eyes. He's not about to take credit for all of this. "I got them to able to throw a real punch and dodge. They practiced a lot with each other, got good. Ziva's on ninja training."

Fornell flicks on the elevator again, shaking his head, _Never would have thought he had it in him_ clear on his face. They probably get about ten feet before he flicks it off again. "Okay. No. You need to tell me. Either McGee's a psycho or… DiNozzo really fucked something up. Either way, I've still got to work with them. What the hell happened?"

"Stop being nosey."

"I'm a cop. It's my job to be nosey. And this isn't just nosey. Which one of the two of them went bonkers?"

"They've both got your back. They've got each other, too. That's all you need to know."

Fornell flashes Gibbs his frustrated look, knowing Gibbs isn't going to give on this.

* * *

Seth starts laying out cups when he sees Gibbs and Fornell head toward him. "Regular for McGee and I, double caff Sumatra, one cream, three sugars, two squirts of hazelnut, whipped cream on top, and caramel sauce, and… cappuccino for you, right?" Gibbs asks Tobias.

He nods. "Can't believe you remember her order."

"Only had to watch her take a sip, grimace, put it back down and glare at me three times before I had it down."

A small smile crosses Tobias' face. "And then you only got it wrong on occasion to piss her off."

"Something like that. Put French vanilla in it once to see what she'd do."

"What'd she do?"

"Gave me a thermos of what smelled and tasted like my coffee the next morning. It was decaf."

"Oh." Fornell winces. He's seen Gibbs sans caffeine. It's isn't pretty.

"Didn't notice until my head started to hurt and my hands were shaking."

Fornell shakes his head while watching Seth make up their orders.

"So… She seeing anyone these days?"

Fornell whips his head back towards Gibbs. "Why on earth would you want to know that!"

"Curious."

"Bull."

"Looking out for Draga."

"More plausible, still bull."

He glares at Fornell, who still hasn't answered the question.

"Best I know, she's single. But these days all single means is not married. She's probably got three or four Dragas lurking in the background somewhere."

"I'll let him know."

"Like hell you will. You aren't contemplating doing something stupid, are you?"

"No. Just asking."

"You never just ask anything."

"I'm just asking about this."

Fornell's not buying that. "Like hell you are."

* * *

 _See who's really there. Enjoy it._ Heat, passion, intellect. Once they got through the territorial squabbling, Tim's taking her through what he did to find Herden, and though he and Fornell are somewhere between asleep from boredom and lost by the details, Diane is following along just fine.

She might not be a hacker, but she can see the money trail Tim honed in on, and understands some of the techniques he used to follow it.

He's showing her the database of Bing's fraudsters, and why he called in Fornell, and she's nodding along, pointing out that some of these people are legitimate businessmen running companies that get actual government grants and the like.

Tim's nodding back, talking about how the first link in this chain, the guy they found Herden through, had produced similar issues. He actually did genuine web work in addition to bilking the VA.

Gibbs thinks that in some ways Diane and Tim are very similar. Diane was the oldest of three girls. Daddy, career Navy, wanted boys, sailors to follow in his footsteps. Mom wanted princesses. She could never be enough of a boy to make her father happy, and wasn't the docile little girl her mom had envisioned, either.

Unlike Tim, instead of hiding in plain sight, she responded by being sharp and aggressive. She couldn't ever be a boy, so she'd scare the crap out of them, be harder and better and smarter than they were, and she'd make sure they knew it. Make sure Daddy knew it. But in the end, Daddy didn't much care. By the time they were getting married Daddy was on his third family, this time with two little boys, and didn't want to be reminded of his girls.

She was never going to be a placid as her sisters, but she was prettier. So she played that up, too. Her mom wanted pretty, so pretty she was. Granted, her mom wanted Cinderella, and what she ended up with was Scarlet O'Hara. Last he heard Mom was in Florida living with Gillian (her older sister) and her insane husband. (He only met Gillian once, liked her, too. Never met the husband, though he used to be FBI. They both did. Fornell's got some really bizarre stories about them.)

He sees, watching Diane and Tim working together, two very different responses to similar childhoods.

Tim quietly begged for attention by doing the job better, faster, spending more time at it than anyone around him. He'd light up when he was petted, and put his head down and work harder when he wasn't.

Diane demanded attention, screamed for it, hit him in the head with a golf club when he kept ignoring her. That's what she had said to him, that it was all she had ever wanted, someone to love her and fill up that hole. Someone who would pay attention.

And right now, he's paying attention.

* * *

Tim stands up and stretches. "Lunch break?"

The other three nod. Everyone is tired of sitting around, talking numbers, and a break sounds like a splendid idea.

"I'm going to head down and see if Abby's free. Back to it in an hour?"

More nodding.

Diane looks at Jethro, head tilted to the side, "Get some coffee with me?"

"Sure."

"Just got to freshen up. Meet you downstairs?"

He nods, pleased, and smiles at her.

"Are you flirting with our ex-wife?" Tobias asks the second the door closes behind her.

Gibbs shakes his head. He's not flirting. He's intentionally not flirting because part of this whole see the person who's there, involves actually seeing Diane, and if he's going to do that, really see who's there, not moving into flirty, romance, get laid mode is the plan. So, no, he's not flirting.

He is being nice, and considerate, and, maybe, looking at her longer than is strictly necessary, while listening very intently. And, maybe, smiling more than usual. Because he's putting her at ease, getting her to talk more, and actually listening to the answers.

_Shit. That's flirting, isn't it?_

"Don't give me that. What could you possibly be thinking, flirting with the Spawn of Satan?"

"I'm not flirting, I'm… being nice?"

"You aren't nice! You especially aren't nice to _her._ What are you doing?"

"Just, tryin' something."

"Well, don't!"

"It's just coffee."

"It's never _just coffee_ with her. She's probably got five boyfriends she's happily off _having coffee_ with. Hell, she probably _had coffee_ with McGee. And she's been eyeballing Draga like he's an extra foamy mocha latte with chocolate and caramel sauce. You don't need to go down that road again."

"That's not… You remember _that thing_ I told you I was doing, with Cranston."

"God, you make that sound like _getting coffee_ , too. Most people would just say, my therapist said…"

"Fine. She suggested-"

"Picking things up with Diane? That woman is insane!"

"No. Just… I like her. I always did like her."

"That's the problem! She's likeable. You think you're getting this cute, little, sassy kitten, next thing you know your heart is broken, your bank account is empty, _and she's having a kid with another guy_."

" _I know,_ Tobias. Not talking about marrying her again. Just, trying to see how liking someone feels. Without all of the baggage."

"You have an entire airport terminal's worth of baggage with that woman!"

 _So do you, so stop dropping your baggage on me, okay?_ Comes through loud and clear in Gibbs' expression. "Just coffee. Just talking."

"You don't _talk!"_

"I'm talking to you!"

"No, you're listening to me talk about you shooting yourself in your own ass and then rubbing salt in the wound and then finishing it off with a nice dip in a bath tub full of lemon juice." They spend a good minute staring at each other, Gibbs feeling frustrated, Fornell searching his face, trying to figure out what on Earth Gibbs could possibly be trying to do, before Fornell takes a quick breath and says, "Right, we're going out tonight and getting you laid. Look, I know, trust me, _I know_ what you're seeing when you look at her, and I know it's been a long time and you're getting edgy—"

Gibbs holds up his hands and winces. "Stop. Right there. It's not about…" Fornell's still talking about how Tony's got to know somewhere they can find a girl for him. "Stop!" That finally ends Fornell's dissertation on the subject of getting Gibbs laid. "Don't wanna get laid. Just want to sit down and have a cup of coffee and _talk_ to a woman I like."

Fornell doesn't look like he thinks that's legit, but he's willing to go with it. "There has _got_ to be some other woman you like who will have a cup of coffee with you." Fornell is watching Gibbs carefully so he catches that little flicker in the back of his eye. "Okay, what the hell was that? There is someone, isn't there?"

"Yes, but I can't ask her."

Fornell's mid _don't give me that lame excuse_ look when something hits him. "She married or something?"

"Yes. She's married," Gibbs says, relieved to get off of this.

"Well, that doesn't mean you go after Diane."

"I'm not _going after_ her. It's not about that."

Fornell doesn't seem to buy that, but he backs off, curious about the new one. "So why haven't you mentioned her?"

Gibbs opens and closes his mouth in his _I don't know, don't make me think or talk about this_ gesture.

"How married is she?" Fornell asks.

"Married! Doesn't matter if she's barely married or joined at the hip with the guy. She's married."

"Do I know her?"

"No." _Drop it_ is written all over Gibbs' face.

"Only new woman you've mentioned in months is…" Fornell's eyes go wide and his shoulders slump. "Oh, holy shit, Jethro, that's a bad plan! That's the mother of all bad plans. That's the only plan I can think of where going out with Diane sounds like a sane alternative. What the hell is wrong with you?"

Jethro is giving Fornell his _I am so done with you_ look. "Nothing. There is no plan. The only plan is have a cup of coffee with Diane and remember what liking someone felt like. That's it."

"Sounds like you remember liking someone just fine."

"Yeah, I like Rachel. Nothing I can do about it, so that's that. Nothing I can do about it is probably part of liking her."

"Like, seriously liking her?" The warning bells are all going off in Fornell's expression, and Gibbs knows he's asking, _falling in love with her?_

"No. Just. I like talking to her."

"You like _talking_ to a woman?"

"I'm not completely mute!" He looks at Fornell, earnestly. "It's… nice, you know?"

Fornell squeezes his shoulder. "God, you are so lonely, aren't you?" he says gently.

Gibbs rolls his eyes and shakes his head. Fornell keeps looking at him, waiting for a response. Finally he says, "I'd like to not screw it up this time. I know I'm not in a good place for it, yet, but… yeah, I miss it." He looks away from Fornell. "I'd like to sit down and just talk to a woman. Ya know?"

Fornell nods, that he understands. "But, Diane?"

"When we weren't fighting, it was always fun. I liked playing with her. You, me, and her, remember the dinners we'd have?"

"Yeah." Fornell nods at that, too.

"It was fun."

"It was."

"I'm not going back, but… be nice to feel something like that again. I know how to push her buttons. She knows mine. And, maybe… this was what Cranston was thinking… maybe trying that, seeing her for her, not her for some sort of Shannon substitute… would be a good thing. She told me once I was using her as a human anti-depressant. Too much truth there. Might be nice to just see her for her, at least once."

"Tall order for one cup of coffee."

Gibbs shrugs, smiles, says dryly, "Might be pie, too."

Fornell snorts a laugh at that, then gets serious. "Jethro, don't fall in love with her again."

"I didn't the first time."

 _Give me a break_ is unspoken but clear. "How long you been telling yourself that lie? She wasn't Shannon; that doesn't mean you didn't love her."

"I…"

"I was there, remember? Steaks on the fire, sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, her cuddled up on your lap, feeding you little bites, teasing both of us. Us telling her about our different cases, sounding like big damn heroes. All three of us sucking down beer and laughing. Just because it wasn't fairy-tale, forever love didn't mean it wasn't real."

Gibbs remembers those nights. Hasn't thought about them for a long time, especially not in a way that recognized that those had been good nights.

"And I heard your voice when you got that letter. You don't sound like that if it's someone you were just fond of. It went wrong, Jethro. I fucked you over. You fucked her over. She fucked both of us. It went wrong in almost every direction it could go wrong. You loved her. I loved her. She… God only knows… I think she loved us, or you, at least. That's why it hurt. That's why it _still_ hurts. And you don't have it in you to give her the attention she wants. I didn't either. I don't know if any man does. But you'll like her again, because she's warm and fun and beautiful and sexy and sharp… and you'll get sucked in, and she'll hurt you when she wants more than you can give. And, honestly, you'll hurt her because you can't be the man she needs."

"Just coffee."

Fornell shakes his head. "Fine, have your coffee. Tomorrow night, come to dinner with Wendy and me."

Gibbs is on the verge of nodding when he notices something in how Fornell said that. His eyes narrow. "Dinner?"

"Yeah, we've had dinner before. Food, at night. You remember how that works, right?"

"What else?"

"Else?"

"Yeah, you've got something else in mind."

"Wendy's sister is in town," Fornell says with a guilty smile.

"No. We've already got the same ex-wife. I am not getting hooked up with your sister-in-law."

"You'd like her."

"I don't need to get set up."

"Says the guy so lonely he's contemplating coffee with Satan Incarnate."

"Tobias…"

"Fine. Don't do anything stupid."

"I won't."

* * *

"Tobias try to talk you out of this?" Diane asks half a minute later when he meets her outside the conference room.

"Yep."

"What are you doing, Jethro? Trying to give him heart failure? Last time you spent that much time looking at me, we were still married."

He raises an eyebrow in question, looking her over intently. "You mind?"

"No. Nice to know you still like to look. Starting to wonder about that these last few years."

"The view was never the problem. Always liked the view." He smiles warmly. "Still like the view."

"Thank you. You're looking awfully fit these days, too. You and Chucky make some sort of get in shape pledge?"

"Something like that. Want some food to go with your coffee for lunch?"

"Sure. Know anywhere that makes a decent salad around here?"

"I know someone who'll whip one up for you."

* * *

Monday and Tuesdays are Elaine's weekend, so while they do go to the diner, the service is a bit less personal. Which actually suits Gibbs just fine. Elaine has heard of Diane, and… that's a complication he doesn't need to get into.

Mindy, the girl who takes over on Elaine's days off is friendly and efficient, but not prescient. They actually have to order.

By the time the food is sitting in front of them, he had gotten through why he and Tim are in better shape. (The quick version. He doesn't like to whip out Jimmy and Breena's heartache to just anyone. He may have indicated it was more of a passing on of Dad-like martial virtues to his two younger boys, and then a few weeks later Ziva got into it.)

"So, Tony just join in as well?"

He looks at her curiously.

"He's all beat to hell. Tim's all beat to hell. They obviously fought each other. Won't talk about it. Probably because Tony's supposed to be the Boss and he's trying to save some face in front of Draga. Can't admit he's out of shape. Looks like he needs to practice more, probably underestimated Chucky, or overestimated how fast he still is. He's getting a bit soft around the middle, you know?" Gibbs rolls his eyes at that. "Been letting Draga and Tim run down the bad guys?"

"Something like that." Gibbs says, after sipping his coffee, figuring that letting her think she knew what happened would work better than trying to deny anything. Then he told her about putting Ed in his place, because that story did involve all of them working together, happy.

"Show me some pictures," she says as he wraps up the story of them putting Ed in his place, smile on her face, having enjoyed that tale.

"Hmm?"

"That's what old people do when they reminisce, right? Chucky showed me some shots of his girl, and you with her. So, show me the rest of your family."

"You're not that old."

She laughs at that. "I'll be fifty next year. I'm old enough."

"Happens to all of us. They're making me retire in January." He switches around to sit next to her and pulls out his phone.

She looks taken aback. "I was expecting you to whip out a shot from your wallet."

"Tim got me this."

"And got you to use it?"

"It's… handy. Plus he wired it so that if you mess with it, it'll take your hand off."

She rolls her eyes. "You and your guns."

"This one has pictures of my kids on it." He grins. "My Sig doesn't do that."

She rolls her eyes again and laughs a little. "So, show me some shots. Got one of all of you together?"

"Got one of all the grown-ups." He flips around and finds the shot of all of them from Tony and Ziva's wedding.

"Oh, wow. You give away the bride?"

"Both times."

"I know everyone but the lady with Ducky. Who's that?"

"Penny Langston. Tim's grandma."

"Date for the evening?"

"That one and every one after it. They're living together now."

"I saw some shots from Tim and Abby's wedding. Emily kept telling me about it. She had a blast, she's still Facebook friends with… Harper, right?" Gibbs nods. "But the ones she took were of the other kids or Tobias. Didn't see a shot of you."

"Here, this one will make you laugh." He found some shots with him in them from Tim and Abby's wedding.

"Are you wearing a morning suit?"

"Yep."

"I had to pull your toenails out with pliers to get you into a tux. What did Abby do?"

"Pouted a little. Threatened to have a RenFaire wedding."

She laughs at that. "I would have paid money to see you dressed like that."

He smiles wryly. "You and everyone else."

She's holding his phone, flipping through the shots, and stops of the one of Tim and Abby dancing together at Tony and Ziva's wedding reception.

"They really that happy?"

"Yeah."

"Good. The night I slept over, when we were talking… I mentioned how things were going wrong with Victor, and he talked a little about how sometimes you need time to get yourself right before you can make it work. That sometimes the second time was a charm."

"Sometimes."

"Looks like it was for them." He catches the wistfulness in her voice, and sees the deep loneliness. He thinks that was always there, too, part of what drew him to her, his sorrow to hers. He catches another layer there, the question she's too hurt to ask, too burned by him and years of rubbing each other raw, the part of her that opened up in his basement, named how she felt, and watched him say nothing.

But that spark is still there. Hope he doesn't feel like he ever earned. It's still lurking back there, still striving for his attention and affection.

He very lightly, just the back of his forefinger, strokes her cheek. Her eyes close and she leans into the touch. "I'm sorry, Diane. Sorry I never saw you for who you are. Sorry I couldn't enjoy you for you. Sorry I couldn't let it go."

She smiles, warm and pleased, overwhelmed by that, for a second, and for one more second, and then on the third second she pulls her armor back into place. He sees her snap it back around herself. And he nods at her, recognizing it, as she says, "Oh, God, Jethro, did you join a twelve step program or something?"

He smirks at that, shaking his head, taking a bite of his meatloaf. "Or something."

"Good, Lord. I knew… I didn't know it was…"

"No. Not that sort of or something. Just… Remember me telling you that I'm not such a great guy to be?"

She nods.

He took the phone back from her and found a shot of him with Molly and Kelly. "Got a bunch of little girls gonna be looking up to me. Another one's due in December. Really hope Tony and Ziva have one, too, someday. Got a bunch of kids who need a Dad. It's time to get to being a man worth looking up to. Time to get to being the guy I was supposed to be."

"And this is part of that?"

"Maybe. Don't know. Doing a lot of thinking, lot of figuring stuff out."

"You're not dying are you?" She says pointedly, spearing a cherry tomato on her fork, lifting it to her lips, amused smile on her face at how intensely he's watching her.

"Hope not."

"But…"

"But they're making me retire. Tony's in charge of the team now. Tim'll be heading to Cybercrime any day. Duck's gonna fly soon. Everything changes."

"Yes, it does."

"Emily's a sophomore now, right?"

"Uh huh." She sighs. "We're starting to look at colleges next month. PSATs are next week. Her grades are good, and if her scores are high enough, she's talking about skipping her senior year and going straight onto college."

"Has she mentioned that to Tobias yet?"

"No, not yet. He's still debating going to college with her and sleeping at the foot of her bed with a loaded gun."

"He's not that bad."

"He's not that good, either. He's scared for her. Afraid he didn't do enough hands on dadding and that she'll run off and throw herself at the first boy who shows her any real affection."

Gibbs shrugs. He knows it's real. Fornell's talked about it. But he missed that phase with Kelly, and now it's a good thirteen years off for his girls. "Want me to help talk him down?"

"Sure. If it happens. Got to see how she does on the PSATs, might not be an option. But if it is… She's so excited to get out there. I want it for her."

Gibbs nods, he knows all about wanting good things for your kids. He takes another bite of his meatloaf. "Now that you've been back at it a while, how you liking have your own badge?"

She takes a sip of her coffee and smiles. "Feeling overshadowed?"

"Nope. Just curious. You spent so much time listening to us blather on about it, wondering how it feels to have one of your own."

"I like it. I really like it. Without it, I'm just a pretty numbers wonk. With it, I'm terrifying."

He snorts, amused. "You are more than terrifying without it."

"Then I'm the step beyond terrifying. 'Diane Anderson, IRS.' One guy wet his pants."

Gibbs laughs at that. They spend a pleasant half hour talking. Him listening mostly, enjoying it, because listening to Diane talk about something she loves is fun. She lights up, happy, passionate, and it's not like he can't sympathize with the high that comes from solving the puzzle and tracking the bad guys down.

"Should head back soon," she says after eating the last bite of the caramel apple pie they shared.

He doesn't need to check his watch to know they are already bordering on late. He's reaching for the check when she snatches it. His eyebrows rose in surprise.

"Not a date, Jethro. IRS will expense me for it, since I'm in the field today."

He nods and they head back toward NCIS.

* * *

She and Tim are finishing up the official who gets what draft when he thinks of his proposal:

"I'm not much for words.

"Most things are better left unsaid

"It'd be a lot easier if I could just pick you up, and we'd start running, and we'd never stop.

"Maybe I'll still do that. But before I do…" and he knelt down and whipped out the ring, and her face was soft, her eyes lit with pleasure and love and she grinned wide, and said, 'Yes."

Running. Take her and run, run away from the pain and who he was and who she was and just live in those minutes of sex and fighting and teasing.

Say goodbye to the past and their ties and… And it never works because you can't run away from yourself. You always come along for the race.

He never told her he loved her. Never said the words. Hid it behind the not talking thing. Wrote it a few times. Gave her some cards with it. But never said it, and right now, watching the late afternoon sun light her hair and eyes, he doesn't know if Fornell is right, doesn't know if he never said it because it was never true, or if he never said it because he couldn't bear to admit it was.

They're still talking through the final settlement of who'd be charged with what and by whom, and what they'd be taking to their individual prosecutors. He's got nothing to add to that, so he takes out his phone and sends a text to Rachel.

_What if I did love her?_

A minute later he gets back: _Would you rather be a rock who used women you didn't feel for to make yourself more comfortable, or would you rather be the guy who couldn't make it work because if it worked that might threaten what you had before?_

He's not sure if she expects a real answer right away, and even if she does he can't give one. They're wrapping up for today. So he sends back a quick: _Thanks. Thinking._

As Diane and Fornell head off, bickering gently with each other, Tim says to him, "Have a good day?"

He shrugs.

"Fornell talked to me some before you and Diane got back from lunch. Whatever it is you're contemplating… Rachel or Diane… It's a bad idea."

"I don't need an intervention."

"And we're not having one. This is just me and you having a chat."

Gibbs glares, not hot, more of a back off look.

Tim raises his hands, peace gesture. "Just, you know, I've been so lonely that anyone who's even remotely interested in you starts to look good. No matter if they're good for you or not."

Gibbs nods at that.

"Gotta give this to Tony." He taps the folder with the agreement in it. "You want to come over for dinner?"

Gibbs shakes his head. "Got some thinking to do."

"Okay. See you tomorrow, then?"

"Yeah." Gibbs is in the process of stepping past Tim when he put his hand on Gibbs' shoulder and pulls him into a hug. Gibbs stands there, and lets himself be hugged, feeling kind of stupid, wondering exactly how much of what he was thinking was on his face today. When Tim lets go, he squints at him _What was that for?_

"Looked like you needed one. Besides, how long has it been since someone touched you? Saturday night? Friday? Whenever it was Abby hugged you last?"

Gibbs nods.

"You need to be touched. We all do. Took a damn long time for me to figure that out. Helps you make fewer stupid decisions."

"Think I'm about to make a stupid decision?"

"I hope you're not."

That gets another eye roll and a gentle ruffling of Tim's hair as Gibbs steps out of the conference room. "See ya tomorrow."


	24. Perfume

Somehow, after Molly was born, the occasional Saturday morning at the Farmers' Market got added to the things they did with the Palmers on a semi-regular basis. Maybe once, maybe twice a month. It depends a lot on caseload and how rammy the babies are. (Might have something to do with the Farmers' Market being open early on Saturdays and babies not grasping the concept of sleeping in on the weekend.)

And, while it's true that Tim's been aware of the fact that DC has a really awesome Farmers' Market, it wasn't the sort of thing he ever bothered with. But once it got added to the routine, he's come to look forward to seeing what will be there.

Since October 10th dawned absolutely glorious, bright blue sky, highs in the mid-sixties, leaves in full autumn fire, he was supremely unsurprised to see: _Farmers' Market? Half an hour?_ Pop up on his phone from Jimmy.

And in half an hour, they were getting Kelly's car seat into Palmer's van, and another half hour after that they were strolling around, looking at the harvest, artisan crafts, and all sort of yummy things, feeling pretty relaxed and happy.

(Well, Tim and Abby are pretty relaxed. Kelly's just chilling in her stroller. Jimmy and Breena are kind of nervous. Molly objected vehemently to riding in her stroller, so she's on foot and wants to touch _everything_.)

But for the most part, they're just sort of ambling along, snagging things like apples, jars of heirloom popcorn, fresh breads, greens, mushrooms, talking with each other.

"What do you think of this?" Abby asks Tim.

Tim's not really paying attention. He's looking at a stall selling wind chimes, half-thinking maybe they should get some; the front porch is kind of bare-looking, half-pondering the fact that he still doesn't have an anniversary present for her, and both of them are getting closer and closer.

"Tim?"

"Huh?"

She thrusts her wrist under his nose. "What do you think of this?"

He inhales and _fucking hell, what is that?_

It's deep and rich and… and… he thinks it's sandalwood and vanilla and maybe jasmine or something floral and some sort of musk, maybe some leather and smoke, there's a tickle of something spicy in the back, and it's just… it's everything perfume is supposed to be. The ads always act like perfume is bottled sex and yeah, it's okay, and there are a lot of scents he likes, but that gotta grab the woman wearing it and eat her alive, nope, he's never felt that.

Not from a perfume. Not until now.

Which isn't to say that there aren't scents that get to him like that. But the kind of scent that grabs him by the balls and yells SEX at him usually is a sex scent. Her pussy, wet, _God yes!_ , that hits him so hard. His saliva along with that. That's a scent that gets him hard. The way his hands smell after he's gone down on her, when they're wet with her cum, and his saliva, and usually some of his musk, too, that definitely gets to him, gets him so hard he'll ache. The way her face smells after she's gone down on him. That mix of his semen on her breath, sure that's usually a too little too late sort of thing, but it gets to him. His semen on her pussy. Also, generally, too little, too late, but for a second round, that one _really_ gets to him.

But whatever the hell it is they sell for three hundred dollars an ounce and stick in pretty blown glass bottles, not so much.

But this, whatever this is, on her arm, that's getting his attention in a _very_ good way. In a wanna-push-you-up-against-the-nearest-stationary-object-and-get-it-on-right-here-and-now sort of way. In an he's awfully glad he's not wearing his kilt sort of way.

He's probably staring at her with that hit over the head hasn't quite managed to come to yet look, because she smiles, giggles, and says, "So you like it?"

He nods. "Oh yeah."

"How much?" she asks with a saucy grin, licking her lips.

He steps closer to her and says very quietly, finger tips lightly stroking her thigh just below where her gray and navy plaid skirt ends, "If we were in a club, I'd already be balls deep in you. As it is, I'm counting the minutes to naptime."

That got another smile and a teasing kiss, as she cupped her hand on his cheek, holding her wrist just below his nose, and he inhaled deeply, again, then titled his head to kiss her wrist, biting gently where her pulse throbbed.

"The booth behind us." She tilts her head toward it. "It's called Thousand and One Nights. My purse is in the car. Buy it for me?"

"Yes!"

* * *

Finding the booth took about nine seconds. Finding the right scent took longer. There has to be at least one hundred different blends here, all of them with identical labels. But, fortunately they're alphabetical and it didn't take him long to find it among the Ts.

It's a tiny little amber bottle. "Five-fifty," says the girl behind the display. Like Abby, she's probably not as young as she looks, her eyes are just too adult for her blue-haired, teenager-ish aesthetic.

But the price is right. Really right. Hell, five-fifty, and he'll buy it out. He takes the other three bottles and hands the woman a fifty.

She just stares at him, shakes her head slowly, and hands him the fifty back. "Five hundred and fifty dollars."

He just looks (eyes on the verge of falling out of his head) at the bottle. It's the size of his thumb. According to the label there's only half an ounce of perfume in there. (He can hear Jimmy laughing behind him.)

"What's it made out of, gold?"

The lady at the booth looks amused at that. "Most of the ingredients actually cost more, per ounce, than gold does. And even if they didn't, the skill necessary to put them together to make something that smells like that is worth more than gold."

He hears the pride of ownership in her voice. "You make this?"

She nods. "I make all of them."

He smiles at her, hoping he didn't insult her with the gold crack. "You're right about that. That's beyond delicious." He puts the other three bottles back, very carefully, and gets his credit card out. "Don't suppose you ever have sales?"

"If you give me your email address, I'll put you on my mailing list. I do, on occasion, have sales."

He hands her one of his Thom Gemcity cards. (This didn't seem like anything he wanted going to his computer at NCIS.) She reads it and looks up at him, scrutinizing.

"How many twitter followers do you have?"

"I don't know. Let me check." He gets his phone out and looks, thinking that's a really bizarre question. "Forty-three thousand four hundred and twelve."

She thinks about that for a tenth of a second. "Mention it in a tweet and the second bottle's free."

And then her question made a whole lot of sense. Better advertising than any five hundred dollars could buy. "Done." He took a quick picture of the bottle, making sure the label, which had the name of the scent, the company, and their website on it, was clear, and then sent out: _Anniversary present for my love._

She tucks the second bottle into a small, padded box, and put both of them in his bag. "Enjoy."

"I intend to."

She looks to Jimmy, who's just been standing slightly behind him, watching the exchange, smirking at Tim, until he realized Tim was actually going to buy it, and then looking stunned. "Anything I can help you with?"

"Got anything I don't need a second mortgage to afford?"

"You got forty thousand twitter followers?" she asks with a smile.

"If I had twitter, all six of my followers would follow him, too."

She smiles at Jimmy and points to the left side of the booth where there are even tinier vials. "Two point five milliliter vials. They all run less than fifty, and for most people that's about twenty or so applications. Or you can use it to scent a bottle of moisturizer, massage oil, shampoo or something like that."

"So you mean he's got enough for the rest of his wife's life?"

She nods. "Pretty much." Then looks at Tim, realizing how that may have sounded. "You can swap one for another scent if you want."

He shakes his head, holding one hand up. "I'm good with this."

"Okay. Store it in a cool, dark place. As long as it stays in that bottle it'll be fine, and that particular scent gets better with age. In about three years, it'll knock your socks off."

Given how he's reacting to it already, the idea of better is staggering. "Good to know."

* * *

Ten minutes later they're wandering back toward the girls. (Jimmy had gotten two little vials for Breena, both sweeter, more floral scents. Tim thinks of them as being 'pink' scents. They're pretty. He likes them. Doesn't have a visceral reaction on any level to them.)

"Can't believe you actually bought that," Jimmy says, smiling.

Tim shrugs. "Got an anniversary present now."

"And then some."

"Got two of them in one week, this should do."

"Two?" Jimmy's expression is curious. He knows one is coming up, but isn't sure what the other is.

"Second first date was the 23rd, wedding's the 1st."

"Good point."

"What'd you do for your first anniversary?"

Jimmy smirks a little at Tim, and shifts his eyes to Breena, about five stalls up sitting next to Abby on a bench, Molly in her lap. She's wearing a pretty maxi dress in pink and coral, and a white cardigan, very pregnant with his third child, sharing a muffin with his first child, and that smirk morphed into a genuine smile. "Made Molly. Maybe. Probably. Like to think we did, you know?"

Tim smiles at that, nodding, he knows. Then Jimmy looks at him, does a bit of quick math, remembers one of his pre-wedding conversations with Tim, and says, "Same thing you did, too."

"Probably. Technically that was our second anniversary. I missed the first, thought it was a week later than it was."

"Oops. Think you may have made up for it this year."

"Maybe. So besides baby-making sex, you guys do anything?"

"Dinner, movie, ate the top of the cake we missed because we spent our wedding day in the hospital waiting to hear if Ducky was going to live, checking our phones every ten second to see who they'd found at NCIS and if they were all right."

Tim sighs. "I forgot how exciting your wedding day was."

Jimmy rolls his eyes. "Try traumatic."

"Yeah."

"Puts for better or worse in context."

Tim nods. By that point they were back to the girls. Abby's smiling up at him, looking excited. "You get it?"

He takes the little box out and shakes it (gently) at her. "I _really_ hope you like this."

She looks mildly confused by that, and he shakes his head, smiling.

"I get any treats?" Breena asks.

Jimmy smiles at her, looking satisfied. "Maybe. Did you want a treat?"

"When don't I want treats?"

"Treats!" Molly says, excited.

"You've already got one," Breena tells her daughter, breaking off another piece of the muffin and giving it to her.

Jimmy sits next to her on the bench. "Close your eyes."

Breena did, smiling.

"Okay, this one." He opens one of the vials, wafting it under her nose. "Or this one?" Then he repeats it with the second one. (Abby leans over, sniffing both as well, nodding at Jimmy, giving him a thumbs up, approving of his choices. He nods at her, pleased.)

Breena's grinning. "They're both great. How about the second one?"

Jimmy covers the top with his forefinger, flicks it upside down, letting the fluid touch his skin, and then gently drags his forefinger down her throat, kissing the other side, and then kissing the top of Molly's head.

"Does Mommy smell good?" he asks his daughter while capping the vial, as Breena rubs her wrist against her throat, and then against her other wrist.

Molly snuggles in close, inhaling loudly, and nods.

And Tim is noticing, able to smell it on her, that before by "pink" he meant flowers, cotton candy, and teddy bears. Now he's thinking flushed skin, wet lips, and hard nipples, "pink." In the bottle it smelled innocent. Nice. Pleasant. Not even remotely sexy.

On Breena, like the scent Abby picked, it's sex in a bottle.

Whatever the hell it is that woman does, it's worth a grand an ounce.

* * *

The car ride home is interesting. Kelly's feeding schedule means they needed to rearrange the seating. Usually if both of their families go out, Jimmy and Breena'll take the front, the girls go in the middle row, and he and Abby hang out in the back. But Kelly wants to eat, and she can't feed herself, so Jimmy's driving, Breena's in the front next to him, and Abby's in the back row with Molly. He's in the middle row, feeding Kelly her bottle.

But, in the middle, twisted toward Kelly, he can easily see both of the girls, and he can definitely smell both of them, too.

Like the women, each scent is very different, but they both hit him hard, both appeal deeply to him. The longer they wear the scents the more they shift, blend into the woman, but amplify her own unique sensuality. Floral and sweet are still there on Breena, innocence is there, too, maybe. Debauched virgin, that's the words that come to mind, pink roses and eagerly pulling the bride's panties off. And Abby's scent is still warm and sensuous, spicy, exotic, dark, making him think of darkly painted eyes, silky veils, tied wrists, and hidden sex in verdant, wet, blooming, walled gardens.

The last time he was this turned on by both of them together was the tail end of that dry spell before Kelly was born. When they were sitting on the sofa together, and there was just lots of beautiful woman in front of him looking all soft and pregnant and sexy.

And breathing in both scents, watching Breena in coral and pink and white, long flowing blonde hair, very round breasts and tummy, all sensuous, pregnant curves, and Abby in thigh high socks, a short plaid skirt, relaxed gray sweater with a wide collar slipping off her shoulder, and short , sassy blonde/pink hair, he can honestly say that he is deeply grateful that it's not going to me more than an hour until he gets laid.

The girls are chattering away, smiling, having what looks to be a great time. He's quiet, torn between keeping the tip of the bottle in Kelly's mouth and the x-rated fantasies flying through his mind. He's vaguely aware of the fact that Jimmy's not saying much either, and he half-wonders if the way the girls smell is hitting Jimmy as hard as it's hitting him.

* * *

Abby's putting the groceries away when he gets downstairs from putting Kelly down. They don't have all that long, half an hour tops, twenty minutes, realistically, before she wakes up and wants to eat again.

DC has an awesome Farmers' Market, and everyone and their cousin agrees with that. By the time they got free of traffic a good hour and twenty minutes had gone by.

So, now, home, baby down, it is indeed naptime, and Abby still smells like walking sex.

Delicious, sultry, hot, exotic sex bopping around the kitchen, (she's got music on, pretty loud) putting groceries away.

"She go down okay?" Abby asks without looking at him, pulling a bunch of broccoli out of one of their bags. They've had occasional issues with Kelly not transferring well between her car seat and the crib.

He nods, steps right up behind her, pulling her flush against him, his hands on her hips, and nuzzles her throat and ear. He nibbles gently before sucking her earlobe. "For future reference, wearing this scent means 'Fuck me right here and now, I don't care if the neighbors are watching or not!'"

She squirms against him, as he takes the broccoli out of her hand and tosses it toward the counter. (Didn't actually hit the counter, ended up on the floor.)

"You're saying I shouldn't wear it outside of our bedroom?" Her hands stroke up his sides, curl around his neck, and then run through his hair.

"Depends on how much you want our neighbors to know about us," he says, wet and hot against her ear has his hands slide under her sweater, gently cupping her breasts.

"Uh huh." She grinds into him, rubbing her ass against his erection, and he groans quietly. "And what if I wear it to work?"

That gets another groan as several images go spinning through his mind. His left hand settles on the back of her neck, stroking lightly with his nails, getting a sharp inhale and goosebumps out of her, then grasping firmly, as he pushes her to the counter, bending her over it.

"Unless you want Corwin to walk in on this." He flips her skirt up, kneeling to kiss her through her panties, hot breath meeting moist cotton, then hooks his finger in the crotch, and pulls them down in one swift move. He gets them off her left foot, and lifts her leg, so her knee and thigh are also on the counter, spreading her wide open, while kissing his way up her right leg. "I wouldn't suggest it."

She groans as his tongue finds her clit, arching back against him. "You'd just have to… oh fuck…" His teeth graze over her clit. "Go fast… wouldn't want… God…" She shudders as he sucks gently, one finger stroking over her gspot. "That to happen."

He stands up, popping the button on his fly, unzipping quickly, and pushing his jeans and boxers down. "Fast?" It slurs into a long groan as he thrusts into her, hard, fast, deep.

"Yeah!"

She's touching herself, and he's rocking into her as quickly as he can. This isn't about spinning their orgasms out or finesse. This is desire so sharp it has to be acted on at once. This is need burned into quivering strokes and half-moaned grunts.

It's not pretty at all, just hard, sloppy fucking, his hands gripping her ass, as he slaps against her in hard, solid thrusts, one of her hands steadying herself on the counter, the other rubbing fast on her clit, and both of them loving every second of it.

Doesn't take long before both of them are crying out, bodies jerking, quivering in blissful release.

Took even less time after that for both of them to tense and look over at the sound of the sliding glass door opening followed by Jimmy saying, "Hey, we got one—" Which is when Jimmy actually looked over and sees what they were up to. "Oh shit! Sorry… um…" He grabs one of the bags off the kitchen table. "Bye." And sprints out of there.

Tim's head drops to Abby's shoulder and they both giggle as they hear Jimmy's car pull out of their driveway.

* * *

While it's true there are a lot of things Breena likes about the latter months of being pregnant, constantly craving salty snacks is not one of them.

But with twoish months to go, she's well into the MUST HAVE SALT, SALT, ALL SALT ALL THE TIME, SALT! phase of her pregnancy.

And, the Farmers Market was kind enough to provide her with many wonderful options for dealing with this particular craving.

As they pull out of Tim and Abby's neighborhood, heading toward their own, she's really hankering for the home cured olives they'd picked up. For some reason they sound unimaginably good right now, and she really, _really_ needs them.

But she can't find them. All three of their bags are in the space between the front seats, and she's looked through the first two, no olives, and the third… still no olives.

Of course, the reason there are no olives in the third bag is that it belongs to Tim and Abby.

"They've got one of our bags."

Jimmy sort of shrugs at that. He's having enough difficulty trying to focus on the road and not how Breena smells, or the fact that her dress is gloriously low cut and he can see the tops of both breasts, and how much he really wants to be touching them right now.

Given that, he is not feeling a burning need for olives right this second.

But, in that he is a veteran pregnant daddy, he feels the flavor of the silence that follows his shrug, and looks at his wife. Okay, looks at her face, he's been looking at her, as much as he can, without crashing the car. "You want us to turn around and go get it? Or is tomorrow at breakfast soon enough?"

"Now!"

He nods. "Now it is." And runs them through a u-turn at the first intersection he sees where it's legal. Minutes later, he pulls back into Tim and Abby's driveway, grabs the bag that isn't his, and heads toward their back porch.

He can see the grocery bags on the kitchen table through the sliding glass door, and yes, one of them is his. Since Tim and Abby have a no knock policy, he opens the door, heading toward the table, saying, "Hey, we got—" which is when his eyes slide to the right, and see what is happening in the part of the kitchen not visible from the sliding glass doors. "Oh shit! Sorry!" he grabs his bag, fast, drops theirs, "Bye," and runs back out, blushing furiously.

Breena looks at him curiously when he gets back into the car, blushing and giggling.

He gets out, "They were busy."

She stares at him for a second, then figures out what busy means, and starts to laugh, too.

Jimmy holds up the bag. "Busy or not. I got you your olives."

"Good husband!" She takes the bag from him, leans over to kiss him, smiles, and says, (while opening the jar) "Hoping for some busy time when Molly goes down?"

Jimmy nods, kisses her shoulder, looks her over, from head to toes, puts the car into reverse. "God, yes."

She smiles brilliantly at him, and gently licks the juice off the olive between her fingers, making sure he sees her tongue slipping soft and wet over the round tip of the fruit.

He closes his eyes, grits his teeth, and puts the car in reverse, trying to focus on driving. "You're killing me, you know that? Literally, dead."

"Yeah, but you love it."

"I do."


	25. Goodbye

"It's tomorrow, isn't it?" Rachel asks as they're wrapping up the session.

"Yeah." He doesn't need clarification that they're talking about his wedding anniversary. Only one big thing happening tomorrow, and the advent of yet another Tuesday isn't it.

"What are you going to do?"

"Don't know."

She doesn't believe that, but his evasion has her interested. "What do you usually do?"

He shrugs at that. It's been a while since he hasn't wanted to answer her questions but this one's… not so much personal, though it is, it's more that he'd prefer she didn't think he's gone fully bonkers.

But she's learning his different looks and silences, and knows that this is something he wants to say, but hasn't worked himself up to yet, so she pokes a little further. "Don't have a usual, or don't want to tell me?"

He half-smiles, sips his coffee. "I've got a usual. Sounds crazy."

"You're already talking to a shrink," Rachel says with a gentle smile.

"It's straight jacket crazy."

She raises one eyebrow. "I doubt that intensely. No one wraps you in a straight jacket unless you're a danger to yourself or others. Are you going to do anything dangerous tomorrow? More so than usual." After all, he's a cop, a day at the office might be awfully dangerous.

"No." He shakes his head. "We got married a bit before sunset, and… usually, around then, I see her. We talk."

Rachel's considerably less surprised by that than he was expecting her to be. "Does it happen when you aren't alone?"

He tries to remember. He doesn't take the day off, but he also does his best to be home by sunset. Hasn't always worked, but it's probably been a while since it didn't. "I usually am, but if not, then no, it doesn't happen. She waits until I'm on my own."

"What do you talk about?"

"Stupid stuff?" He's not sure how to characterize what they talk about. But it's not… important… on any real level. Last year he told her about Tim and Abby's wedding. She liked the idea of him dressed up in the morning suit, and really liked him giving away the bride.

"The weather?"

"Nah. Not that stupid. Just… stuff. Whatever's going on. The kind of things you store up over a day or so to tell your spouse. Dinnertime talk. Always wraps the same. I tell her I miss her. She tells me to move on. That we love each other." There's a sad smile on his face. "Just stupid, everyday stuff."

"Talk about Kelly?"

"No." They don't. And he doesn't know if that's because it'll break the illusion in his mind of Shannon, prove she's not really there, or if it'll just make him too sad.

"Do you see Kelly, too?"

"Rarely. Sometimes on the anniversary of their death. Sometimes when I've been close to dead." He watches Rachel for another moment. "Why don't you think that's insane?"

"Jethro, one of the exercises we often have clients do is talk to people who aren't there. Say the things they need to say. That you're doing it on your own isn't a problem."

"I'm telling you I see ghosts. That's not a problem?"

She flashes him a _get over yourself_ look. "One of my clients is a wizard. Full on magic. Summons angels, likes to talk to them about the secrets of the universe. And you know what, I am completely indifferent to the truth value of his magical skills or the existence of his angels because that's one of the aspects of his life that's functioning and makes him happy. And as long as your ghosts are also trying to point you in a healthy direction, like Shannon encouraging you to move on, I have no trouble with you chatting with them. Ghosts in and of themselves aren't a problem. Ghosts encouraging you to do stupid things, that's a problem. Anything like that happening?"

"No."

"Then enjoy your visit with Shannon."

"That my homework?"

"Yes." And he can tell, by her smile, that like with enjoying some time with Diane, she expects this to take him deeper than just a pleasant evening.

* * *

"How are you going to get what you need if you can't let go?" "It's time, Gibbs." "You need to let go." "You can't get what you need if you're still clinging onto me."

She's said it a lot of different ways, lot of different times. At least every year for the last five years. Said it to him when he was with Hollis. He doesn't think she said it before then, but that's at least ten years now.

"It's time, Gibbs." He's not sure if that's her, or if he's saying it to himself. Either way, when they quit work, he shakes his head at Tim, who invited him over for dinner, gets into his truck, and begins to drive away from his home.

* * *

He hasn't been back here in years.

They aren't here. Not really. Names on a stone and bones don't matter, not in any real sense, but he doesn't have a better place to go in mind, so this will do.

He sits down, back against the tombstone Shannon and Kelly share. There's one empty space on it, for him, and sooner or later, and these days he's gotten to the point where he's consistently sure it'll be later, and more importantly, he's also hoping it will be later, Tim, Tony, and Jimmy will carry him here and lay him to rest with his girls.

He feels her before he sees her.

That's always been true. Was true the first time he saw her. There was just a sense that something, someone earth-shakingly important was nearby, and it drew his eyes, made him look.

He saw the red hair, fine build, and warm smile and fell in love before he even knew her name.

Her hand lands on his shoulder, and he grasps it, squeezing gently, not saying anything while she sits beside him.

"Been a long time since you've come here," Shannon says to him, letting his hand go and resting her head against his shoulder.

"Yep."

"Don't know if I like you coming here to remember us. Home is better, or the beach, or somewhere we were together."

He nods and sighs.

The sun is setting and it's starting to get cold. He points to the left, where a scarlet maple filters the sunset, the reason he picked here. "This time thirty-six years ago you were standing in front of a tree like that, getting your picture taken."

"Oh." She looks over at it. This one is bigger, one of many trees, not a lone ornamental in the churchyard. "Why here, why not the church in Stillwater?"

"They remodeled in 2006. The tree's gone. So's the church, really. It's glass and steel now."

"Blech." She sticks out her tongue, and then smiles at him.

That pulls a smile out of him. Emanuel Episcopal Church had been made of the local stone. Quarried less than five miles from the site. It was old, always a little damp and cold, no matter how hot it got outside, the gray granite slowly going black and greenish with time. It built it almost two hundred years. But it was old, and damp, and cold, and growing black mold, and didn't attract new young people, and stone was hard to renovate so that it met with the OSHA codes, so they ripped it down and built it up new and shiny.

She takes his left hand in hers and strokes his wedding ring. "Putting this on you was one of the happiest moments of my life."

"Mine, too."

"But it's time to take it off. You've spent twice as long mourning me as you did married to me."

"I know." And he does. He feels the weight of those years very intensely right now.

"And this last year, you've done a good job getting yourself right. You're finally letting the anger go and filling up that hole with love."

He's looking at her fingers stroking his. "I miss you."

"I know." She's staring him in the eyes, her expression soft, tinged with sorrow.

"I'm trying." He smiles sadly at her, and she strokes his face, leaning in to press a gentle kiss to his lips.

"I know that, too. And you're succeeding." Her face is earnest and encouraging. "You were meant to be a family man. Being a dad and granddad, it's good for you."

"Yeah, it is."

Shannon shifts around so she was kneeling on the ground in front of him, between his outstretched legs. She holds both of his hands in hers, and stares into his eyes.

"You were meant to be something else, too."

He nods, knowing that the heart of the family is husband and wife.

"All I ever wanted was for you to be happy, Gibbs."

"I know. It's all I ever wanted for you, too."

She squeezes his hands. "You made me so happy. And you can make me happier. You're ready; it's time to move on."

He cups her face in his hands. "How can I be ready for this?"

"Because you are. Because it's time." She shakes her head. "It's more than time. Because the hate and the anger and the guilt are almost gone, you just have to let them go. Because I want you to remember me and smile, not cry. Because I want to stop being your pain and go back to being your joy." There are tears streaming down her face as she kisses the ball of his thumb.

"You are."

"Not yet. But I will be."

Gibbs slips the knife he always carries off of his belt, and digs a shallow hole over Shannon's grave, then places the ring in it. She smiles, still crying, as he does it, helping him replace the dirt and grass over his wedding band.

"Will I see you again?" He doesn't wipe away the tears that are streaming down his face.

She shakes her head. "Not for a good long time. Got a lot of life left in you, Gibbs, you gotta go live it."

He's quiet, looking at the hole, feeling the lack of her very intensely.

"Gibbs…" He feels both of her hands on his shoulders. She's standing behind him, and he turns to look up at her. "I've never had any problem with sharing you. I shared you with the Marines. I shared your love with Kelly. One of these days, you'll bring another woman here and you'll tell her about me, and it will be okay. You'll love her, and she'll love you, and it will be okay."

He nods, unable to speak.

Shannon bends down, kisses his forehead, and vanishes.

He spends a long time staring at the darkening sky, crying for what was lost, fearing what is new, but when he stands, he feels purged of anger, of guilt, and ready to go on.

* * *

It's well after dark when he gets home, and like with burying the ring, he knows what he needs to do.

He goes upstairs, takes his mattress and box spring off the bed, and begins to take it apart. Carefully, slowly, he knows he'll save the wood. Won't use all of it, and he'll redesign, but at least some of the new bed will be made with this wood. The main support structures, probably. The big beams, the legs. That seems fitting to him.

His fingers linger on the oak, drift along it.

It'll never really be goodbye. Shannon and Kelly were so much of his life, so much of who he was and who he is, and that will never change. They're the bedrock foundation of Gibbs.

But it's time to build something new on that foundation.

It takes an hour for him to get it completely disassembled and then all of the pieces down to the basement.

And from there he spends the rest of the night sketching, working on a new bed, something that remembers who he was, honors it, but isn't trapped by it.

* * *

In the morning, there's no call out, another paperwork day. He can feel all four of his teammates staring at his hand, seeing the missing ring. He shakes his head. He'll tell them about it, explain, sooner or later, but not yet.

Right now, this needs to be just his.

And right now, they aren't pressing him on it, which he appreciates.


	26. October 23, 2015

At 11:23 on October 23, 2012 McGee and Abby were making love for the first time in a little less than a decade.

They were in her apartment, on the floor, right in front of the front door, having a _very_ good time.

* * *

At 11:23 on October 23, 2013 Tim and Abby were sitting in his car, pulled over on the side of an empty road in Kansas, listening to the song Abby had picked for Tim to celebrate the anniversary he thought was the next week.

She snuggled in his lap as they listened to the music, cold fall air whirling around them, as stars undimmed by the lights of man gleamed overhead.

* * *

At 11:23 on October 23, 2014 the soon to be Mr. and Mrs. McGee were in bed, just having finished making love in their new home for the first time. He was spooned up behind her, hand on her belly, both of them wondering if they had just made a baby.

* * *

And, at 11: 23 on October 23, 2015 Mom was nursing an intensely fussy baby girl while Dad googled ear infections, hoping there was something they could do to make her more comfortable because, with the exception of when Kelly has Abby's breast in her mouth, she's screaming bloody murder and all the baby Tylenol in the world does not seem to be helping.

At all.

And while it is true that if you were to ask either of them if this was how they had hoped to celebrate their third anniversary, the answer would be no, that this is, at its heart, the essence of love.

They are both exhausted, dark rings under their eyes (Kelly was up all last night and all day), crabby, Abby is god awful sore, wanting to wince every time Kelly sucks because she's been nursing for close to an hour and a half now, and no one's nipples were designed to take that, but they are still working together, still supporting one another, and still trying to comfort the person their love made.

And yes, there is sarcasm and snarkiness here, and short tempers, but when Abby can't take another suck, she hands Kelly to Tim, and he takes her in his arms gently, letting her suck on his finger. (She's less than thrilled about that, but she still seems to prefer it to the pacifier.) He kicks back the recliner sofa, props Kelly on his stomach and chest, letting her suck away, and Abby snuggles into him, and both of them catch a few minutes of sleep while Kelly chews on her Daddy's finger.

Eight minutes later, when Jimmy texted them back with _Baby Orajel, could be early teething or sore throat to go with the ear infection_ , they were overjoyed to try it, and see Kelly fall into an almost immediate sleep.

So, for their third anniversary, the now married, now parents, now Mr. and Mrs. McGee, got to sleep, both of them, for a solid three and a half hours.

And by that point, that was all the celebration either of them wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Just a short one today. More tomorrow/next day. Passed the million word mark last week. Lots more to come!


	27. Pittsburgh Rare

He supposes it's something of a record. Almost five full days. He took the ring off on Tuesday. They'd all seen it by Wednesday. They saw his look and didn't press.

And kept not pressing.

But, with the little glance he sees Ziva shoot to Tim and Jimmy as the three of them head to the men's locker room after bootcamp, he's got a pretty good sense that not pressing is about to end.

* * *

Double teamed by Tim and Jimmy is both frustrating and impressive. Impressive because they're handling it well. Frustrating because it's annoying as hell to have two guys nattering away with each other, very much _not_ asking you about what happened so that you took your wedding ring off while talking about wedding anniversaries (Tim's is next week, and the party that acted as Jimmy and Breena's wedding was the second week of November.) and being married and all of that jazz.

But they aren't actually asking. They're just talking to each other. Slowly. With lots of looks at him and breaks in the conversation where, should he so desire, he could, add some information of his own.

"Doing anything special on Sunday?" Jimmy asks Tim, looking at Jethro, and both of them pause, leaving an opening for Gibbs, but he doesn't say anything, so Tim responds. And they just keep doing it.

Finally, having done it all through getting stripped off and their showers, without any useful results, Tim opened his locker, pulled out his boxers, and turns to Gibbs and says, "So, you want us to keep doing this? Cause we can keep it up until you get home, and then we'll wander down into your basement with you, drink your booze, and just keep doing it."

"All three of the girls have deputized us to do this. We've been told not to come home until we've gotten confirmation that you are at least okay," Jimmy adds, opening his locker.

"I'm fine," Jethro says, pulling his briefs out of his locker.

Tim and Jimmy look at each other, roll their eyes, and then they look back at Gibbs.

"What exactly do you think is going to happen to me if I go home and tell Abby, 'He says he's fine?'"

"Breena's not buying that either," Jimmy says, shaking his head.

"And really, just because she won't jump down your throat about it, does not mean Ziva will be cool. Our ninja will be displeased and take it out on us next week."

"You won't be here next week. And I won't either," Gibbs reminds them. Sunday is Tim's anniversary, and Gibbs will be babysitting. Though, last he checked, Tim thought everything was starting up well after bootcamp ended.

"I am not going one on one against her if I have failed to have gotten the information she wants. So, shall we keep chattering away, waiting for you to volunteer the information, or do we go out, get some drinks, and just talk?" Jimmy wraps with.

"Girls don't expect us home until later. Dinner's on me. Whatever you want." Tim says as he buttons his jeans.

" _You_ should be getting home. Abby doesn't need to be spending all day alone with a sick baby."

Tim shakes his head, reaching for his shirt. "Nope. Not getting out of it that easy. We already had that conversation. Ziva and Tony are heading over to my place after she gets dressed. Abby's getting some down time. They're getting some babysitting practice. We're interrogating you for details." Tim smiles.

Gibbs grits his teeth and sighs, pulling his t-shirt over his head. The downside of a family full of cops is that none of them are good with just letting mysteries be, and they've got the planning skills to dig deep and find out what's going on.

"Fine. But you two are going to be useful."

"We're trying to be," Jimmy adds, zipping his fly.

"Useful to me."

"That's what he meant."

* * *

For the most part, woodworking is soothing for Gibbs. He likes the whole thing: the tactile experience, the feel, smell, and sound of metal shaping wood. The repetitive, yet focusing, motions. Put that all together and it's a very good place for him.

Stripping the finish off of wood on the other hand… Not his idea of fun at all. Dousing wood in nasty smelling chemicals that you have to keep yourself covered head to toe to prevent it from touching your skin does not make his day.

So, if the wonder twins want to pick his brain, they can also strip his wood.

* * *

"Is that you bed?" Tim asks, very surprised at what they saw when they got into the basement.

Gibbs nods.

Jimmy steps closer to the pile of beams laid out between two sawhorses. "You took off your ring and disassembled your bed?" Taking of the ring makes a certain amount of sense to Jimmy, the bed is leaving him boggled.

Gibbs nods again, and Tim adds, "It's the bed he built her."

"Oh."

Gibbs tilts his head toward his workbench. There's a sketch of a new bed on it. Like the rest of Gibbs stuff, it's fairly restrained. Like the original, it's mostly straight edges and square corners, but there's more detail work here, showing how he's grown as a woodworker in 36 years, beveled edges on the headboard, intricate legs, and when he finds the right piece of wood, he'll make his own veneer for the main part of the headboard.

He explains this to the guys, who are following along as well as two guys who know basically nothing about woodworking can. He wraps up with, "It's time to rebuild."

Both of them nod. They may not have gotten what precisely a hidden dovetail was, let alone how Gibbs was going to make them, but rebuilding is a concept they both understand.

"What do you want us to do?" Jimmy asks.

He picks up the bottle of solvent and tosses gloves at them. "Gotta get the finish off of these."

They're nodding along, gloving up, getting ready for this when Gibbs opened the bottle and Tim's lungs decided that they weren't going to play along.

"I'm on dinner," Tim says with a wheeze.

The other two stare at him.

"Can't do this," he says, heading up the stairs. "Abby doesn't need a sick kid and husband at home. Stay down here much longer and I'll have a full on asthma attack."

Jimmy and Gibbs nod at him, and he heads up.

* * *

Jimmy surprises Gibbs by not saying much of anything. He's just steadily working away on the wood, dabbing on the solvent the way he showed him.

"Thought you guys were supposed to be cross-examining me."

"Tim told me it was your anniversary. You took your ring off. You're rebuilding the bed you built her. I tell the girls that, they'll know you're okay. That you're doing something healthy with your grief. Don't need to press more than that. Though, if you want to talk…" Jimmy gestures to indicate his ears work just fine.

Gibbs doesn't say much. They keep working. A few more minutes pass and Jimmy says, "I've been thinking about this… How to work with someone who isn't Ducky. I know it's not as soon as you heading off, but one day he won't be down there anymore. It'll be me and whoever I hire."

"Got your own stories."

"Not sure I want to spend all day telling them. Not sure I want just quiet, either. I think part of why he talks all the time is to help fill the room. Too easy to just blend in with the dead if it's just silent. A voice, even your own, helps keep your mind on life."

Gibbs tilts his head, adding more solvent to his rag; he can understand that. "His mom told stories. Knew everything about everything, and she told them all the time. Used to say they were a clan of Bards and historians. They told the tales that made men immortal."

"You knew her before she started to slip away?"

He shakes his head. "Met her four-five times. And the last few times she didn't remember who I was from time to time. Remember Ducky talking about her."

"Keeping the stories alive. I guess that'll pass down to Tim."

"You've got stories, too."

"He's better at telling them."

"Doesn't mean you can't."

Jimmy smiles at him, and Gibbs starts to wonder if he just talked himself into a trap. "Nope. It doesn't. Of course, just because your best friend tells the stories, doesn't mean we don't want to hear yours, too."

Gibbs shakes his head. "Smartass."

Jimmy smiles again, even brighter. "I try. So, are you okay? This really moving forward or a new layer of hiding?"

"Hope not." Gibbs pats the beam under his hand. "Was the cross piece, one of them," he points to the other one that matches it. "Gonna cut it in half, here." He gestures to the midpoint of the beam. "Then split it in quarters." He points to the legs of his current bed, which are propped against the wall. "Will cut two inch-thick sections and an eight-inch section out of those, take the corners off, and fit the quarters into them. Glue it into a solid block. The eight-inch piece'll get drilled for pegs, and that'll connect into the mattress supports. Those supports and the pegs'll be made from new wood."

"The memories and history are still there, but changed into something beautiful, something that supports a new life?" Jimmy looks at the pieces in front of him and starts backtracking. "Not that the old one wasn't beautiful before, but…"

"I got ya, Jimmy. And, yeah. It's easier to build it with my hands than say it."

"Where's the ring?"

"With her."

Jimmy touches Jon's diamond on his medic-alert bracelet. "Are you going to keep anything to mark it, her?"

"Sleep on this bed, live in this house, sailing the boat with her name. Probably enough, maybe too much."

"Naming the boat after her… That's you and her heading off into the sunset together?"

Gibbs nods. That was the idea.

"Maybe naming it after her, especially if you're thinking that you might want to sail off with someone else at some point, maybe that's not such a good plan."

That wasn't a thought that had hit Gibbs, but hearing it, there is a certain logic to it. "Been thinking of her as Shannon since before I started building her."

"Yep. But it's been… four years? Lot's changed since then, though, right?"

"True."

"Come January, you're not going to just vanish off the face of the planet, right?"

"Didn't intend to." Which is the closest he's come to admitting to any of them that that did used to be the plan.

"So, maybe she needs a new name." Jimmy can see Gibbs thinking about that, so he doesn't press. A few minutes later, as they flip the beam they're working on over, to get the underside wiped down with solvent, he does ask, "You find out what Franks was doing? Tony and Ziva aren't talking."

Gibbs nods.

"You're not talking, either."

"Can't tell you for the same reason he couldn't tell me."

"Oh, god. How illegal is it?"

_Very_ says Gibbs' expression.

"Drugs?"

"No." _Quit asking._

And Jimmy may not, as he said, be psychic, but he can read that loud and clear. "Fine. Are you going to start doing it?"

Gibbs doesn't answer. He does glare slightly.

"I'll leave it alone."

A few seconds later, they hear Tim yell down, "Jimmy, where are your keys?"

"In my pocket." He puts his rag down, and strips off his gloves. "Why do you need them?"

"Got the fire started, thought it might be a good plan to buy some food to cook on it."

"Good point." He heads to the base of the stairs and tosses his keys up to Tim, who caught them tidily.

"Back in a bit. Fire's lit, got the grate closed." Jimmy nods, and a few minutes after that, they hear his car pull out of Gibbs' driveway.

Jimmy heads back, snaps the gloves back on, and says, "Okay, last thing about whatever it is Franks was up to, keep good notes if you want Tim, Tony, and I to pick it up in twenty year."

"Maybe it won't be necessary then."

Jimmy's eyebrows shoot up, and Gibbs shakes his head again, not willing to say more.

* * *

Gibbs is better at cowboy cookery than Tim. In that he's been doing it for decades, this is not much of a surprise.

So, yes the steaks are simultaneously somewhat less rare than Tim or Jimmy like (black around the edges) and a bit more rare than they like (quietly mooing in the middle), but they are steaks, and the fire's still burning, so getting the middle bit cooked more isn't that much of an issue, and he absolutely nailed the greens.

(Of course, the fact that Gibbs thinks this is the best spinach in the history of spinach may have something to do with the fact that it's kale and chard. Or possibly that Tim cooked them in lots of butter, garlic, and salt, and then added a little cider vinegar to them. Either way, this was the most enthusiastic they'd ever seen Gibbs about a vegetable.)

They're sitting near the fireplace. Tim and Jimmy close to the flames, trying to get their steaks a bit less rare. Gibbs is further back, sitting on the floor, leaning back against the sofa, happily eating away.

Jimmy's got a piece of steak on his fork, charred top and bottom, luke-warm, almost purple center. He's toasting it over the fire, trying to get it to rare without burning it any more. "So, is next week's bootcamp learning how to cook over a fire?"

Gibbs sniggers at that, chewing, looking like he's enjoying this quite a bit. "Don't like your steak black and blue?"

Neither of the guys know what that means.

"Pittsburgh rare?" Gibbs adds, seeing that means nothing to them, either. He stares at Jimmy, confused. "He grew up in California, so I know he doesn't get it. But you're from western PA, right?"

"I went to college there. Wasn't eating much steak then. Grew up in Wilmington, Delaware."

Gibbs nods at that, tucking it into his mental map of Jimmy. "Burn the hell out of it on a really high flame and keep the middle rare."

"People do this to steaks intentionally where you're from?"

Gibbs nods. "Douse 'em in melted butter first, stick 'em over a high flame, fwoosh. Black and blue."

"Really?" Tim had been feeling pretty embarrassed about the steaks. They'd been sizzling along, looking fine, smelling great. He went into the kitchen to start on the greens, and as they were cooking down nicely, he started to smell char and by the time he got them flipped they were black on the side closest to the flame.

"Mom made 'em like this. She said that the steelworkers would take cuts of beef to work, pop 'em on the cooling steel for a sec, flip 'em, and that was lunch."

Jimmy's staring at him, not buying it. "You sure that wasn't an accident? Sounds like the kind of story my mom would tell when she accidentally messed something up in the kitchen. Spaghetti's still crunchy in the middle, 'Oh, that's the way they eat it in Italy.' Spaghetti's cooked to soup, 'That's how they do it in France.'"

"Saying my mom couldn't cook?"

Tim's got _Danger! Back away!_ all over his face.

"I'm sure she was a great cook. Just, you ever see Pittsburgh rare or black and blue anywhere else?"

Gibbs laughs. "She was a weird cook. She'd put chocolate sauce on apple pie or ketchup on scrambled eggs. Pittsburgh rare is a real thing, not like 'French' spaghetti soup."

"Ketchup on eggs?" Tim asks, that's not just weird to him, it's revolting.

"Uncle Ron came home from World War II and ate ketchup on everything. He'd put it on oatmeal if you let him. Sort of like how MREs all come with Tabasco. Everything came with ketchup then. She was seven when he came home, and idolized him, did everything he did, so for a while she put ketchup on everything, too. Ketchup on eggs, she liked."

Tim's shaking his head, eating a less raw piece of his steak.

"'French spaghetti soup' only happened once or twice. Most of the time dinner was okay. But she did like those god-awful pour canned mushroom soup on top of canned tuna, frozen peas, and noodles and bake for ten hours casseroles."

Both Tim and Gibbs wince at that.

"Jello salads," Gibbs says. "No dinner was complete without some sort of jello with all sorts of weird stuff floating in it. Orange jello with chunks of carrots, apples, and raisins. That was always part of Thanksgiving."

Jimmy and Tim look at each other. Tim says, "Doesn't sound too bad."

"The carrots and apples were hard and crunchy, size of a dime."

"Oh," Jimmy says.

"Red white and blue Jello for Fourth of July. Cherry and lime Jello for Christmas, eggnog jello on top. Pink and yellow and blue Jello eggs for Easter. Name a holiday, and we had Jello for it."

"Labor Day." Jimmy says.

"Whatever the pink stuff was with watermelon and strawberry chunks, Cool Whip on top."

"Your mom loved Jello."

"Yeah, she did."

"Baskin Robbins," Jimmy says. "We had one five blocks from our apartment. Friday nights in the summer, Mom'd make hot dogs on the little grill we had on the back patio." He looks at the steak on his plate. "Actually, they were usually cooked pretty close to this. Then we'd walk down to the Baskin Robbins and get ice cream. Summer break's ten weeks long, so one year, fourth grade, fifth, something like that, we decided we'd try all 31 flavors." Jimmy smiles at that. "Each get two scoops, and try all of each other's as well. Clark let us down, he kept getting the same four flavors, but we still made it."

"Tim?" Jethro asks. They've been talking about family food memories, but besides listening, he's not adding anything.

Tim shakes his head. "Wasn't a big deal for us. When I was little, it was mostly just me and Mom. So, sandwiches, take out, McDonald's playland some nights. By the time I was ten, Sarah was a baby, and we'd split cooking. Nothing special, just enough calories and vitamins to keep us going. Only time dinner was ever a big deal was when The Admiral was home, and I didn't cook those nights. Didn't eat much, either. Gran was a 'good, plain' cook, which was code for well-done everything cooked with salt and pepper and boiled veggies with butter or bacon. She could bake though. Good pound cakes and biscuits. Penny didn't learn to cook until she was in her sixties. She got back from traveling one time, and had all these ideas she wanted to show us. I remember that."

"Any of them good?" Jimmy asks.

"Probably. I was fourteen and lived on a diet of white bread peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, soda, microwave pizza, my own cooking, and fast food. Salt and pepper was the extent of my skills with seasoning. I remember being mildly horrified by anything she tried to spring on us. However, I had mastered spaghetti by then, and never served it as soup."

Jimmy snorts at that.

"How about Shannon, what was her special thing?" Tim asks.

Gibbs smiles, looking at the fireplace, and waits a beat or two, until they've got the kind of steaks he makes on there in mind. "Who'd you think taught me how to do that?"

"Wasn't the Marines?" Jimmy asks.

"Or Boy Scouts?" Tim adds. Even he got the cooking badge, so he's sure Gibbs had to have gotten it, too.

"No one gives a pile of Marines or Boy Scouts decent steaks. They'd kill 'em. Cook 'em like Jimmy's mom's hotdogs."

Jimmy's eyeballing Tim, the steaks sitting between them, Tim again. Tim pokes him in the knee with his foot.

"Shannon's family liked to camp. She and her mom believed that being miles away from a stove was no excuse for making a bad meal. She was even better with fish. When we lived in California, we'd spend long weekends at the beach, cook 'em less than a hundred feet from where we caught them. Doesn't matter what it is, catch it, gut it, cook it over a driftwood fire, finish it up with s'mores. That's gonna be a good night."

Jimmy nods along with that.

"Did that once, with my grandparents," Tim says. "Hadn't thought of it in years." He watches the fire, sorting through the memories, trying to place them. "Would have been little. Sarah wasn't with us, yet." He rubs his eyes, thinking more. "Dad and Pop caught the fish. Dad built the fire, really big and high, probably not great for cooking on but it looked awesome. Spent the day fishing and playing in the surf. Might have been clams… Are clams an east coast thing? I remember a big pot, so something must have gone in that pot. But we were with Gran and Pop, so that meant California, not the east coast." Neither of the other two answer, letting Tim talk. Both of them getting an idea of how young 'little' had to be if Tim was referring to his father as 'Dad.' "Built this huge sandcastle. Walls, ramparts, moats, more walls, towers… Surf got it eventually, but it had to work hard to get it. I don't remember eating the fish. Probably did, get yelled at for wasting food if you didn't eat it, and I don't remember yelling. I do remember the marshmallows." He smiles at that image. "Pop was holding me around the waist, making sure I didn't get too close to the fire, showing me how to keep rotating the marshmallow or it'd catch fire. Then my mom just stuck hers right into the flames, and up it went, she let it burn for a few seconds, blew it out, and popped it in her mouth, grinning at him, teasing him about how much better they were charred."

"And thus we learn how Tim learned to cook over an open flame."

Tim rolls his eyes at Jimmy. "That was a good night. And marshmallows do taste better gently browned with salty driftwood smoke."

Gibbs is nodding in agreement. "Three, four years, when they're all potty-trained and down to one nap a day we'll find a place on the coast and do that."

Jimmy smiles at him. "Already got a place. It's on the water. Four bedrooms. Don't even need to wait for them to get potty-trained, never have to be more than two hundred feet from a convenient changing table. Ed and Jeannie's place in the Outer Banks is ready and waiting for little girls to come and play. Ziva and Tony manage to not be really pregnant this summer, and we can head down."

"Remember what Leon said…" Tim adds.

Jimmy shrugs. "By this summer you'll run one department, I'll have another, Abby'll have a third, Tony and Ziva'll have the MCRT and we'll all have seconds in command. Won't be like the lab shuts down when Abby leaves, or MCRT can't investigate. Cybercrime'll go without you for a day or two. And yeah, I'd need to get up there pretty quick, if someone dies, but that's not as big a deal as having the investigative branch, the lab, and the morgue all shut down."

Tim nods, that's a pretty good point. Jimmy looks at Gibbs and asks, "You got more than one fishing pole?"

"I will by this summer."


	28. Forgive?

For as lovely as November 1st, 2014 was, November 1st 2015 was determined to be ugly. Lead gray clouds, a mixture of cold rain, light sleet, and mist (Abby calls it freezing ick.) was drifting sulkily from sky to ground.

The theoretical plan for the evening was dinner out. Short dinner out. Abby still nurses three times a day, and two of them are seven and ten, so they can't go out for too long, but a decent meal and some good conversation is certainly a possibility.

If all goes according to plan, and the weather stays the current 35ish degrees, Gibbs'll be there around seven, Kelly will eat, they'll go out on their first baby-free date since June.

* * *

"What are you doing?" Jimmy's voice on the other end of the phone.

"Nothing much. Just fed Kelly," Tim says.

"Good. I'm already on my way to your place. We're taking the girls to the mall."

Tim just stares at his phone for a second, wondering what the hell was going on with Jimmy. In that, among other things, he last saw Jimmy a hour ago when they were all leaving Ed and Jeannie's, he wasn't expecting to lay eyes on him again until tomorrow. "All right. And we have a burning need to go to the mall with the girls, why?"

"Because it's 36 degrees out and raining, Molly's climbing the walls, Breena wants a nap, and Abby wants you out of the house so she can get ready for tonight. Hence, we're going to the mall."

That seems like a fine reason to Tim. "Okay. I'll get Kelly suited up."

* * *

In general, Tim is not a fan of malls. At this point in his life, he'd say he's spent, maybe, but this could be an overestimate, four hours at a mall in the last ten years, not counting when he's had to be in one for a case or when he's eaten in a restaurant attached to one.

He's just not a mall guy. He wants something, and unless he needs it right now, he buys it online.

In general, Jimmy's not much of a mall guy, either. Though, between a significantly more extroverted personality, and the fact that just about every tenth store in a mall sells shoes, Jimmy does tend to have a better time in them than Tim does.

But, Jimmy is, in addition to not being much of a mall guy, a bit further along on the Dad curve than Tim is, and he has realized (namely because Breena told him) that at the Mall they have several areas covered in soft foam rubber designed for small people to run around on.

And he's in possession of a seriously rammy small person. A small person who, when not tearing around their house like a wild woman, is whining and fussing. A small person in desperate need of space to play hard and fast without driving her very pregnant, very uncomfortable, and very tired mama insane.

In that it is, as Jimmy previously noted, cold and raining, the park and his backyard is out.

So he's driving, Tim's in the passenger seat, the girls are in their car seats, and they are en route to the mall.

* * *

They're the only married men there. Okay, not the only married men, there have to be some other guys with wives somewhere in the mall, but the little area where the toddlers are running around shrieking, all the other guys are at least ten (and three of them look more than fifteen) years younger and none of them are wearing wedding bands.

It occurs to Tim that his demographic does not appear to hang out at malls.

But Molly's having a blast. Kelly's sitting on his lap, watching the other kids play. He and Jimmy were chatting about something, he doesn't remember what, when one of the grandmas (lots of them around) commented on how pretty their girls were, asked how old they were, standard questions.

And they know how this works, so they ask which one of the kids are hers, and about three minutes of polite conversation ensues.

Jimmy checks his watch. "This time last year, I was getting suited up for the wedding."

Tim nods. "Was already at the church."

"Hard to believe it's been a year."

"Yeah. Fast year." Tim smiles, looks at Kelly, kisses the top of her head. "Good year." Jimmy nods at that, his smile not nearly as bright, because for him it's been a much rougher year, and Tim nudges him with his shoulder. "Next year'll be even better."

That got a real smile out of Jimmy. "Yeah, it will."

"Excuse me," The Grandma asks, "I know this is… I was wondering, how did you find a surrogate? My son and his partner would like to be fathers and are thinking about it and…" She can see from the stunned look on Tim and Jimmy's face that they may have been talking about a wedding, it clearly wasn't a wedding to each other, and she starts backtracking fast. "Oh, God. I'm sorry. I heard you mention the wedding and… you've got one stroller and… and your girls look just like you, so you couldn't have adopted and… I'm so sorry."

Jimmy recovers first. "No problem. It's his anniversary. Mine's in May. My wife is eight months pregnant, so we already have the two baby stroller, so with it wet and cold out it was just easier to use the one stroller."

"Oh. I'm so sorry." She's cringing and looking horribly embarrassed.

"Really, not a problem," Tim says, wondering exactly what the protocol for something like this is, because, yeah, he'd prefer that people didn't think he was married to Jimmy. But at the same time, having a fit about it is just really uncomfortably homophobic, and the woman already indicated she had a gay son so… "Just, don't know anything about surrogacy. We both… um… did it the old fashioned way."

She nods, still looking embarrassed. "No. I guess not. Happy anniversary."

He nods back, a _really everything's all right_ smile on his face. "Thanks."

She looks away, watching her grandsons toddle about.

* * *

They are heading back to the car an hour later, after Molly had tired herself out and was ready for nap time, when Jimmy says, "That was a first."

"No one ever thought you were gay before?"

"I don't think so. Never got hit on by a guy before, if that's what you mean. Just… When did we get to the point where two married guys out with kids at the mall are assumed to be with each other?"

Tim shrugs.

"It's not like our rings are even close to matching." In that his is white gold and Tim's is mostly black titanium, not matching is something of an understatement.

"Did you notice we were the only married guys with kids there?" Tim asks.

"Yeah. That's weird, too. I mean… It's not like I'm one of those you've-got-to-be-married-to-have-kids-guys. Don't have any problems with Draga. But… I mean… _none_ of those guys were married to their kids' mom."

"Maybe the young ones don't wear rings?" Tim says with a shrug, fairly sure he's wrong. All the baby Sailors and Marines they run into with wives wear the ring.

"Maybe." Jimmy looks back at their girls. "I'd kind of like to know my grandkids' dad is going to stick around."

Tim looks at his ring and shrugs. "Ring's not magic. Can't make anyone stick around."

Jimmy catches that and realizes Tim's thinking of his dad. "Yeah. I know. But…"

"No. I get what you're saying. I never would have even noticed it before Kelly, and it's my anniversary so it's on my mind, but, yeah, I did check the other guys, and it did feel weird to see that none of them had a ring."

"That little voice, in the back of your head, sounds a lot like Gibbs, and you didn't even notice it was in there until you saw the guy with the two kids and the pregnant girlfriend, and it's yelling, 'Man up, you pussy, go marry that woman!'"

Tim laughs a little at that. "Wasn't quite those words, but yeah, something like that."

* * *

They were a few miles down the road when Jimmy asks, "So, how's talking to Wolf going?"

Tim shrugs. "It's going. Not like I'm experiencing any great revelations as to the nature of my past or character."

"I don't think that's how it's supposed to work. Feeling any less angry?"

"Yes, but how much of that was beating the shit out of Tony and how much of it is talking to Wolf, I don't know. He suggested that if I really was feeling calmer, less pissed, that maybe I should invite my mom and Ben for Kelly's christening."

That surprises Jimmy. Sure, they all wonder what's happening with Tim and his mom, but he hasn't been saying, and none of them have been asking, not wanting to intrude. But, if he's willing to talk about it, Jimmy wants to hear. "Do you want to do that?"

"I don't know. I've talked to her twice in the last month and it was… Okay. Actually, lot like Tony before the fight, really tentative and nervous, but maybe better than nothing."

"What's Abby think?"

"That if we do it, they shouldn't stay with us."

Jimmy nods emphatically at that. "I'll second that."

"She's also kind of nervous about how the rest of the family, and Gibbs in specific, would deal with her."

"Ohhh…" Jimmy winces like he's staring at a train wreck. The idea of Gibbs and Tim's mom in one room hadn't occurred to him, but now that it has, he's not seeing how that could be anything but trouble.

"Yeah. That makes things… complicated."

"I mean, if you tell him it matters to you, and you're trying to patch things up, I'm sure he'll support you…" Though Jimmy doesn't sound very certain about that.

"I know. In a he won't actually shoot her in the head or do anything out and out that he thinks would bug me, but it won't be warm or easy or…"

"Yeah." Jimmy nods. Gibbs isn't the poster child for warm or friendly when he's at his best. At his worst… defending one of his cubs… No… Jimmy doesn't think that'll be pleasant on any level.

They drive another mile.

"So… you going to do it?"

"I don't know. Part of me wants to see her. And she's never seen Kelly. And if she's going to be part of our lives, then the whole forgiveness thing would be part of that, right?"

"Probably."

"And Wolf seems to think that forgiving people is part of the whole not being mad all the time thing. Forgiving them or fully cutting ties. That this… in between, ignoring it until I can't anymore, blowing up at it, and then ignoring it again thing isn't good."

Jimmy stares at him and then says the thing you're not supposed to say. "Might be easier to cut ties…"

Tim shakes his head, staring at the ceiling. "I know." He smiles, very sad. "But she's my mom. And, it's stupid, but, I miss her, sometimes."

Jimmy squeezes his hand. "Whatever you're gonna do, I'm here."

"Thanks."

They drive a few more minutes, ending up in Tim's driveway. He looks back and sees both girls asleep. "You want to put her down with Kelly? Stick around, give Breena more quiet time?"

"Sure."

It takes a few minutes, but they get both girls settled in the nursery. Tim pokes his head into his bedroom and sees Abby getting a nap as well. He smiles at that, thinking it bodes well for staying up late tonight.

He heads down to the kitchen and grabs himself a cider. "You want something?"

Jimmy pokes around his fridge a bit, and grabs another one for himself. "This is good." They both settle on Tim's sofa, and Jimmy asks, "So, what else are you and Wolf talking about?"

Tim sighs, blowing out frustrated breath. "We've been talking about the difference between what happened with Tony and with my Mom. 'Cause I'm not angry at him anymore. And how he…" Tim stops for a second to collect his thoughts on that. "Tony put it all on the line, put his literal body into play, and let me scream, physically and metaphorically about how angry I was at him. Beating the shit out of him probably wasn't the best way to handle it, but… it worked.

"And I don't know if I can do that with her."

"Scream, not fight, right?" Jimmy says as he takes a sip.

"Yeah," Tim rolls his eyes a little. "I'm not getting into a fist fight with my sixty-two year old, slightly arthritic mom. But… with Tony, he basically said, 'I know you've got to get your own back… so do it.' But with her, what the hell is getting my own back? The one thing I want most, being able to consider my Dad a monster who acted alone, I can't do anymore."

"Nope. And I don't know what getting your own back would be. What'd Wolf say?"

"I'm supposed to be thinking about it, trying to decide how I'd like our relationship to work. At some point, I need to sit down with Sarah and Penny and talk to them, too. Because it's not just me."

"No, it's not. How are you guys handling your dad?"

"You know my part: completely out of my life. He visits Sarah when he's in town."

"She still has contact with him?"

"I'm not going to ask her to rip her dad, who didn't pull any shit on her, out of her life, because he was an ass to me."

"He was more than an ass to you. Not like he was just impolite."

"I know. But…" Tim rubs his forehead. "He's still her dad. Maybe he started overcompensating or something after they divorced, but she's got happy memories of learning how to ride a bike, and sailing, and fishing, and getting to go onto his ship and meet the sailors and…"

"Okay. I get it. Maybe after he lost you he decided it wasn't going to happen again?"

"Yeah, well, he could have tried not treating me like shit." Tim says with a self-depreciating smile. "That might have worked wonders. 'God, sorry I was a flaming asshole, Tim.' That would have gone a long way."

"Really?" Jimmy doesn't look like he's asking so much for himself, as to get Tim to think about that more.

Tim shrugs, probably not. That would have been a band aid on an amputation. "Would have been better than what actually happened."

"I guess."

"I called him, a year ago…" Jimmy's really surprised by that. "Didn't like my vows… That's not true, I didn't love them. They were so bound up in… in not being him. In having seen, lived this train wreck that was their marriage and knowing who and what I didn't want to be, I called, asked what he thought he was doing. I mean, how did it go _that_ wrong? I needed a piece of the puzzle I didn't have. Only talked for like, five minutes, something like that. But, 'Hey Dad, I'm getting married tomorrow, gonna have a baby in the summer,' got nothing. Just disapproval that Abby was already pregnant. I mean, even if you didn't like the guy, you'd offer some congratulations on that, right?"

"I would."

"Yeah. Me, too. But from him, nope. And in that it didn't involve him cussing me out or insulting me, that was our best conversation in… God… Ever."

"I'm sorry, Tim."

"Yeah. Me, too. So, anyway, he and Sarah are fine. I haven't been brave enough to ask about it, what she might be doing with him about me, beyond telling her that I didn't expect her to cut him out of her life. Penny yelled at him a few times and when he wouldn't come to the realization that he'd done anything inappropriate, she stopped talking to him."

"She cut ties with her son?"

"Yeah. I… I don't know what to do with that, either. I know how bad the idea of losing Kelly hurts, and I don't want to be responsible for that for her."

Jimmy shakes his head at Tim. "I know one thing to do with that. Stop thinking it's your fault. He behaved in a way your grandmother felt was indefensible. She cut ties with him because you don't keep relationships with people who do things like that. None of that is your fault."

"I guess."

"Stop guessing. You know. Him being a psychopath is not your fault."

Tim smiled at him sadly. "But I don't know. Wish I did. Be easier if I did. He adores Sarah. She was able to be everything he ever wanted for her, and they get on fine. She could make him smile, so why not me?"

Jimmy slowly closed his eyes and opened them again, then put his cider on the coffee table and scooted closer, wrapping an arm around Tim. "It was never you."

Tim snorts, bitterly. "Be a lot easier to believe if he'd been a psychopath to both of us."

"It wasn't you."

"Yeah. That's what everyone but he and my mom say."

That last bit deflates Jimmy, feeling Tim's hurt from his mom having agreed with whatever it was his dad thought, even if she didn't want to use the same tactics. "What did your mom say?"

Another depreciating smile from Tim. "That they were afraid I was too soft. That I needed to be tougher or the world would beat the shit out of me. She's not saying that anymore. Now it's all, 'So, so sorry,' and walking on a tightrope, afraid to say something that'll scare me off. I have a feeling Penny ripped her a new asshole or six. But before she started double and triple thinking everything she said, that came out. I was too soft, too afraid, and needed to be tougher. And Sarah was fearless, she always was. I was twelve, she was three. I'm babysitting. She had one of those Big Wheel tricycles, and she'd take it to the top of the driveway and go down, full speed, straight toward the garage…"

"And you were babysitting when she crashed?" Jimmy knows where this story is going, but that doesn't make hearing it easier.

Tim nods. "Yep. One of the few times he got home before Mom did. She's screaming. There's blood all over the place. She'd split her lip…" And they both know, first and second hand, how a split lip bleeds like crazy. "I'm trying to get her cleaned up, and he comes in, takes one look around, orders me to my room. So up I go, but I can hear him talking about his brave little girl, and I can see him, half an hour later, zooming down the driveway with her, she's shrieking with laughter. Later, after she was asleep, he came to my room and chewed me out for an hour over how I was an irresponsible cunt incapable of keeping a three-year-old under control, and if I couldn't keep her safe, how was I ever going to be of any use to anyone else? How were other _men_ going to depend on me? How was I ever going to run a ship if I couldn't make a toddler obey my orders? And on and on and on and fucking on.

"I'd been taking care of her on and off, with help and without, since the day she came home from the hospital. I spent more hours alone with her that week than he had in her entire life at that point, but yeah, I was the irresponsible fuckwit who couldn't be entrusted with another life."

Jimmy's rubbing his shoulder, trying to be comforting. "You know, before Breena, I wasn't a church guy. But my family went, and I had some buddies in Sunday School. No one I was really close to, we didn't go to the same school, but there were guys I'd hang out with between the services."

Tim nods, he's familiar with how that worked. He had a few guys like that at his church, too.

"One of them was gay. He came out senior year. The second he turned eighteen, his parents booted him out of the house. And everyone at the church, the grown-ups at least, were all, 'You made the right decision. Can't have a kid like that hanging around. You've got to think of your younger kids,' all this bullshit that boiled down to if only Tom had acted different, if only he'd pulled it together and been the guy his parents wanted him to be, it'd have been all right.

"They were all sanctimonious assholes, Tim. One big circle-jerk of rabid homophobia. Tom couldn't have 'pulled it together.' He couldn't have made himself straight. And it was not his fault his parents and the people around him were scum. And it's not your fault you weren't Captain America or whatever the hell sort of super sailor your parents wanted. It is entirely their fault they couldn't look at the child you were and loved you like you were. And if Sarah was more what they were hoping for, well, Tom's little brother and sister were straight, and none of that changes that his parents and yours are assholes. It's on them, not you, not Tom. Them."

Jimmy smiles at him a little. "That's why it's a job, right? We make these people, and they're gonna be whoever it they are, and it's our job to love and shelter them and help them become the people _they_ want to be, not the people we want them to be."

Tim closes his eyes and leans his head on Jimmy's shoulder for a moment, seeking and taking comfort from his touch. Then takes a deep breath and sits up, away from Jimmy. "What do you think, should I see her again?"

"I think seeing her is going to hurt. But it may be pain you need to go through, like having a bad tooth pulled. I think not seeing and not making a firm decision as to if she's going to be in your life is putting that pain off. Tooth is still bad, it's still festering in there, and you've got to get it out. Wolf's right, ignoring it until you blow up is a bad plan. I think the only thing that's going to fix this on any long term sort of way is making that decision, cut her out or forgive her. And that… I don't know what the answer is to that."

They heard Kelly start to cry, and Tim got up, fast, going to grab her before there was any shot of waking Molly up, but as he headed up, he said to Jimmy, "Neither do I."


	29. The Boss

Book Four: The Boss

* * *

Tim gets into the office, sees that he's, like usual, in after Gibbs but before Tony and Ziva. He's not sure if Draga's in yet or not. There is a RedBull on his desk, but there's usually a RedBull on his desk. Could be fresh, could be yesterday's. He's not poking around to find out.

So, paperwork.

He sits down and fires up his computers.

Like always he hits his email first. Checks to see what's new or interesting or updated. As he's scanning through the list of new letters, he finds himself thinking of talking with Jimmy, and then later, over dinner, with Abby, (wasn't the most romantic meal ever, but probably something they needed to talk about. After dinner made up for it.) and hits the compose button.

It's quick, just a few words:

_Hey Mom,_

_Kelly's christening is on Sunday. There'll be a big family party after. I know it's last minute, but if you and Ben want to come up for it, we'd like you to._

_If you're free, dinner's at our place on Saturday, 5:30._

_Hope to see you then,_

_Tim._

And he hit the send button before he could think about it again.

* * *

He's filling out paperwork when his phone rings. That startles him. Yes, he has a phone on his desk, but it's probably been three years since he's given that number to anyone. If you want to get a hold of him, you call his cell phone.

That's even the number on his card now.

But the phone on his desk is ringing, and for a second there's a tinge of dread in his heart. Is his Mom calling him? Does she want to actually, physically _talk_?

But it's still ringing and the rest of his team is staring at it, so… "McGee."

"Agent McGee…" He identifies the voice of Vance's secretary and feels a wash of relief. "Director Vance would like to see you."

Oh. That sends a spark of flushed happy through him, only one thing Vance is likely to want to have a one on one chat with him in person about. "Okay. I'll be up in a few seconds."

He hangs up and feels all four of his teammates looking at him. He points up, and everyone nods, understanding what's about to happen.

Fifteen seconds later, he's standing in front of Valerie, and she tells him, "Go on in," so he does.

"You wanted to see me, sir?"

"Yes." Vance looks up from his computer, stepping out from behind his desk. "Twenty minutes ago Jenner gave me his letter of resignation. Sixty days' notice." He offers Tim his hand, and Tim, smile breaking across his face, shakes. "Congratulations McGee, as of January 4, you'll be the newest NCIS Department Head."

There's a smile on Leon's face, too, but Leon's smile has some bite to it. "My understanding is that the techs down in Cybercrime are aware of Jenner's resignation. So, while it is true that you are not taking over for two more months, letting them know that you're their new Boss is entirely on your shoulders."

"Ah." Yes, there is that, and especially sitting down with Manner to have a chat with him about how he's not the guy taking over Cybercrime. "Then I guess I should be making an appointment to have a talk with Jenner soon."

"I'd think that would be an excellent idea."

* * *

He knows exactly what is going to happen if he heads right down to the bullpen. He'll have all four of them congratulating them, and in a matter of minutes Abby, Jimmy, and Ducky will be up for a little impromptu party.

Which would be great. Which he's intending to enjoy. But not right this second, because the guys in Cybercrime don't know about it yet, and he doesn't want them finding out via scuttlebutt. He especially does not want Manner finding out by having someone say to him, "Hey, did you know there's that guy up in the MCRT celebrating getting your job?"

So he flashes a quick text to all seven of them: _1/4/16 first day as Head of Cybercrime! Cybercrime doesn't know that yet. Need to talk to Jenner and Manner._

As he's heading down the steps, his phone buzzes, another text from Abby to everyone, along with Breena and Penny: _If there's no hot case, we're cutting out early. 5:30. Dinner and drinks on us, at the diner._

Three quarters of the way down the steps, he's hunting through the NCIS employee directory, finding Jenner's number. He sends a quick text. _Can we talk?_

Once he's back at his desk, supposedly working, watching everyone smiling at him, smiling back at them, not really paying attention to his paperwork, feeling really happy, he gets back. _Kind of busy. Does it have to be today?_

_Be nice if it was, but no, it doesn't._

Two more minutes go by. _Got a few minutes at 2:00. That do it?_

_Probably. See you then._

* * *

"Agent McGee."

"Jenner."

They stare at each other. He worked with Jenner briefly back when he was down here. He's changed. Jenner hasn't. Still that same tightly wound, pale, nervous personality. The kind of guy who's physical appearance is so bland he blends into the background while you're looking at him, but his mood is so nervous he puts everyone else on edge. "What can I do for you, McGee? We're kind of busy down here, big changes coming soon, and I didn't expect a request for time from the MCRT golden boy. Finally run into a puzzle so big you can't handle it on your own?"

Tim looks at Jenner strangely. There's a lot of bite in those words, and okay, yeah, he'd been spying on his team, and making sure Vance knows how inefficient Jenner's managerial style is, but he also didn't think Jenner knew that. And, also, he's thinking that it should be fairly obvious why he's down there. A senior tech guy shows up at your desk half an hour after you give notice, putting two and two together shouldn't be difficult. But he's not getting any sense that Jenner knows this call is about anything other than a case.

"It's about those changes. Vance tells me your last day is December 31st."

He sees the recognition light on Jenner's face, and felt his mood go from curt and slightly annoyed to absolutely frosty. "And your first day is January 4th."

Tim nods, smiling, trying to... He's not sure… Trying to not piss this guy off just by existing? _Screw that._ He stops smiling.

"So, why are you down here?" Jenner asks.

"I wanted to talk to you, get up to date on all the cases you're working, let your team know that I'll be taking over, transition stuff."

"Before I leave, I'll have briefs written up for all active investigations. Obviously we won't be working on the same things then as we are now."

"Nope. From now until then, when I'm not actively investigating or in court, I'd like to be down here, getting to see how you work, how your team functions, getting to know the players."

Jenner shrugs. "You can do that, but I don't think it'd be very informative. No one does their best with someone breathing down their necks."

"All right. Then I'll see how they do when they're at less than their best. When do you want to tell them I'll be taking over?"

 _Never_ is clear on his face. "Doesn't matter."

"Then today will work fine. I understand you were grooming Stephen Manner to be your replacement?"

He nods, terse, and Tim gets the sense that Jenner genuinely likes Manner and is pissed that he's not getting this job.

"Steve's been my right hand man for six years now."

He gets another layer of this. "And you told him he'd take over for you?"

Jenner nods. "He deserves to run this department. He's put the years in, done the job, and done it well."

Tim has his own opinions about that, but in that Manner is one of the only two techs who passed all of his tests, he deserves at least basic respect.

"Obviously Vance thinks I'll do a better job of it."

"With all due respect, Agent McGee, Vance has no idea what happens down here. He wouldn't know a worm from a phishing attack."

"But I do. And he knows that when he needs the impossible done yesterday, he calls me, not you. And he knows that when NCIS needed to up its Cyber security, you guys built a system. That system got hacked in three weeks. So, he had me build a wall around us that's never been breached. A wall so well-designed that people have had an easier time breaking into the building to use our computers than getting through by hacking. So, do you mind if I pull Manner off of his station for an hour or so and have a private chat with him?"

"Have at it, Agent McGee. I assume you know who Manner is?"

"Yes."

* * *

Manner's sitting at his desk, earbuds in, some sort of pop music blasting away, fingers flying over his keyboard. Tim doesn't interrupt. He hates it when someone breaks his flow, so he's not going to do it to someone else. Sooner or later Manner'll notice him standing there.

The correct answer is a hell of a lot later than Tim expected. For ten full minutes he stands there, watching Manner at work. By the end of the third minute, he's thinking Manner may be intentionally ignoring him, but since his eyes haven't flicked off his screen, and this is the guy who coded straight through his font attack, it's entirely possible he's really that into it.

It's a good long time to study the man. Since he's trying to get Manner to notice him without interrupting, he's facing him, so he can't see what he's doing on the computer. That leaves his physical person.

Tim's pale. He always has been, always will be. Can't be Irish back to the dawn of time and not be pale. Manner's ghostly: porcelain skin, white blonde hair, light blue eyes. Tim's debating if he's some sort of albino or whatever that tribe in Northern Europe the girl from Frozen was based on is. Either way, working in a dimly lit basement is not helping at all.

But, eventually, his fingers slow down, and Manner looks up, sees Tim, leaning against the edge of his cubicle, and jerks with surprise.

"Can I help you?"

"Yes. Hi." He holds out his hand. "I'm Tim McGee. I was wondering if you'd be willing to get a cup of coffee with me?"

Manner squints at him, seems to be figuring out who he is, does not shake his hand, and looks annoyed. "I've got work to do. Don't need to be flirting with you."

Tim stands up a bit straighter, tucking his hands into his pockets. "Let's try this again." He smiles, but it's not warm. "Hi. I'm Tim McGee, in two months I'll be your boss. I thought, since Manner kept telling you that in two months you'd be the boss, that it'd be a lot easier to get the news that wasn't going to happen in private, and that we could talk about what happens next without your eleven co-workers all listening in. So, want to get a cup of coffee with me?"

Tim waits, patiently, as what little color he has drains from Manner's face when it hits him that he's not going to be filling the office he'd been designing in his head for however many months now, then he waits through the homicidal rage phase, which lasts a bit longer than he was expecting, and he waits a few more minutes for the what-the-fuck-am-I-going-to-do-now phase to pass into the find-out-more phase.

So, all in all, he stands there for almost twenty minutes before Manner says, "Let me get my jacket."

* * *

"It wasn't supposed to be you."

Tim shrugs. It's not raining anymore and warmed up a bit, so they're sitting on one of the benches outside the Navy Yard. For all he's been thinking about this moment, because he's known for months that job one was going to be telling Manner he didn't get the job, he never felt like he'd gotten to a good way to deal with this. If Manner can play with the team, Tim wants him to play. Manner's probably about a good third of the talent NCIS Cybercrime has on staff, and losing him would hurt.

But if he can't play, or won't accept Tim as his boss, Tim's not interested in dealing with that headache.

So, somehow, he's got to get through this, making sure that Manner knows he's the better man for the job, but not alienating him so much that he decides to stick around and be a pain in his ass.

"I disagree, and Vance does, too."

Manner shakes his head. Like Jenner, he doesn't seem to hold much respect for Vance when it comes to what they do. "How did you…"

"I went up there and asked for it. I gave him a plan for where I wanted Cybercrime to go. I gave him a tactical assessment of your strengths and weaknesses. And then I showed Vance why I'd do it better than Jenner is, and honestly, better than you would, too."

Manner isn't buying that. Scorn's radiating off of him as he sips his coffee. "You really think you're good enough at this to be my boss?"

"I know I am."

Another snort. "Yeah, I know your reputation. You're the one everyone calls in when they're stuck. But it's not just hacking down there. You've got to run the team, run the ops, run the paperwork. So you're slick with a computer, fantastic for you, you've got to be a bureaucrat, too."

"I need to do it, you're right. But you don't, and Ngyn doesn't, and Hammon and Brent and Jiff and the rest of them don't. Right now, bureaucracy is the biggest problem you guys have down there. We're cops. What I need to be is a team leader. What you guys need to be is a team. You've been sitting down there thinking you're some sort of hall monitors and keeping all your paperwork tidy. You've got the cleanest record of any government agency on the east coast, lowest cracked case ratio, but your paperwork is perfect because you spend more time dotting I's and crossing Ts than you do catching bad guys. No more. We catch bad guys. We stop them from hurting people. That's our number one priority. We do it with computers instead of guns, but we work together and we do it. Are you in any way surprised that Leon found that to be a compelling vision for NCIS Cybercrime?"

"Are we being honest with each other?"

Tim holds up his hands. "Why not?"

"I don't think _Leon_ cares one way or another what happens down in Cybercrime. I don't think he has a clue as to what we do down there. I think he's got a pet who's handy with a computer who asked for a new assignment. If the rumors I hear about you are true, it's in _Leon's_ best interest to keep you happy, because otherwise you'd be a nightmare of a whistleblower. And, now, instead of running a smoothly functioning operation, I'm stuck with having to manage a cowboy who wouldn't know a rule if it jumped up and bit him in the ass."

Manner looks sincerely taken aback when Tim bursts out laughing at that.

Tim shakes his head. "The rule thing. You have no idea. And if you'd ever seen me near a horse, you'd know why I'm laughing at the cowboy image."

"Rumor has it you've hacked the CIA, FBI, DOD, Justice, Mossad, Coast Guard, MI5 and 6, more private companies than anyone can list, more individuals than anyone can count, couldn't care less about legal or warrants, and you think you're good on rules?"

Tim smiles, still amused, but he can see this is pissing Manner off. "The thing about rumors, most of them aren't true. But the thing I find really interesting here is this, you seem significantly more interested in following the rules than catching the bad guys."

"If we don't follow the rules, we are the bad guys."

"Justice and Law aren't synonyms."

"Said every villain ever."

"I'll remember not to send you in on the wet work missions."

Manner's eyes went wide.

Tim holds up his hands again. "I'm kidding. The real question is, do you want to stick around? I can guarantee you Cybercrime under me will not look like Cybercrime under Jenner. If you don't like that, I won't hold you leaving against you. Jenner'll give you a great review, and I will, too. If you aren't interested in working for a 'villain,' now might be a very good time to spruce up your resume.

"But, you are one of the two techs who passed every test I ran. And while I don't like what you did with that, I don't want half of my best talent running off as soon as I show up."

"Don't like… Tests…?" Manners is looking very confused by this.

"Like I said, I did a tactical assessment for Leon of your strengths and weaknesses. Think it's a coincidence you've been hacked several times since summer? You and Ngyn were the only ones who noticed I was doing it. She actually figured out it was me. Vance had to tell you because you missed my breadcrumb trail. Neither of you thought it was worth pulling your team into action, or letting Jenner know what was up.

"My first goal for this team is that it will be a team. One of you gets hacked, it'll be an all hands on deck until we're secure again. I sat there and watched as all twelve of you had your screens go bonkers, and most of you did nothing. You coded straight through it, and didn't even make a move until after you'd finished your work.

"And if you think that maybe you deserve Cybercrime more than I do, that you'd do a better job of it, that I'm getting this department because I'm being paid off to keep me happy and silent, then you need to ask yourself why you didn't rally your team, fix the breech, and find who caused it? Because I can absolutely guarantee I would have, and Vance knows that."

"I didn't 'rally the team' as you put it, because I knew the attack was coming from the inside. It didn't do anything important, so there was no reason to go full bore on it. Vance said it was a test, so there was no reason to go any further."

"The attack looked like it was coming from the inside. It wasn't."

"Yeah, well no one is suggesting you don't know your way around a computer."

"I'm flat out saying that you're the second best person in Cybercrime and you fell asleep at the switch. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but ever since I built the wall we've got protecting NCIS, all attacks have come from the inside. No one's gotten through from the outside, which also should have been a huge neon sign for who was hacking you. So, if you're staying with us, I want the words, 'coming from the inside' to vanish from your vocabulary. I know for a fact we've had people break in to screw with us, because it's easier to get into the building than it is to get into the computers."

Manner is not looking thrilled with this assessment.

"So, you sticking around?"

He shakes his head. "I don't know."

"Fair enough."

* * *

He heads back into Cybercrime with Manner, who goes straight back to his cubical. From there he stops by Jenner. "You've told them you were resigning, right?"

"Yeah. Told 'em Stephen was their new Boss, too."

Tim mentally winces. "Wonderful." He thinks for another moment. "Was 'busy' code for getting the congratulations party in order?"

"It was."

"You mind if I get them together to tell them I'm taking over in January?"

"Go for it."

"Thanks." Tim turns away from Jenner and quickly notices there's no good workflow here. He can't just gather them together or call campfire. His eyes flick over the basement, straight rows of cubicles, huge bank of filing cabinets, at the far end there's a counter, a coffee pot, a soda machine, and a snack vending machine.

Closest thing they've got to a meeting place.

He takes a minute to set the text then sent it to all of his team. _Meet at the coffee pot. 15:05._

And in five minutes he had twelve techs, all standing, pretty awkwardly, in front of the coffee pot, most of them looking around curiously.

"I'm Tim McGee. I work upstairs with the MCRT." They kind of nod along with that. From the way they're looking at him, they're expecting him to hand them a problem to solve. "Jenner told you today that he's resigning at the end of December. Come the beginning of January, I'll be taking over as Head of Cybercrime." Eleven sets of eyes all turn toward Manner. He rolls his eyes, shrugs a bit, and gives them a _life sucks_ gesture. "Right now, I'm still a field agent, so as often as I need to be in the field, I'll be out there, but when I'm not investigating, I'll be down here, talking to you guys, seeing what you're doing, getting a feel for how you do it. Come January 4th, I want to be able to hit the ground running, up to date on your cases." They all sort of nod at that.

"I guess what you really want to know is what is going to happen when I take over. Is everything going to be change? Yes. It is. Part of what I'll be doing is figuring out what you do and how to do it better. Any ideas you've got, plans you'd like to see put in place, stuff that just bugs the hell out of you, all of it, make notes, talk to me. I haven't worked down here since '08, and I was only here for four months, so I've got no attachment to any ways or traditions. You can't step on my toes by telling me you don't like how things are done. Can't win points by liking how things are either.

"Total blank slate time. We're going to rebuild from the grown up. So, from now until January, keep thinking about how you want this job to be. Think about what tools, what practices you need to be able to do your job as well as you possibly can."

They all stare at him. He hands out a stack of his cards. "Anything you want, need, want to talk about, drop me an email. I'm in court tomorrow and the next day, so I won't be down then, but if a case doesn't go hot, I hope to be down here on Thursday, just getting a sense of how this works."

There's some mumbling along the lines of, "Okay, yeah, we'll think about it," but he knows that they really just want him to head the hell off so they can commiserate with Manner and gossip with each other about him without him listening in.

"Okay. See you Thursday!"

* * *

He was in the elevator when he got the text from Tony. _Dead body. Meet us at the car._ So much for celebrating.

* * *

It's well past two in the morning when he gets home. Like anytime they get a dead body call, he heads straight for the washing machine to deposit his clothing, and sitting on top of the washer, where Abby knew he'd be, was one of the tirimisu cupcakes he loves.

Next to it is a piece of paper with a little heart on it.

He smiles, takes a bite, and heads to his office to decompress for a few minutes before going to bed.


	30. Forward and Back

Inviting his mom to visit five minutes before becoming the next head of Cybercrime was awfully bad timing.

Tuesday morning an effusively happy email was waiting for him, confirming that Terri and Ben would be up for the christening. And that's when the full-bore: _Holy shit what the hell was I thinking; do I really want to see these people?_ crashed into him along with a side of muscle twitching nervousness.

Add in two days of testifying on top of that, which is more free time than he needs right now. He's gotten to the point where testifying is old hat. Waiting to testify, though... They stick him in a room by himself, and he waits and waits and waits. Eventually some junior legal beagle shows up to go over one final prep, and on the stands he goes.

The testifying part is usually fine. He doesn't get called in as often as Tony, Ziva, or Gibbs, because his part of the job is usually very technical and tends to bore jurors.

Likewise, at this point, defense attorneys tend to not like him, either.

When he's answering prosecution questions, he gives somewhat lively versions of 'explaining how it works to Tony and Gibbs' style answers. He keeps it simple, short, and as amusing as possible. Jurors don't exactly listen to him, attention riveted to his words, but they don't fall asleep.

When he's on cross-examination, he whips out 'explaining it to Gibbs or Tony when someone else I want to impress with my brains is in the room' and pulls out all the tech speak. This buffs his expertise cred and puts the jury to sleep/makes them annoyed at the defense team for making them have to listen to all this nit-picky crap they don't understand.

So, that part's not too bad.

But right now, sitting in this room, doing not much of anything beyond worrying about his mom and Ben showing up, is not fun.

He's got the personnel files for everyone on his soon to be team. (Had to get special dispensation for that. The Defense side was wary he had some sort of extra case prep that hadn't been agreed on, but finally decided he could keep the folders with him once they'd glanced through.) He's trying to pay attention, write up notes and brief dossiers on everyone. But the enormity of _Mom's coming on Saturday_ is making it difficult to focus.

He knows part of the reason this is jarring him so hard is that he just signed up for an undetermined number of hours of emotionally intense interactions. Even if everything goes perfectly (and he's not even sure what perfectly would be) this is going to be tense and draining and… and… and that's not really it. That's part of it. That's the easy part of it.

He's typed out the email, twice, the _nope, I'm not ready for this, don't come_ email, but doesn't send it. (Can't send it. He's not allowed contact with the outside world until he's done testifying. Even if he could, he wouldn't.)

He doesn't send it because he knows what he's doing. If he sees her, he'll have to make a decision. Can't be in the same place, same room with her for hours and leave it in this half-functional limbo. Once she shows up, he has to act, has to make himself forgive or burn that bridge.

Sending that note would just be putting it off that much further.

Once identified as the problem, some of his nervousness starts to ease into the background. At least he has an easier time forcing himself to look at the folders in front of him and really see, focus on them.

He'd gotten a hold of Cybercrime's resumes earlier, in an effort to figure out if Manner had hired the B Team, or if working under Manner turned good people into the B Team. Nothing he's seeing in the personnel files is disabusing him of his original impression that Manner had hired decent people and then sucked all the life out of them. As he looks through, he sees things like Manner was giving them commendations for how well-done their paperwork was or how efficient their code was and stuff like that, which is all well and good, Tim's in favor of correct paperwork and efficient code, but he also noticed that Manner never gave anyone any petting for actually catching bad guys.

Sigh.

Worse, doesn't look like he's ever given anyone any grief about not catching bad guys. He's not allowed to have contact with the outside world while he's waiting to testify, so he makes a little note to himself: Check Cybercrime hours. He's got the sinking suspicion that this department never racks up any overtime.

On the upside, it's a pretty evenly balanced team. Twelve members, four basic skill sets: coders, hackers, web specialists, and database experts, everyone's got at least some skill in all four, and their specialties divided nicely.

Except… Edward Riely. _Joy of working for the Federal Government, can't get rid of deadwood…_ He's a mainframe specialist who's most recent language is C++. It's not that Tim has anything against unique or weird specialties, it's that NCIS doesn't have a mainframe and hasn't had one since the mid-90s. And best he could recall, every other US Gov. agency had gotten rid of their mainframes, too. So, unless he's called in to go back in time and solve a crime in 1992, this guy is more or less useless.

He takes out his phone and writes another little note, reminding himself to find out if they've got a computer guy on the cold case team. That might be a way to fob this guy off and open up his desk for a new hire. Tim's thinking that if he can get that free desk, Catherine Howard, who he'd interviewed for the MCRT, would be a good fit.

"Agent McGee?"

He looks up and sees one of the bailiffs staring at him. "Yes."

"You're being called to the stand."

"Okay." He quickly packed everything up and headed off to explain what it is he does and how he does it.

* * *

Thursday he's back in the office, and for the moment, there's only paperwork.

He looks over to Tony, who's working his way through the mound of forms on his desk. "You mind if I head down? I told them I'd be poking around down there when I had some downtime."

Tony looks up at him, and though he seemed happy for Tim when the news broke, he's been… Tim doesn't know… hasn't seen enough of it to know, but there's something besides _I'm happy for you_ going on back there.

"Your stuff done?"

Most of it is. He's got about a quarter inch of forms to go. Monday night he'd been part of the hard original push on the case, but he'd been sidelined for Tuesday and Wednesday, so he hadn't been as involved as he usually is in one of their cases. Tim stands up, grabs his short stack of paper, and puts it on Draga's desk. Draga glares up at him. "Hey!"

"Two months from now, it'll all be yours, anyway. Might as well get used to it." Then he turns to Tony. "Yep."

Tony appears to approve of what Tim just did. He smiles. "Have fun."

* * *

Tony watches McGee head toward the stairs. The idea that he's really leaving, that two more months and his partner will be gone...

He's happy for McGee. He really genuinely is.

And it's time. He knows that. They're butting heads like two bucks fighting for control of the herd. He talked with Gibbs about it, a little. Can't have more leaders than followers in a team. And Tim's not a follower, or at least, he's not willing to be Tony's follower, not anymore.

Either way, it's time. He knows it. He's pleased. Tim's getting his own department and the family life he wants to go with that. That fantasy life of the house in the 'burbs with the babies with pig tails and black diapers that he'd told Gibbs about back when they started dating: Tim's there.

But his partner's leaving. The geeky kid who turned into a man with balls of steel on his watch is leaving. His wing man, his back up, his straight man, no more. And that aches.

He's talked with Ziva about it, how weird it'll feel not to have McGee's quiet, stable energy there. He hasn't mentioned, though he's sure she knows, how lonely it'll be not to have a good listener for his stories.

He wonders, a bit, if this is how Ducky would feel if Palmer was moving on.

But it doesn't matter, McGee's leaving. Two more months, sort of, he'll probably be spending more and more time down there as they get closer to his go day, and then, one day he'll come up here and McGee'll be gone. All of his stuff will be off the walls, Draga'll be sitting at his desk, and everything will be different.

* * *

This time Tim heads down, and for a few minutes lingers just outside the elevator.

He supposes, if he tried, he could come up with a less welcoming work environment. But short of hanging up an "Abandon All Hope/Ye, Who Enter Here" sign with a few manacles to the blank, gray wall that's the first thing anyone sees when the elevator doors open, nothing is immediately springing to mind.

It's a big, dim, dank (But not really, it should be dank, it's gray and dim, and dank goes along with that, but it's not dank because computers don't like dank. It's psychosomatic dank.) rectangle of gray painted cinderblock walls, gray concrete floors, not nearly enough overhead light, no natural light, twelve (gray) cubicles in three straight lines, all of them softly glowing with individual lights and computer screens. It's simultaneously a little too cold, (ACs on high to keep the computers cool) and a little too warm (all of those computers are throwing off a lot of heat). It's loud in an indistinct buzzing sort of way, computers, exhaust fans, AC, dehumidifier, music on too loud through headphones.

Filing cabinets on one end (army drab instead of gray). Out of date coffee pot (God, it's a drip pot on a hot plate!) and snack and soda vending machines on the other.

There's absolutely nothing he can do about the lack of natural light. They're three floors underground here. (Which is intentional. Nothing short of a mag pulse or a bunker buster will take out their systems. After Deering's bomb, the level between Cybercrime and the rest of NCIS was strengthened; a "regular" bomb going off in the building won't take out Cybercrime.) But from what he can see only one out of three of the lights hanging from the ceiling are actually lit. He doesn't know if that's some sort of green use-less-energy thing, or if it's a matter of physical plant hasn't been down here in months. He does know, that unless there's an awfully good reason for it that he's not seeing, as of day one they will get some freaking light bulbs down here.

He circles around, and like every other time he's snooped electronically, everyone is in his or her own cube, working away. They're all looking very industrious. He doesn't see how they communicate with each other. (IM? Maybe? He's not looking closely enough at their screens to see if that's how they're doing it.) He also, from just walking around, can't tell who's working on what.

They do, however, have little nametags on their cubes. He ducks into the one labeled "Summers," remembering that he's a fellow Beaver (undergrad/machine learning), database specialist, has been with NCIS four years, and has received two commendations from Manner for (unspecified) excellence.

It's a very tidy, lighter gray on the inside, cubical.

Tim stands, waiting for Summers to take a break. And eventually (three minutes later) he does.

"Can I help you Mr. McGee?"

"It's just McGee, and yes, thanks. You mind telling me what you're working on?"

"Running down an IP for Hanson."

Tim nods, he knows Hanson, he runs the third of the five DC field teams. "Then I'll leave you to it. Don't want to slow you down."

"Won't matter." Tim's getting a sense that just possibly Summers is less than perfectly thrilled by how Cybercrime is currently run. At least, that 'won't matter' sounds awfully hopeless. And the way Summers is looking at him, wary but hopeful, is making him think there's more than just a conversation about a specific bit of hunting going on.

"Why not? Faster you get that address, the faster they can move."

"Cases are first come first serve down here. Get a case, work it to the end, pick up a new one. This one's been on the board for three days. And extra few minutes won't matter. All I can do now is tell them where the suspect _was._ "

Tim stares at him, dumbfounded. It takes a literal thirty seconds before he can say, "Three days?"

"Yeah." Summers nods slowly. _I really don't like this_ all over his face.

"Is there any chance this is a cold case?"

"Might be by now." Oh, that's really not the answer Tim wants to hear. Likewise the fact that his team is the fastest team in the building is very sharply coming into focus, all the other teams farm their computer work down to Cybercrime.

"Help me out, why has a lead on a hot case been sitting for three days?"

"Because it was sixth in line."

"Okay, where's the line?" Summers wrote down an address for their NCIS interweb. "New things get added to the bottom of the chart, old things are at the top, as soon as you finish one job you pick a new one."

"Who else is working this one with you?"

"No one."

Tim blinks slowly, stepped around, and read over Summer's shoulder. No it's not a big job. It'd take him maybe two hours on his own. So, soloing on this makes a certain amount of sense. He looks at the chart. "How about any of these. This one… Rundlebach…" he'd heard a few mentions of that case, big time fraud involving enlistment benefits, "that's big case, who's on that?"

"Ngyn. I think."

"Who else?"

"No one. You finish one job, you grab another."

"So, you're telling me you're all working solo?"

"Yeah." The look on Summers' face makes it perfectly clear he does not approve.

Tim's shoulders slump, he sighs, and then straightens up and smiles. "Okay. That's good to know. Thanks, Summers."

"No problem."

He walks the circuit one more time, watching, listening, getting ideas in mind for how this whole thing is going to change, and then heads over to the coffee pot, pours himself a cup, and practically spits it out. The stuff they have upstairs is revolting. (There's a reason why it doesn't matter how nasty it is outside, they always go to Seth's cart.) However, it's manna from the coffee heavens compared to this. He's not even sure if this is genuine artificial coffee flavored coffee. (Tony talking about his civil war reenacting days with his dad, being forced to drink the stuff they called "coffee" which was brewed from something like burnt dried corn and acorns, springs to mind.)

He flashes a text to Abby: _You'd think, in that we're NAVAL criminal investigative services, that someone, somewhere would have heard of the idea of triage._

A minute later he got back: _You'd think. Though none of my guys ever served. How about yours?_

He thinks for a few seconds. _Nope. They're, like your guys, doing the cases first come, first serve, doesn't matter how big or urgent. Get this, they're also doing all of them one tech to a case._

_Oh Lord, even my guys knew that wasn't good._

_Yeah. Coffee sucks, too._

_That's easy to fix. Now you can get that Keurig you look at longingly every time we go to Target._

He smiles at that. He does look at it longingly, occasionally petting it, but at home, he's the only one who drinks coffee, and he's got a perfectly good machine, so no reason to get a new one until the old one dies.

_I think I have a plan for Saturday. Kelly and I are going on a Target run, getting one of those, along with a ton of coffee pods. I may not be able to change anything else, yet, but I can get my guys better coffee!_

_There you go. You'll be McGee: The CoffeeBoss._

_I can live with that. Are you in charge of what color the walls are in your lab?_

_Ish. Part of the maintenance routine is every five years they paint. They give me a list of options, and I pick one._

_How about new equipment? How's that work?_

_Got a yearly budget. As long as I don't go over, I can requisition new stuff._

_Carryover from year to year?_

_Yeah. No way I'd ever be able to afford the new scanners or the gas chromatograph, otherwise. Don't tell Major MassSpec, but we're saving up for a combo GC-MS. Should have enough cleared in two years._

_My lips are sealed. Besides, he wouldn't believe me even if I did tell him. He'd assume I was rumormongering to just make him angry._

There's a long quiet minute. Tim assumes she's actually working, and he opens his laptop and logs into the task log, getting a feel for how it works, and becoming familiar with what's on tap for Cybercrime.

Then his phone buzzes again. _It's just hitting me. This is how it's going to be from now on. You won't be coming by to chat and work. Might stop in to mess around or something, but it won't be every day. We'll text about work, maybe have lunch together, but you and I won't sit next to each other at the desk, working the same job, not anymore._

_(sad smile) Yeah. I know. You won't be read in on all my stuff anymore, or I yours, too._

_Sigh._

_Yeah. No unmixed blessings._

_Guess not._

* * *

He heads over to HR and asks for information about how the hours in Cybercrime work. Doesn't take too long of hunting through the forms before he's sure that part of what is going on down there is that no one is working overtime. They all get in at eight. They all leave at five. They each take every single day of vacation. (Okay, he's assuming on that, it'll take hours to go through everything that thoroughly.)

He takes his phone out and sends a text to Gibbs: _I know why you hired me, now._

A few minutes later, as he's heading toward Accounting, curious to see what shape his budget is going to be in, he gets back. _Couldn't resist those pretty green eyes._

_Wink._

_Not yours, Abby's. She kept pouting at me about it. But Gibbs, we neeeeeed McGee! I run the lab; I can't be your tech girl, too._

_Love you, too. They get in at eight. They go home at five. God forbid you need computer work done at 5:15._

_There was a reason why Abby was doing all our tech before you showed up._

_Yeah, and now I know why you needed a tech guy. I'm also feeling significantly less cool about mocking the other teams for being so slow._

_Mock away, the other team leaders could have done the same thing I did and hired a computer guy._

_Guess so. Just hitting me that you and Kate and Tony worked pretty well as a trio. You didn't actually need another field agent._

_Didn't think you'd ever really become one. Probably the best surprise of my life._

_Thanks._

There's a few minutes' pause while Tim makes a note to himself about getting Cybercrime onto a twenty-four hour cycle. Crime happens all the time, so someone's got to be around to handle casework. He also makes a note to make sure that there's not some sort of messy labor rules against it.

His phone buzzes again while he's searching the regs.

_Draga's getting sassy. Says if he's doing your paperwork, he should have your desk. He just scooted over there._

_:) It'll be his soon enough. I'll boot him out when I get back up there, though._

Nothing against it he could see. Time to head off.

* * *

Tim gets to Accounting, asks for the budget information he wants, waits for the girl to call up to Vance to get the okay for this. She's staring at him warily, apparently requests to see departmental budgets are few and far between, let alone by guys who are not actually in charge of said department.

But, after a brief conversation with Vance, she stares at him, nods grudgingly, and sets him up at an empty desk, giving him the log in information he needs to view what will soon be his budget.

It's very nice. Painfully tidy. Like the rest of Cybercrime it's in perfect shape. The accounting team probably loves them. Nothing's over, everything appears to be accounted for, he's even got, and this pleases him quite a bit, close to twenty thousand dollars unused. Yeah, that's not big money, not in the grand scale of things, but that would certainly spruce up the basement, get the work flow better, upgrade some of the tools, and add a few toys to keep his techs happy.

Of course, no one in Cybercrime ever works overtime.

That 20k may vanish really fast if he gets them working the kind of hours they need to work.

He grabs his phone and flashes another text to Abby. _Where does money for overtime come from?_

_From your budget._

_Shit._

_?_

_They're working perfect 8 to 5, no overtime. I know I've got stuff I want to change that'll cost money. And I know keeping butts in chairs'll run overtime._

_Welcome to management! ;)_

He snorts at that. _Thanks._

_Comp time may or may not be your friend. Or, you shake them up enough, and they only log 40 hours, but work more because they love the team. Same way you guys do._

_Great._

_Not feeling hopeful of that?_

_Not immensely. Talked to one of them, Summers, he was showing some signs of wanting things to change._

_That's good._

_I hope so._

_And a pile of new trace just came in. Off to actually work._

_Enjoy!_

He's digging through his numbers, looking into what all it is Cybercrime spends money on (software licenses, wages, hardware, bonuses: It's not too complicated.) when his phone buzzes again.

Gibbs this time. _Really weird to see him sitting at your desk._

Tim supposes it would be, but he's not having any sort of gut reaction to it. Probably would have this time last year, but... The desk isn't home so much, not anymore.

_I haven't left yet._

_Nope. Just different._

_Yeah. I know. Would have felt the same way if I'd been the one who left later, and had to see someone else at your desk._

_Don't remind me. Tony and Ziva are rummaging through resumes right now._

_Gotta fill that space sooner or later._

_Guess so._

_At least it's less traumatic than the last time we filled an empty desk._

_Amen to that._

* * *

Ziva is sitting next to Tony, both of them scanning through the list of resumes on file with HR for field agent positions.

Her eyes dart over names, qualifications, just little bits and pieces of information. They want more tech, sniper skills, a Marine would be good, and if they can get all of that with a psych background, someone who can really nail the interrogation angle, that'd be perfect.

But it won't be perfect, because her team is splitting up and heading off.

It's been almost five years since she told Cranston that she wanted something permanent, something that couldn't be taken away. When she said that, she was envisioning her team.

Silly answer. She knows that, feels it now, but she needed it then, the idea of a rock to chain herself to.

But nothing is permanent, everything changes, and anything can be taken away. Of all of the team, she knows that most intimately.

Which is probably why she wanted the opposite more than anything.

Now, though, having lived five years of changes, she knows that if you've got permanent, you're looking at something/someone dead.

Her team will never be the same. It'll never work as smooth. It will never be the haven from life outside.

But that's okay, because she doesn't need that anymore. And, privately, in the very deep thoughts, the ones she's still playing with herself, the ones she hasn't even voiced to Tony, yet, she's not sure how much longer she'll be part of the team. There are parts of her that have been hiding, afraid to see the light for decades, and she's thinking that maybe, wrapped in a family that loves her, it might be okay to see about exploring them again.

Back when this started, when she became Special Agent Ziva David, NCIS, she was replacing the smoldering ruins of a blasted, destroyed family with a team. It wasn't enough. But it was what she could get. And it was safely distant enough that she didn't have to risk, yet again, heartbreak.

Once again, she has a family. She doesn't need a team to fill the void left by ghosts of a brother and sister, mother and father.

She looks through resumes with Tony, and thinks about a conversation they need to have.

* * *

Tim spends another hour, through lunch, on the computer, checking around, coming up with some ideas. (Modified shareware/freeware. Cybercrime spends more on licensing than it does on anything else, and if he can free up some funds by switching software, he can get more hours out of his people, and get better tools for them to work with. Get more out of each of those hours. That's the plan, or one of them, at least.)

By the time that was done, he felt like he'd done as much as he could with what he had. Tomorrow, Monday, he'd start heading down to shadow individual techs... God, there's got to be a better name for them.

Abby's got LabRats, so what should his guys be?

Worms? They're underground, never see the light of day, and computer worms are a thing. But he doesn't like worms. Too... worms.

He's got a dungeon. Dark, gray, dank (but not really). Who works in a dungeon? Imps?

Computer Imps?

Diskworld references aside, he's not loving that. No, if he's going to be the grand overlord of Cybercrime he's got to have... A smile spreads across his face, yeah, it's kind of dumb, but it'll make Abby laugh and it amuses him.

McGee's Minions.

That works.

Tomorrow he'll start spending at least an hour or so a day observing his Minions. He feels a bizarre desire to rub his hands together and cackle at that.

* * *

When he got back up, Draga was sitting at his desk, working on his computer. He just stares at him, _Really, you gonna pull this shit on me?_ on his face.

"In two months, it'll be my desk, might as well get used to it, right?" Draga says with a cocky smile.

Tim steps behind his desk, kicks (lightly) at the back of the chair while pointing to Draga's desk. "Out!"

Draga stands up, grabs the stack of papers, leaving about half of them on Tim's desk, and moseys over to his own.

Tim shrugs and starts filling them out. Not like he hasn't done it before.

"How was it McGee?" Ziva asks looking away from Tony's computer.

"It's going to depend a whole lot on how the people working there react to change. I can see a lot of easy ways to make things better, but..."

"But if they do not want to change..." she leads.

"Yeah." He smiles and nods. He tells them a little about what he's noticing. His teammates are all properly appalled. Tony makes a joke about how if he'd known he could have gotten regular hours by learning computers he would have bothered to learn. Gibbs watches them (because it is a paperwork day, and a certain amount of goofing around is allowed on paperwork days) fondly.

As he's talking, Tim's thinking about how much he's going to miss this. Easy, fun chatting while they all fill in the blanks.

And for as much as he's looking forward to the future, as much as he wants to see where Cybercrime will take him, there is a sort of anticipatory ache of losing this.

Tony's phone rings. He picks it up, listens, nods, asks a few questions, jotting down answers. They all know what this means.

Like Gibbs, Tony's kept the start of case mantra, "Gear up."

Cases, all cases, begin with "Gear up." The team will change. Tim'll go. Gibbs'll go. Eventually Ziva will probably take maternity leave. But those words will stay the same. "Gear up." And the cases'll keep coming. No matter what, sometime, somewhere, some poor son of a bitch'll buy the plot, and NCIS'll show up to figure out what happened.


	31. Endings

Tim's nervous. Really, really nervous. They're due over any minute now. The plan, dinner, get to know Kelly, spend a few hours at his house before they go back to the hotel, followed by the full on baptism festivities tomorrow sounded good when he was typing up the email.

Now it sounds insane. What the hell was he thinking doing this? His stomach is hurting, and he's picked up his glass at least twenty times, taken a sip, put it down, and fidgeted around.

Right now, it's just him, Abby, Kelly, and Gibbs.

He's not precisely sure how Gibbs got invited to this. Part of why he's nervous is Gibbs and his mom in the same room. Of course, Abby and his mom in the same room isn't going to be a picnic either.

Hell, _him_ and his mom in the same room probably isn't a great plan, either.

"You really want to do this?" Abby asks.

He nods, taking yet another sip of water, wondering if they've got any good snacks in the house, because he really wants to eat, something to keep his hands and mouth busy.

"Hey." Gibbs rests his hands on Tim's shoulders. "We're gonna make this as easy for you as we can."

"I know." He doesn't, not really, but it's the right thing to say. And right now he's not even sure what easy would be.

His phone rings, and he more or less sprints to get it.

Gibbs looks at Abby as he leaves the living room for his office. "Is he ready for this?"

"He says he wants to try." _No!_ very clear on her face.

"Is there anything we can do to make this easier? Last time he was that tense…" Gibbs shakes his head. He doesn't remember seeing Tim this tense. Maybe when they walked down that hallway and saw John?

Abby shakes her head back at him. "This isn't in our hands. We're making sure he knows he's loved and not alone."

A minute later he's back.

"Who called?"

"Breena."

Gibbs and Abby both look at him expectantly.

He manages something that's vaguely smile-ish. "Last minute pep talk."

They nod.

* * *

The knock on the door.

He doesn't know if it's worse for being expected or not. But he does jerk at the sound of it, and then hops up to open the door.

They look the same as they always do. His mom, tall, blondish hair even more gray now, but the same straight posture and conservative clothing. Ben's as round and smiley as always. He shakes Ben's hand first, that's easy. Nothing about that changed.

Ben steps in, hugging Abby, talking to Gibbs, and Tim stares at his mom.

She smiles and hugs him, and for a second he feels himself melt into it, into the comfort of old lies and memories, and then he pulls himself out of them, and steps back a bit. Her hands are still on his shoulders. "Let me look at you! Oh, Penny told me married life was agreeing with you, but I didn't think... You look fantastic, Tim."

"Thanks."

Abby allows herself to be hugged, but she's not doing her usual enthusiastic, all-encompassing Abby hug.

"You remember Jethro Gibbs?" Tim says.

His mom and Ben nod. He shakes hands with both of them, cool but not the level of frigid Gibbs can easily do, let alone his full on malice.

"Dinner'll be ready soon. We're eating kind of early because Kelly usually wakes up and wants her dinner a little before seven," Tim says, and the nervousness is audible in his voice, along with the way he's started rambling on about the fact they're having roasted chicken.

Ben breaks in, rich voice soothing over Tim's nervous ramble, relieving him of the need to fill the quiet, which he appreciates, complimenting Abby (good guess, she did cook) on how wonderful the chicken smells, asking what she'd used to spice it with, and wandering into the kitchen with her, dispersing some of the tension.

Tim and Gibbs follow along, and Terri ducks out.

She's back a minute later. "Almost forgot this." It's a bottle of chardonnay. Good one by the looks of it. And Tim smiles a little, fairly sure that "almost forgot this" means "I've got a bottle of red and a bottle of white in the car and was waiting to see what dinner was before picking one of them."

"Can't forget that, Darlin.'" Ben smiles at her. "Tim, you got a corkscrew?"

"Yeah." He grabs it and hands it over, along with some glasses, to Ben. Ben's opening the wine, Abby's messing around with the vegetables, which his mom rapidly joins in helping with, Gibbs settles in at the table, watching, comfortable, but Tim can see the edge there. He's ready to jump in if need be.

"Who wants wine?" Ben asks once he's got the bottle open. Terri and Gibbs say yes. Abby shakes her head, "Still nursing. If there's some left after Kelly's last dinner, I'll probably have some then."

"Any for you, Tim?"

"Nah."

"Part of how you're staying so trim?" Ben asks.

"Something like that. Remember how when we went to visit you, you guys picked up the best ice cream ever? Well, we've got the best cupcakes, and I want to have some." They do have great cupcakes. And he does keep track of his calories that closely because otherwise it is too easy for him to go overboard and start putting on weight again, but that's not it. A glass of wine to go with dinner won't tip him over that far. He just doesn't want to deal with alcohol in addition to everything else tonight. Doesn't need anything, even a glass or two of wine, mucking with his emotional control.

Ben laughs at that, happy to hear it. "Always save room for great cupcakes. So, your grandma's been telling us about this mixed martial arts thing you've been doing, is this," he gestures to indicate how much more in shape Tim is now compared to a year ago, "the result of that?"

"Some. Added yoga, too. That's my everyday exercise. Bootcamp's just on Sundays. Diet just gets you thin, working adds muscle."

"Well, whatever you're doing, it looks good," Terri adds.

"How'd you get into this?" Ben asks, sipping his wine. "Great pick, Terri."

She nods, appreciating the approval.

"You remember me telling you about how Jimmy and Breena lost the baby?"

They nod at him.

"Jimmy was talking about being so angry and not having anything to do with it. So we fought. Then this one," he nods to Gibbs, "took a look at us, decided we didn't know what the hell we were doing, and that it was more than time that we learned. Something about making sure we'd both be ready and able to put the fear of Dad into future boyfriends."

Gibbs smiles at that, looking satisfied, and took a sip of his wine. "They had the basics, just getting them polished up."

"Getting them ready to singlehandedly invade France," Abby adds, grating nutmeg onto the carrots she was sautéing.

Gibbs smiles. "Nah. Ziva's doing that."

"Ziva's the pretty little thing with the dark hair?" Ben asks.

Abby smiles at that. Of course, if you'd only seen Ziva at a rehearsal dinner and wedding, you might think that about her. "Yes. Though she used to work for Mossad. They call her the ninja."

"She's the team's hand to hand combat specialist."

"And you're computers?" Ben asks.

"And precision pistol shot." Gibbs adds. "Haven't made a target small enough Tim can't hit it with a hand-gun."

"What are you?" Ben asks Gibbs.

"Sniper."

"Interrogator," Tim adds.

The timer dings, and Abby takes a big step to the side, away from the oven, but still able to keep the carrots moving in the pan, as Tim gets the chicken and potatoes out. While he carves the chicken, Gibbs gets up, showing off his ease in their home, and sets the table.

* * *

Relaxing dinner at home with the parents. They all work toward that illusion.

Ben does a good job of keeping up pleasant, easy conversation. He's like Tony in that he can keep everyone, even Gibbs, chatting comfortably. They talk about Tim's soon-to-be new job, how the team is faring, a bit about Gibbs' retirement plans, some about the new development he and Terri are working on. Just a round hour of fairly gentle, pleasant interaction.

Tim can feel how easy it would be to slide back into this. This is what visits with his mom were like before. There's warmth, and laughter, and even with the edge that everyone is working hard to pretend isn't there, this could be something lovely.

He can imagine Penny and Ducky, Sarah and Glenn here as well. Everyone together, first time in a year. All goes well, that'll be tomorrow after the party.

He's almost feeling hopeful when they hear Kelly's tiny cry.

Gibbs stands up; he's done eating. (Downside of the formula they're feeding her, baby poop right now is fiercely awful, and even two or three hand washes after, little whiffs of it seem to linger. Since he's done eating, and Tim and Abby aren't, he's offering to get her.) "I've got her. Back in five or so."

And in about five minutes, Gibbs does head down, Kelly cradled in his arms, leaning against his chest, bright-eyed and looking at everything.

Terri hops up fast to go to her, and stops, a step away, eyes warm and brimming with tenderness for the tiny child in Gibbs' arms. "Hello Kelly, I'm your grandmom," she says while moving to Gibbs' side so Kelly can see her face easily. "May I?" Gibbs looks to Abby and Tim, and they nod so he hands Kelly over.

"Oh, God, Tim, she's perfect," his mom says as she snuggles Kelly against her shoulder.

And those words shot the fragile peace of dinner to bits. They rip through Tim like hot knives, each stab ripping open infected psychic wounds, swollen with anger, putrid with regret. He bites his lip, and both Abby and Gibbs know that's a classic unhappy Tim sign, closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, stands up, and says, "Yeah, she is. _Exactly_ the way she is."

"Yes." She holds Kelly a little further away, cradling her head in her hand, so wrapped up in studying her granddaughter that she's completely missing, for the moment, the heat in Tim's words or look. But eventually, she feels his look, glances up, sees the rage behind his eyes, and blanches.

He shakes his head, takes Kelly in hand, gently, and turns around, heading back up the stairs.

Terri looks stunned. She's been desperately trying to not say or do the wrong thing, and cannot begin to even fathom how she could have gone wrong by saying Kelly was perfect.

But Abby gets it, and after a few seconds Gibbs does, too. Timothy was the child who wasn't perfect to his mom, not the way he was.

Abby looks to both of them. "We'll be... I don't know. I've got to feed her," and heads up after Tim.

* * *

Vastly stronger women than Terri Allister have faltered before the death glare of Leroy Jethro Gibbs. And men, much, much harder than Ben Allister have fallen before that look.

So the fact that it took all of three seconds before neither of them could meet his gaze wasn't exactly a surprise.

He does feel a little bad for pulling it on Ben, who, from what he can see, is a genuinely nice guy who got dumped into a massive family mess that from his side of it, ended years before he even got on the scene.

But Tim is his boy, and he's hurting, and if there's one thing Gibbs is good at it's spreading hurt all over the place.

Gibbs doesn't say anything. He's never precisely rude. He just keeps looking until Terri starts to cry. Then he stops.

And then he didn't look at her again.

For a minute after she starts crying, it seems like Ben is going to try something, but he sees the look, sees the force, the anger behind it, and realizes that Gibbs might literally kill him if he tries to defend Terri on this, and he decides not to say anything.

That's probably a wise move.

* * *

Ten of the longest minutes of history go by, and Tim still doesn't come back. Gibbs can, just, almost hear him, and part of him is wondering if he's really hearing the tears, or if he's just imagining them. Probably imagining them, all of the times he's seen Tim cry, he didn't make any noise.

But he can feel it, hear it, if hearing it is what's happening, and it goads him into moving. He grabs Terri, who jerks at his touch, trying to get away from the vice-like grasp on her wrist, and pulls her to the back porch, waiting the barest second for the door to shut behind him before he starts in on her.

"You knew. You knew, and you didn't stop it." Those aren't questions. They're statements, statements edged with broken glass and laced with poison. "It was your job to stop it. You had a beautiful, brilliant boy, and instead of treating him like the love of your life, like the light that made you happy to get up in the morning, you broke him."

Terri nods. She knows right now would be a very bad time to disagree with Gibbs.

Gibbs' voice is very low. "He's not yours anymore. He's mine, and he's Penny's, but he is not yours. You and Ben leave here, and you don't come back."

"He invited us."

Gibbs shakes his head. "You leave, and you do not come back."

"He wants—"

"No." Gibbs' voice is cold and hard, almost calm sounding, but he's not calm. Or if he's calm, he's the calm of a beach where the water has pulled back, gathering into the wave of the on-coming tsunami. "You leave. You leave right now. He will go to you, on his terms, in his own time, if he wants you. But right now, you leave, and you do not ever set foot in my presence again. You hurt my son. You hurt him worse than you can imagine, and you and John are _only_ breathing by his sufferance, so you leave, you turn around and you walk out of here, now. And you pray he never sheds another tear over you because otherwise you will answer to me."

Less than half a minute later, Terri and Ben are gone.

* * *

He heads upstairs, knowing they'll be in their room. The door is closed, and he's not sure if that's to keep the sound down, or to keep everyone out. But before he can knock Abby calls out, "Come on in."

He does, sees them on the bed. She's nursing Kelly with one arm, and has the other around Tim. His head is on her shoulder, and yes, he is crying, silently.

Gibbs' immediate instinct is to join them, but they're in their room, in bed, so he's hesitant of violating the intimacy of that space. Abby sees him pause and nods a bit to Tim's far side, kissing him on the forehead in the process.

And with permission granted, Gibbs heads over, sitting next to Tim, wrapping his arm around him.

He looks up, face red and wet, eyes bright green, looking a little embarrassed that this still hurts so bad, hits him so hard.

He sniffs, his defensive, sad smile in place. "She was supposed to feel that way about me."

Gibbs smiles back at him, also sad. He nods, ruffles Tim's hair and kisses his temple. "Yeah, she was. And she should have fought to the death to protect you, too."

Tim wipes his eyes. "They still down there?"

"Nah. Sent them away."

"Okay." He sniffs again, inhaling hard, his head resting on Abby's shoulder. He pets Kelly's cheek, hand skirting gently over her shoulder and arm.

"Why wasn't I enough for them?"

And that's the question that Abby and Gibbs can't answer.

We love you. You're more than enough for us. We adore and cherish you. All of that's great. All of that matters. That's his soul and bedrock.

But it doesn't help with the pulsing hot, sick ache of not being that for his mom.

And all of the snuggling, cosseting, and petting he's getting right now, all of which he needs, doesn't answer that question, can't answer it.

And the only way to get the answer is to go to the dragon's den and look it in the eye.

But he's not ready for it. Not yet. He needs a few more minutes to put himself together, and time after that to don his armor.

* * *

Half an hour later, when his face has calmed down, and his emotions are a bit more in check, he texts to his mom. _Where are you?_

_Does it matter?_ Comes back a few seconds later.

He's honestly not sure. It'd be easy to just hide away, let them leave, not speak of it again. But he thinks of Jimmy saying this is pain he probably has to go through, and that he can't just leave this festering.

_Yeah. Like to talk to you. Probably won't be fun or pleasant. Probably don't want Ben around. I know I don't._

_Okay. DC Hilton._

_Be there soon._

* * *

It's a fairly high end hotel. Not too far away. Not too close. Only takes Tim twenty minutes to get there.

He changed before he headed out. When his mom and Ben got to his house he was in his standard work clothing. Nice jeans, belt, button down, jacket, loafers. His blend in, don't attract attention look.

The kind of look, where, if you're paying close attention, you can catch occasional sight of the wrist cuff, and that's it in the way of hints that there might be something interesting going on below the surface.

It's November, night, and cold, so he doesn't go for his full on Goth-wear. Kilt, t-shirt, Abby's gray sweater, (It's a men's sweater, oversized on her, just right on him.) leather jacket, boots. He did his nails, left off the eye makeup. He's sure he'll be crying again.

He added just a little of Abby's perfume. On her skin it's walking sex, but he's spent many pleasant, drowsy, very happy moments where enough of it has rubbed off on him that he's got very warm, cherished, loved, sated and safe associations with that scent on his skin. On his skin it's adored afterglow, and he needs that right now.

Like the knight going into battle, he carries his lady's favor. Being able to smell her scent won't hurt, and will help keep some good things in his mind. And if it's a bit more sweet and femme than a 'guy' scent, he doesn't care, not like he's wearing gallons of it. Just enough so he can catch the occasional hint, just enough to help anchor him in now, not let him get lost in the past.

Because he knows it'll be too easy to get caught in the past. The child/teen he was is right below the surface right now, and he'll break through very easily.

He knocks, almost wishing he could just run away from this, knowing that never getting done with it will bite him eventually.

She opens it, and looks him up and down, bit of shock coming through the sorrow on her face. "Oh."

He steps in, nods.

"Penny and Sarah mentioned the kilt. It's..." He can see she's horrified by it; he might as well be wearing a pretty floral sundress, her eyes flick to the painted nails, and he feels her discomfort at it. Trying to be kind she limply finishes with, "nice."

"I like it."

"I like the dragon." She does look carefully at the tattoo. "That's the family mark, and each rope goes with a baby? That one's Kelly's, and you're leaving room for others?"

He's surprised she's good with the ink, but it looks genuine. Of course, she saw some of the arm cuff tattoo when they were in Texas (the bit that's an inch or so below where most of his t-shirt sleeves end). She didn't ask to see the whole thing, but it didn't seem to bug her, either. "Yeah."

"It's nice work. Always liked that about living on base. The guys usually had interesting body art."

"Oh." He hadn't known that about her. "Thanks."

They stare at each other.

"So, why all dressed up now?"

He shakes his head. "This isn't dressed up. This is me." He slips the boots and jacket off. She's sitting on the bed, so he sits on the chair by the dresser. "This is me, hanging out, at home, with my family, on the weekend. The other stuff, that's what I wear to blend in, be like everyone else, not attract attention."

"Okay."

"This is me, Mom." He's shaking his head. "And I shouldn't have had to wait thirty-seven years for you to see it. Shouldn't have had to spend thirty-four years only letting little hints of me come out, constantly terrified of getting chewed into dust for being me. This is..." His eyes are tearing up, and his voice is warbling, so he takes a few second to steady it. He doesn't just have to say it; she has to understand it, too. "I should have been enough. You should have looked at _me_ like I was perfect. I am your son, and that should have been enough!" He takes a long, deep, shaking breath, feeling years of... he doesn't even know what all, too many emotions, he can't even begin to name them, let alone sort them out, all come bubbling up.

"It was, Tim!"

"Like fuck it was!" He's not looking at her, making sure he doesn't start sobbing because she needs to hear the words that he's not done saying. "You and Dad spent my whole life with you trying to change me. Nothing about me was ever good enough. Didn't matter if all the answers on the test were right, I still had to do better. Didn't matter how bad life sucked, I still wasn't allowed to cry about it. Didn't matter if I hated whatever it was you and Dad wanted, I had to do it. Nothing about me was ever enough for you.

"And you look at her, and you hold her in your arms, hands trembling, face lit up in a huge smile, love oozing out of every pore... You were supposed to be feel that way about me!" He's inhaling shaky and harsh between words, but still intelligible. "I was supposed to be perfect to you! Just the way I was. I was supposed to be enough…" And that did break him. He is sobbing, audibly. Not loud, especially not by grown-man standards, but it's probably the first time in twenty-five years that he's let go enough to make any noise.

She sits there, tears streaming down her own face, too. She wants to get up, hold him, comfort him, and starts to, but he glares at her, so she sits back down on the edge of the bed, fingers clenched, nails digging small crescent shaped tears into the palms of her hands.

Finally he gets himself together. "Why not me?"

She takes a few seconds to get her own voice under control. "When you were a baby I held you just like that, and cuddled you, and told you you were perfect and sang to you and petted you and snuggled you all the time."

"When I was a baby..." He snorts. "Love doesn't have an expiration date. What, I turned three, wasn't cute enough anymore, and that was that? When did I stop being your perfect little boy? Because if I ever was, it was way before I can remember."

She smiles, very sad. "No one's perfect. Not really. That's not how it works. Babies can be perfect because all they have to do is exist. And even babies aren't really perfect. But… No. Your kids aren't perfect the way they are. I wasn't. You weren't. Kelly won't be. They are going to want things that aren't good for them. And it's your job to stop that. You're the adult, you're the one who knows how to survive in this world, and you will do whatever it takes, even if she hates every single second of it, to make sure she has what she needs to make it through.

"It's not about perfect. And it's not about not being enough or not loving. It's about the fact that one day she won't be a baby. It was about the fact that one day you were going to be out there on your own, and you needed to be able to survive it.

"Kelly won't want her vaccinations, she won't want her medicine when she's sick, she might not want to learn how to swim, or do algebra, or whatever. She'll be rude and wild. But there are skills she is going to have to have if she's going to survive, and even if she hates you for it, you will make sure she has them, because giving her the best shot she can possibly have to survive out there, that's what being a parent is."

If Jimmy or Gibbs had said that to him, he'd agree wholeheartedly. But she's not Jimmy or Gibbs, and he survived her and his father's version of 'I don't care if you hate it, you will master this,' so he can't come up with a detached, 'Yes, that's a pertinent insight into the rearing of children' type response.

"So this was my medicine? It was good for me? God, you sound like those assholes who hook their gay kids up to electrodes and try to shock the gay out of them," comes out instead.

She thinks about it for a second and then shocks the hell out of him by saying, "You know what, yes! If you honestly believe that your child is doing something that will result in a lifetime of pain, let alone eternal torment after that lifetime is over, you do whatever it is you can to change it. If you think literal Hell, flames and eternal torment, is looming for your child, you put a stop to whatever it is they're doing because otherwise you aren't doing your job. I mean... You wouldn't let Kelly walk into a bonfire. No matter how much she protests about how the fire is fine, how you're an old-fashioned moron for believing it'll burn her, how it won't hurt her, how she belongs in the fire, and all her buddies are there. No. And if you can't convince her, you will literally pick her up and take her away from it because you don't want her to get hurt. And you will listen to her scream at you, you will hear her cry about it, and you will do it anyway, because you're her father, and that's what a parent does.

She brings it back to raising him. "And we… we were so afraid that you'd get hurt. You were so timid and eager to please, and we didn't want you to be the kid who just went along with whatever the crowd wanted you to do. Didn't want you running into the bonfire because your buddies thought it'd be cool."

His eyes are hard as he asks, "Really? Is that what Dad was doing?"

She shrugs, looking very sad. "It's what he said he was doing. It was what I was doing. And I did it wrong. I know that now. But the goal, the only goal, was to make sure you were strong enough to handle anything that came your way. That's why Johns Hopkins and writing and MIT and working for NCIS and all of that was fine to me. That was you being strong enough to be you."

Tim snorts at that. "You ever think I was so 'timid' because there was someone yelling at me all the fucking time?"

"I do now."

"I used to peek at my Christmas presents."

She nods. "We knew."

"Why did you think I stopped?"

"Figured you didn't care as much anymore. You were eleven when you stopped. Christmas wasn't such a big deal."

He shakes his head. "It's because I had gotten to the point where I could think ahead well enough to understand what would happen to me if I got caught. You say I was too timid, you wanted me to be able to stand up for myself, then why never reward me when I did? Seventeen years, I don't ever remember being petted for being bold. Sarah was. She got compliments and happy smiles, and all sorts of good piled on her for being sassy. Why constantly keep doubling down on me?"

"You needed to be able to draw from your own strength and handle anything that would come your way. If you do whatever it is for someone else's praise, you'll fall down when you don't get that praise anymore. And there will be times when you don't get it. You had to be able to do what was right for you on your own because it was right, not because someone would praise you for it. And Sarah, even as a baby, she just kept rolling. Didn't matter if you liked what she was doing or not, she just kept it up. But you didn't, you were much more sensitive to the people around them, always checking in to make sure they were happy with what you were doing. You needed more help to rely on your own strength than she did, so you didn't get the same kind of treatment.

"Life'll beat the shit out of you, Tim. You know that. The punches just keep coming, and it doesn't end, and it may be decades before it gets better-" She sounds so sad as she says that, weary.

"That's the point of family, to make sure you've got a refuge…" And it hits Tim like a punch to the gut. "You didn't, did you? Stuck in a marriage you hated, little kids constantly needing attention, moving every eighteen months/two years, no close friends, can't complain to your parents about your husband, they told you not to marry him in the first place, your church is telling you to suck it up and pray…" He looks at his mother, trying to see the woman, not just the mom, sitting in front of him. "You were trying to make me hard enough to live your life."

She half-shrugs. "It's just life, Tim. Up, down, doesn't matter, you've got to handle it. Like I said, I wanted you to be strong enough to handle anything that came your way, and I know, now, that wasn't the way to do it… I'm sorry we were wrong about that. I'm sorry that kindness would have worked better, and we didn't try that. But… But I'm not sorry I did everything I could think of to make sure you had the skills, the brains, the grades, and the balls to do anything you ever wanted to do." She does look sorry, and he can feel deep regret and pain on her.

But he's angry, and he needs real answers, and honestly, he doesn't much care that this is painful to her. She didn't want this kind of pain, she didn't have to do this to him in the first place. "How could you have _possibly_ thought that was the right way to do it?"

"Because doing things your kids hate because they need it is a ton of being a parent. Do you remember swim lessons?"

He shakes his head. Not that he doesn't remember them, because he does have vague memories of cold, fear, wet, and crying, but because he's got no context for them and he's not even entirely sure those memories were swim lessons.

"When you were three, the house we ended up in had a pool next door. No fence. Nothing to block it off or keep you out of it. I couldn't watch you twenty-four/seven. We could tell you not to go over there. We spanked you, one of the maybe three times that happened, when you did. But it wasn't stopping you, you kept wandering on over because you were fascinated by the water, so you had to learn how to swim.

"And you hated every single second of those lessons. You'd cling to my legs, crying, begging not to be put in the pool. You'd cry through the whole lesson, and cling to the edge of the pool or the girl teaching you. It was a disaster, but we kept doing it because there was no way we were going to live right next door to a pool with a child who was too young to stay out of the water and couldn't swim. You hating me for dragging you to those lessons was less important than you possibly drowning."

He thinks back. "And let me guess, by the time I could swim I was so terrified of the water it wasn't an issue anymore?"

She shakes her head. "We moved before you got it down."

He thinks about it, unsure of how long they stayed wherever it was when he was three. "So you're saying you tortured me for, God knows how long, _months_ after I hit the point of being so terrified of water that there was absolutely no shot of me going anywhere near a bathtub, let alone a pool," he does remember fighting over the bath time. A lot. He was probably six or seven before he decided water was okay. "because of some insane notion that my three-year-old self absolutely had to be able to swim."

"Can't quit once you start. Have to see it through." That's his dad, at least, he always thought of that as his dad, talking.

"I was a baby!"

"You were a child, Tim. And you did need to learn how to swim. And you needed to learn to finish what you start."

"I didn't start it. You did."

"Tim…" Her face is heartbreakingly sad, and she's shaking her head gently. "It doesn't matter. It's over."

He feels the tears start again, and he's biting his lip, hard, before he gets out, "It's not over because I am still here, and I am still dealing with this crap, and God…" He rubs his eyes. "It's not over! I don't suppose you ever just got in the pool with me and played, splashed around a bit?"

"Your dad did."

"Until, what, I started crying on him, and he got disgusted and gave up? Handing me over to swim lessons until I grew gills or died? And if I wasn't going to grow gills, he really didn't much care if I died."

"It wasn't like that." Her eyes are soft and voice gentle as she says that.

"Of course it was! I had to be able to swim by four because we were a Navy family and I needed to be a little fish to make Dad happy. He stopped getting in the pool with me because he couldn't bear to be seen with a child who was afraid of water. And you couldn't watch me twenty-four/seven to keep me out of the neighbor's pool? Did this house have no doors or locks? Molly's really clever for almost two, but she's not unlocking doors and toddling her little self out into the backyard on her own."

She shakes her head and says dryly, "Your niece may be clever, but you were smarter. And there is a massive difference between almost two and not quite four. You knew how to get out of the house when you wanted to. I only had to grab you two feet from that pool twice, both of them in the first week after we moved there, before you were going to have swimming lessons. You had to be able to swim and that was that.

"You had to have the skills to do whatever it was you wanted to do and not get burned. You wanted to play in the pool. I wanted you to be able to play in the pool. You couldn't do that if you couldn't swim. So you were going to learn to swim."

"If I wanted to play in the pool so bad, why did I hate every single second of swimming lessons?"

A very brief twitch of a smile lights her face. "You didn't, at first. You were really eager on the ride over. Little swim trunks, flip flops, even had your own tiny goggles. You told everyone you ran into how you were going to learn to swim. You were happy, so happy until you got into the water and it was cold, and then the teacher was trying to show you how to do the breathing bit and you were already unhappy with cold and wet and then you sucked in a big mouthful of water, felt like you were going to drown, panicked, started flailing around, slipped out of her hands into the deeper water, and it took her maybe ten or twenty seconds to grab you, but by then you hated the pool, hated swimming, hated her, and didn't want anything to do with water ever again."

The tiny, rational voice in the back of Tim's mind is saying, very quietly, that making your child learn to swim is not insane. The much louder part, the part that is rapidly remembering more and more details (that may be imaginary) of swimming lessons is more or less screaming in rage at what they did and how. He does get calm enough after a few minutes to say, "And from there you decided, what? I needed another sixteen months of swimming lessons after that, never learning how to swim, terrified every day? Was I still running out to the neighbor's pool then?"

"No. But you still had to learn to swim, because the alternative was if you got in the water, you'd drown, and that wasn't going to happen."

"I'm sure."

"You're not thinking like a parent. You're thinking like a child."

"I am your child! And I was a child when you were doing that to me. And yeah, the part of me that's a Dad knows Kelly has to learn how to swim. All the kids do. Molly's already learning. But we don't have to terrorize them to do it. Water's too cold, go somewhere else. Hates the instructor, try someone else. Get in the damn pool and play. There are a million things you can do that don't involve constant pain and terror. Almost everyone else on earth manages to teach their kids how to swim without instilling a multi-year long water phobia."

"I told you, we did it wrong," She snaps out. "Okay? I know that now. I didn't then. I was alone. Just me and you and… And there were things you needed to do, needed to be, and I tried my best, but I didn't know."

"How could you not know?" His voice goes soft and hard for that. Anger beating sorrow into the background shutting it off. "Yeah, I didn't come with instructions, fine. But treat like a human being. Treat like you want to be treated, all that golden rule crap and loving each other they spouted at us every Sunday, how hard would that have been? I mean, just _basic kindness_. That's not the mystery of the ages."

She doesn't answer that, instead she says, "It was done with love. It happened because I love you. You're nine, the docs say that no, you don't just have bronchitis, more antibiotics aren't the answer, that's asthma. All you want to do is hide inside and read, play the Nintendo, and every damn day I was forcing you outside, making you run, making you play little league and kiddie soccer and whatever the hell else it was, and you're whining and moaning about you hate it and the other kids hate you and you suck at it, and you think that was fun? You think I did it because I got my kicks from seeing you trembling and crying and hating every afternoon? Is that why you think I did it?"

"I don't know why you did it! And all Dad had to say was to stop being such a goddamn fucking pussy and get out there and play."

"Of course he said that." Terri looks very tired. Tim's getting the sense that she may be feeling like she got fed a line by her husband and not only did defending it suck, but the 'line' was a cover for him to be cruel. Then he forces himself not to think that. It's just another way for him to give her wiggle room and absolve her of the responsibility of her actions. Tim tunes back in and hears "…the doctors said the more you ran around and played and did hard physical stuff, the stronger your lungs would get, the less you'd need the inhaler. The fewer inhalations the better because you were sucking steroids right into your lungs and they had nasty side effects for long term use."

"And you couldn't tell me that?"

"We told you it was good for you. We told you you needed the exercise. We told you it'd make it easier to breathe. We told you all of that, and you still wanted to sit around and play make-believe games and write and read. You were ten. You didn't care about being able to breathe much, you just wanted to do what you wanted to do, and it wasn't run around.

"Laying around wasn't going to happen. It didn't matter that you loathed it, you needed to be out there, so out you went. And fortunately we moved again and whatever you were allergic to there was less of at the next place, so we didn't have to force it so hard because you could breathe better on your own. But you needed to be out there, running around, and you wouldn't do it on your own, so we kept it up and made sure you were on at least one sport until you got out of high school."

Once again, the rational part of his mind can see that. He was also overweight then (though it occurs to him that if he was sucking steroids straight into his lungs, that may have had something to do with being overweight) and exercise was good for him, and if a Doctor was telling him that getting Kelly out and exercising was necessary for her to be healthy... Yeah, he'd make her do it. But... and once again the angry voice takes over, "And the fact that they were all team sports? Was that for my own good, too? It wasn't enough to make me run around and get exercise? I couldn't have done laps around the backyard, or hell, I could swim then, joined a pool or something like that. I had to have twenty other guys constantly ragging on me all the time because I wasn't very good at any of those sports? I had to have coaches and other little league parents screaming at me when I dropped the ball? What, was that helping me develop character?"

Her posture slumps further. "You needed friends. On your own, you'd spend all your time reading, living in your head with imaginary friends. You needed real, live people in your life."

"Why?" That stupefies him, always has. He has never understood when people say that someone needs to make friends, and then proceeds to dump that person into a crowd of other people who treat him like utter shit. "What good did I get out of being constantly mocked and bullied? Just. No!" The logical part shuts down and all emotion is coming out now. "I don't care what your justifications were. I thought I did. I thought I wanted to understand, but I don't. I don't care. I'm sorry torturing me for my own good was so painful for you." Skin lashing sarcasm on that line. "You know what Jimmy says, when we're off doing something stupid? That pain is your body's way of telling you to stop; that what you're doing is bad for it, and if dragging my ass all over hell and gone and forcing me to do stuff hurt, then you should have stopped."

There's a tiny spark of fire in her eyes as she says, "You don't stop when it's someone you love. You don't stop. You don't give up. You do whatever you need to do to get them where they need to go. You needed to stop second guessing yourself. You needed more confidence. You needed to learn to work, to study. You were so damn smart you were just going to coast along on your memory if we didn't keep raising the bar. You had to get all the answers right because we knew you could get 95% of them right without even trying, but eventually that wouldn't be true, and you had to have the skills to learn things you couldn't pick up from one read or listen. You needed to physically play, or you would have just curled into your brain. You needed to stop being afraid of everything, or you'd let that fear stop you from being who you wanted to be. You needed-"

"To be someone else. I needed to be Dad or Sarah or… Not me."

"No. The fear, the weakness, the shyness, none of that was you. That was standing in the way of being you. You've let it go, even this… mess between us… is part of having let that go. You're fearless now, or as close as any sane man gets. You've got the confidence to be whoever you want to be. This is all I ever wanted for you, and you've got it."

"Of course it was me. All of it's _me_! I'm not fearless now; I'm just loved. I've got a whole crop of new fears because I've got people I love all around me, and something happening to them scares the shit out of me. I'm not any less shy. I just handle it better because I've got a safe place to be me at the end of the day. I am less nervous, but that's because so much more of my life is under my control. I don't constantly worry about putting a toe out of line because I know it won't get chopped off now.

"But all of it was me. You didn't teach me to stand up for myself. You made me so miserable that I stopped caring about what was going to happen next. I was so unhappy by the time I was applying to John's Hopkins my self-preservation mechanism shut down and all I could care about was being able to finally give Dad back a taste of what he'd been doing to me.

"When I ripped up the Annapolis letter, I was sure he was going to literally kill me. He was going to do it with his own hands or drag me onto his ship and let his sailors fuck me to death the way he kept threatening. And by that point I didn't care anymore. No matter what happened, dead or alive, I'd end up out of his house, out of his reach.

"And for decades I pretended you didn't know. You and I, we were victims together. Hiding out from him. But you knew. You didn't just know what he was doing to me; you helped." He's crying again, quietly, tears streaming down his face. "I don't care what you thought you were doing. That's a lie. I do care. I care, and I hate caring, because there's still that kid in there, scared, crying, silently, not wanting anyone to hear, who loves his mom more than anything and wants her smiles and petting and...

"And he's not dead, not yet. But you are. That image of you is gone. There's just that screaming child who wants his mom to adore him, but you didn't."

"Tim-"

"No, Mom. Don't tell me you love me. Not if that's what love is to you. I've got people who love me now. Really love me. Even Tony, who is a grade A asshole sometimes, doesn't pull crap like that on me. When he's ragging on me, he doesn't try to make me think it's for my own good. He doesn't tell me or him lies about how he's trying to make me a better man by ripping me apart.

"Don't tell me it was for my own good. Don't tell me that I needed those skills. You're right; I did, but not like that. Don't tell that screaming child that all those hours of pain, all of that fear, all of the alone and alienation was love. None of that was what he needed."

"I'm sorry. I know we were wrong."

He feels the break inside, somewhat like the break when he started throwing the beakers, but this is more of a hyper-aware sensation as opposed to the numb-dead that went with that. This is perfect, aching clarity.

"It's not enough." And it's not. All the sorry on earth can't, won't make this better. "Don't come to the christening party." He stands up and slips on his boots. "We're not going to see each other again. We're not going to talk. Kelly, Abby, and I aren't going to be part of your life." He shakes his head. "I can't forgive what you did to me. And I can't pretend you didn't do it. And I can't just leave it there and go on. So, we're done." He puts his jacket back on, and without looking back at her, turns and leaves.

* * *

"Well?" Abby asks, but it's on Gibbs' face, too. They're both waiting up for him. Though it's actually not really late. Only 8:45, though it feels like day three of a four day long no sleep work-a-thon to Tim.

He sits down heavily between them on the sofa snuggling into Abby, Gibbs' hand on his shoulder. "No one's the villain in his own story."

They both stare at him, questions on their faces, waiting for more explanation.

"It was all for my own good, and yes, it was the wrong way to do it, but it had to happen and… She treats it like making me take my medicine. I didn't like it, but I needed it, so it had to happen. That's how she understands it."

Abby hugs him a little tighter. Gibbs squeezes his shoulder.

"I told her we were done. Walked out, didn't look back. It doesn't matter why she did it, she should have known it was wrong."

Abby says, "Yeah." Gibbs nods.

Tears are forming yet again, and he struggles against them for a moment, wishing this was just done, but struggling doesn't help, and again sobbing rocks through him.

They both hold him, and let him cry for as long as he needs. And neither of them are very surprised when he quiets down less than half an hour later, not because he's done, not really, but because he's fallen asleep. Only so much you can deal with in one day, and sometimes after that, you just shut down.

Eventually, Kelly starts chirping again, the 'feed me' cry of the four-month-old. Abby looks over to Gibbs, who nods. She slips out of Tim's arms, shifting him gently over to Gibbs, who keeps holding him, very gently stroking his hair.

Tim doesn't sleep through it, waking with a start a few seconds after Abby got up. He starts to pull away, feeling a bit embarrassed, but Gibbs hold on. "I've got you, Tim. She'll be back down in a bit. You rest, okay? It's been a long damn day, and tomorrow's not going to be any shorter."

He nods, letting himself settle further against Gibbs, feeling pulled into deep, numbing sleep.


	32. Christening Party

Tim wakes up the next morning, sevenish, Abby spooned on the sofa in front of him. Gibbs nowhere to be seen (probably in the guest room, that more often than not these days, Tim thinks of as being Jethro's room).

He hurts. All over. Last time he hurt this bad he was waking up the morning after he and Jimmy fought it out. Right now, even his hair hurts. It feels vaguely like a hangover. Given how much crying he did, he probably is pretty damn dehydrated.

Abby wakes up, or senses he's awake and rolls over to face him, very gently stroking his forehead and cheek, kissing his lips lightly.

"Hi." She smiles at him.

"Hey." He doesn't smile back.

"How are you doing?"

He shakes his head slightly, resting his lips on her forehead, holding her close, feeling her warm and sleepy in his arms. "I don't know."

"That's okay."

The thinks about it and comes up with, "Hurt. I feel hurt. I feel like I should be sporting bruises from head to toe."

She scoots up a little, and kisses him softly again. "Yeah, I remember that from when my parents died. Crashed when I got home from the hospital, and just ached all over when I woke up."

"Next time I decide to try some form of emotionally difficult thing because Wolf suggests it'll be good for me, smack me in the head and tell me to stop."

She kisses him again.

Kelly wakes up, letting them know it's start-the-morning time. Tim winces; he didn't get the 1:00 feed. "Did you get her at 1:00?"

"No," she says, getting up to grab Kelly. "Gibbs did. But if he hadn't, I would have. You needed to sleep."

He sits up slowly, expecting his head to feel like it's going to fall off, but this isn't actually a hangover, so that doesn't happen. "Thanks."

"Down in a minute."

* * *

There is a story Tim has not told Abby. Not that it's particularly bad or sinister or something, just, it involves teeth. He thinks of it as he steps into the shower, still aching all over, still thinking that maybe putting this off wasn't a great plan, but wishing he had nonetheless.

Namely, it's the story of how, when he was a junior in college, one of his molars got infected. It's not like he didn't brush or floss, but he was a junior in college, so he wasn't exactly religious about it. Especially, not compared to Abby's version of religious about dental care.

However it happened, he did end up with an abscessed molar. (This is why he had no trouble following Jimmy's bad tooth metaphor.) And they did the traditional soak him in antibiotics treatment plan. This did basically nothing. His tooth kept festering, and finally, after the first course didn't seem to touch it, the Dentist said that they'd drain the tooth, and then do another course, and maybe that'd get him healthy enough for a root canal.

Draining the tooth hurt. Even with Novocain. It was a 'Holy shit, what the fuck is that!' sort of hurt. And draining it didn't magically stop his tooth hurting, either. Once the Novocain wore off, he was still in a world of hurt.

But it was different hurt. Clean hurt, if that made any sense. Between getting the pus out and the new course of antibiotics, the sick, throbbing, poisoned feeling was gone.

He hurt, but it was healing hurt.

And he's not exactly feeling hopeful right now, as he's standing in his room toweling off. Not feeling much of anything that's even remotely positive, but he's thinking this might be the first step toward healing hurt, and away from sick, poisoned hurt.

* * *

Putting on his suit that morning is another layer of armor. Covering himself in the image of respectability. Happy dad of the new baby.

Once his tie is secure, he picks up his phone and texts Penny and Sarah.

_Things didn't go well with Mom. She and Ben won't be at the christening._

He heard back from Penny first. _Sorry. We'll talk when you're ready?_

_Yeah._

_Everything else on for today?_

_Yep. Just pretend my smile's real._

_Oh, honey!_

_I'll be okay, eventually._

_Sorry. Hug._

_Thanks, Penny. See you in an hour?_

_We'll be there._

He's pulling his shoes out of the closet when his phone buzzes again. Sarah this time. _I know. She called last night, sobbing._

_Well, that's two of us._

_You really done with her?_

_I..._ he shakes his head, staring at the phone. _I think so. Too much pain. Too many memories. I can't be with someone who could do that. I sat there and listened to... We'll talk in person, okay? When I don't need to spend a day looking calm and happy._

_Okay._

_I know she's not the same person she was back then._ And right now, less emotional, less revved up, he does know that. _But I don't think it matters. Only so much forgiveness in me, and that's the bridge too far._

_Okay. Everything still on for this morning?_

_Yeah._

_Then we've got to go now, if we're going to get to the diner by nine._

_Okay. See you in fifty minutes._

* * *

He smells coffee as he heads down the steps. Gibbs must have stayed the night. Once he's down in the kitchen, Gibbs hands him a cup of coffee, not smiling at him, but the look on his face is gentle, comforting.

Tim takes the coffee, sipping it, trying to feel more grounded in right now, and a bit less adrift.

It's really not helping all that much.

A minute later, Abby heads in, Kelly in her arms. "Okay, she's fed. If you guys could get her dressed, I'll get dressed, too, and we'll head off."

Tim nods, taking Kelly, and Abby hands Gibbs the christening dress.

Getting Kelly dressed does an amazing job of focusing him in right now. Trying to put twelve pounds of very squirmy, diaper-wearing small person into little white tights is taking all of the focus and energy of both of the guys.

"Okay, you just hold her up; I'll get the legs pulled up." Tim says.

Gibbs nods, holding Kelly by the torso, arms and legs flailing around, (She's not really enjoying this adventure in high fashion.) three inches of floppy white nylon dangling off each foot, whipping around as she kicks, while Tim inches the tights up her legs.

"Remember doing this with my Kelly. Little white dress. Shannon got her dressed. It was my job to carry her in and hold her while the Chaplin did his thing."

"Shannon do most of the dressing?"

"Not at first, she was still healing up from the c-section. But after the first month, yeah, she did most of it. Kelly was six-weeks-old when we had the christening. Spring time. Back in Lejeune then. Her mom was still staying with us, but the Monday after she went home. Day after the baptism was the first day for just the three of us together. Shannon did a lot of dressing and feeding and diapers. I did the cooking, laundry, and walking Kelly around the house when she wouldn't sleep."

Tim finally got the tights yanked all the way up. He looks at Kelly, still held up by Gibbs, kisses her forehead and says, "Don't worry, I will never, ever do that to you again. Mama wants you in tights; she can do it herself."

"Do what myself? You've only got the tights on?" Abby asks, back in the living room, completely dressed and ready to go.

Both of the guys glare at her, and Abby gets the sense that just possibly this was not the job for her Marine and Dragon (her pet way of thinking about Tim recently). If she can't do it personally, this was a job for someone who's worn tights before. Like, Breena.

"Never mind. Sometimes I forget you're guys. Hand her over." Tim does, and in a matter of seconds she's got Kelly in her white, lace dress, very cute little white shoes, and white bonnet. They may not be Catholic anymore, but Abby's got very New Orleans Catholic ideas of what a christening gown looks like, and Kelly's wearing it. Change the outfits on the adults, and they could very easily be going to a christening in 1885.

* * *

They're a bit late getting to breakfast. (Getting the tights on ate more time than expected.) So they're the last ones there. But getting into the diner, they find that the rest of the crew has gotten Sarah and Glenn and Kyle all settled in, and are entertaining them.

Hugs, kisses, congratulations, and an extra-long hug from Penny and Sarah. Penny's holding both of her grandkids close and says, quietly, "Dinner tonight, my place?"

And they both nod. It's well past time for the three of them to sit down and talk this through.

Elaine sweeps over, "Oh, now look at all of you all pretty! Can't wait to meet the rest of this group. Party starts at one, right?"

Tim nods as she hands him a plate piled high with eggs, turkey sausage, and fresh fruit.

"Wonderful." She tickles under Kelly's chin.

When Elaine retreats to grab the coffee pot for more refills, he looks at Abby. "Elaine's coming?"

"And her husband. First time this place has closed for lunch in fifteen years."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

"Ummmm..."

He's not sure how to even ask what he's thinking politely, but Abby sees it and replies, "First two guests lists I gave Jeannie she looked at and said, 'Oh, Abby, come on, you know more people than this. This is big. This is how we welcome babies into the world and get them started in life. EVERYONE needs to come to this. This isn't some sort of intimate little gathering, this is a PARTY! We're calling in everyone to celebrate your little girl. Give this back to me with a few more names, okay?'"

He hadn't known that. "So, um... who is coming to this?"

"Everyone."

* * *

About a month ago, when Jeannie had asked them, "So, what sort of party are you intending to have for the christening?" both Tim and Abby had sort of looked at each other in confusion. Tim's take on getting his daughter baptized could be summed up as: This bizarre ritual matters to my wife, and as such I shall go along and smile because it makes her happy.

For Abby, this is a sign of membership and fellowship in the church and being washed in the eternal love of Jesus, saved for all time by His mercy. And while that's very important to her, she's aware of the fact that her family is, at best, vaguely Christianish-secular or Jewish, so she wasn't expecting this to be any real big deal.

They'd probably, like every Sunday, have breakfast at the diner, and maybe Ducky and Penny and Tony and Ziva would come to church, too. Maybe Sarah and Glenn or Kyle if they were in town and felt like it. And that'd be pretty much that.

So, Jeannie standing there going, "Oh no. No. You've got to have a party! This is how we welcome babies into the family! We'll do it here, everyone already knows how to get here, anyway. You give me a guest list, and I'll take care of it. Not have a party! Hah! Got to have a christening party! Every child in this family gets her very own party." She took Abby by the arm, dragging her into the kitchen, calling out for Breena, and a few hours later, when he found Abby again, they did have what appeared to be a serious christening party in the works.

The next week Jeanie snagged Tim as he and Jimmy and Gibbs were heading out to Bootcamp. "Tim, dear, I don't have any contact information for your parents. I don't want them to feel left out by getting their invite late, so can you just email me their address?"

"Uh…" They haven't talked about his parents, at all. Beyond the fact that if asked, both he and Abby will identify Gibbs as their 'Dad or close enough' and that's all that's said about that. "My dad's out of the picture and… I'll… I'll email you when we get done with Bootcamp."

Ed Slater may have the sensitivity of a brick, but Jeannie Slater runs the front of house for a funeral home, so being keenly attuned to the needs and moods of her clients is second nature to her, and she can sense the distress on Tim, and knows she's put both feet in it. "Oh. I'm so sorry, Tim. I didn't want to dredge up bad memories. Just, if you want them, send me addresses, if not, we don't have to. Whatever you're comfortable with."

"Thanks, Jeannie. I'll send you a note."

* * *

And now, three weeks later, they're done with church, where he did a fine job of standing there next to Abby, Breena, and Jimmy while the Pastor droned on and dribbled water on Kelly. And sure, maybe he wasn't smiling as bright as the other four people, but he thinks he did an okay job of faking it.

Easy part done, now on to the hard part.

He'd been dreading the party. At church there's other things to focus on and no one expects you to make casual chit chat.

But the party after... He'll be spending a lot of time holding the guest of honor. And they all know his mom and Ben are supposed to be there, but they aren't.

So, he's driving more and more slowly as they get closer to Ed and Jeannie's. Abby's glancing over at the speedometer, hovering at 25 in a 40 zone, concerned. She squeezes his hand.

"It's going to be okay."

"Yeah. Great. How many times do you think I'll have to explain why I have no parents there?"

"None. You didn't have to say anything to anyone at the church, and you won't at their home, either. I sent everyone a text this morning, letting them know you had a really bad night. Jeannie said she'd handle it, and even Ed's behaving."

"Oh." That's true. Somehow it didn't filtered through the hurt and faking a smile on top of it.

"You are grieving. It's really, really obvious to anyone who's ever seen it before. Trust me, they all know you're hurting, and none of them are going to step on your toes."

That made a whole lot of sense, too.

* * *

Jeannie wasn't kidding about doing Kelly proud. He's never been to a party this big that wasn't a wedding. Slater cousins he's never met before are here. He's thinking it's possible that every Slater east of Ohio decided to show up for this gig.

There's food on every horizontal surface. He approvingly notes that there are several Jimmy-friendly dishes, and Jeannie does pull Ziva and Tony aside to point out the lasagna and manicotti are Kosher. Tony's face lit up into a vast smile at that. Likewise, he notices Fornell telling Gibbs that this is what a party is supposed to look like before smothering Jeannie in praise for setting a table the way his Nona used to. (Apparently Abby wasn't kidding, everyone they've ever met has been invited to this.)

Flowers, balloons, a general pink baby girl theme blended with a white/silver baptism theme is linking all the rooms together. There's music, and little kids bouncing around, snarfing down the cupcakes and cannoli.

It's loud, hectic, happy, chaotic, and besides lots of congratulations, comments about how beautiful his little girl is, no one says anything to him. No one is asking awkward questions. At one point it did look like Kyle was going to ask where his parents were, but Jeannie neatly brushed him off, redirected his conversation, and took him off to the kitchen to get more to eat.

Besides taking presents, eating, making fairly standard small talk, and saying thank you for those presents, no one expects him to do anything.

He's in a home filled with people who specialize in handling the bereaved with kid gloves, and he's appreciating it greatly.

* * *

So, holding Kelly, standing amid a veritable sea of Slaters, most of whom are, for all practical purposes, strangers, milling about, eating, drinking, enjoying each other, in her honor, Tim contemplates bad families.

For as much care as they're showing him, he also knows that Jimmy had to threaten to beat the shit out of Ed to get even basic respect and courtesy.

That doesn't make any sense to him. But, as Breena's very good friend, none of the adult males feel like they're protecting one of their girls from a guy who won't stand up and do the job. Maybe that's part of it.

He's talked with Breena a little about her family. Enough to know that how her dad treats Jimmy kills her, because she loves both of them dearly. Enough to know that Ed may not be a deep font of tact, but that he did a good enough job of raising his girls that they are voluntarily continuing to work with or for him now that they're adults.

He knows that five-year-old Breena got to work with her Daddy when she indicated she wanted to spend more time with him. And that as a little girl, he took the time to explain to her that they made sure the last days a person's body spent among the living were handled with care and respect. Made sure she wasn't afraid of the people on the tables in the mortuary. Made sure she knew they were people and needed to be treated as such. (Tim spends a moment contemplating what it says about Ed that he shows corpses more respect than Jimmy, before getting back to thinking about Ed as a dad.)

Her youngest sister, Christine, never liked it. Didn't want anything to do with death or mourning. And somehow, Ed didn't press. He and Jeannie made sure she got a great education, studied what was interesting her, and were, very, very happy when she came back with a degree in finance and offered to start working with the family's money.

And when push came to shove, even Ed, who is an absolute flaming asshole of the first magnitude, still figured out how to treat his children, all of them, whether they liked what he did or not, with kindness and respect.

That hits him hard enough that he has to excuse himself.

* * *

He's been hiding in the bathroom for a good ten minutes when the door opens.

He'd been expecting Abby or Jimmy or Gibbs, so he jerks a bit in surprise and half-gasps, "Ziva," as she heads in and sits next to him on the floor, back against the bathtub.

"Don't you ever knock? I could have been..."

"But you weren't. And I didn't want you to tell me to go away, McGee."

"I..." he would have sent her off.

She nods. "I did this." She gestures to indicate hiding out in the bathroom. "When I sat shiva for my mother. People kept coming in and out. They bring food, and sit and keep you company. They only talk if you want to. But there was only so much of it I could take. So, I'd hide out. Let my father or the Rabbi handle the crowd.

"Twelve years later, after Somalia, I sat shiva for my father."

"When he was still alive?"

She nods. "Mourning the loss of my Abba. Eli was still there, but Abba was gone."

"Did you ever forgive him?" he asks, quietly.

"I, eventually, understood him. I came to terms, peace, with who Eli was when I buried him. Maybe, eventually, understanding may give birth to forgiveness. But not yet."

"So, I'm not done, yet?"

Her hand rests gently on his shoulder. "You know you aren't."

"Think we'll ever be done?"

She smiles sadly. "Not for as long as we remember. We don't get over; we just get through, put the pieces back together, and hope, that like bones, the breaks heal stronger than they were before."

"Not feeling any stronger," he says, face red and puffy, eyes bright.

"Your arm didn't heal in twelve hours when you broke it. Your heart won't, either."

"Guess not. You never talk about your family."

"No."

"Would you be willing to...?"

She shakes her head. "Not for today."

"Okay."

Ziva sits with him for a few more minutes, until he stands up and washes off his face. Trying to fight down red and puffy with cold water. It helps, some.

"Presentable?"

She smiles and nods at him. "You'll do."

He, obviously, didn't get a copy of the text Abby sent out as a warning. "What did Abby send out?"

"Big fight with your mom."

"They whispering about it where I can't hear?"

"Yes, but not in a bad way. More in a they-hope-it-gets-better sort of way."

"Want to get their hands on juicy gossip?"

"Of course. But they're not hitting you with it."

He shakes his head, and presses a cool damp towel to his face again. "Right now, that's all that matters."

"Ready?"

He takes a deep breath, straightens his tie, and turns to her. "Enough."

* * *

When he gets out, he hunts down Tony, who is standing with Draga and Jimmy, talking with them, letting Kevin Draga climb him like jungle gym.

He snags Kevin off of Tony, holding him upside down, over his shoulder, while tickling him. Once he's shrieking with laughter, Tim asks Kevin, "Can I borrow Tony for a few minutes? I'll give him back soon."

Kevin looks up at Tim, seriously contemplating the question. Tony's been holding out his hands, letting Kevin hold them, climb up his legs, and then do a flip back down. It's a _lot_ of fun. "You'll bring him back soon?"

"Sure."

"Okay."

Tony gives Tim a grateful look as they get a few steps away. He's rubbing his arms. "I swear that child weighs ninety pounds."

"Try thirty-five."

"I thought that the first six times he did it. But each new time he adds at least five pounds." They get a few more feet away from everyone else, quiet corner in living room where you can't see the TV. "You okay?"

Tim snorts something that sounds like it may belong to the laugh family, but if it does it's a very distant cousin. "No."

"Sorry."

"Yeah. Had to happen. I think. Maybe. Might have just shot myself in the ass again. I don't know. But I do know this, I'm sorry I took a lot of this out on you. That wasn't right."

"It's okay."

"No, it's not. I..."

"Tim." He stops talking, let's Tony keep on. "A good three quarters of the shit I've pulled on you over the years has been about making myself feel better. You're allowed to smack me back for the same reason every now and again."

"I hit you a hell of a lot harder than you ever hit me."

"You've got more going on, and hit me with a decade's worth all at once. I get it."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. Who knows, maybe we'll eventually get to the point where we don't need to do this?"

Tim sighs. "Yeah, that'd be nice."

Tony scans the room, making sure no one is coming up to them. "You any closer on that?"

"I don't know. I hope so. I cut ties."

"Okay. You don't have to come in tomorrow if you don't want to."

"No point to hiding at home. Won't be any different there. Let's get you back." Tony rubs his arms and groans quietly. "You know, maybe it is time you start showing up for Bootcamp. By the middle of January, it'll just be five friends working out together."

Tony starts to roll his eyes, but Tim's got a point. It won't be him working with his Boss and his underling. It would be him out with his family. The dynamic will shift on that. He nods a little and says, "Take a few turns at this, see how easy it is."

They get back to Draga and Jimmy, and Kevin is still with them, waiting, very patiently for a four-year-old. He smiles up at Tony. "Ready."

Tim cuts in. "Hey, how about you show me your trick?"

"Okay." He lights up, very happy with all of this attention. "First, put your hands out."

Tim does, holding his arms out, bent, at waist high. "Like this?"

"Yeah." Kevin grabs on to both of Tim's hands, and begins to climb up his legs. Tony is right, this is harder than it looks. But, it's also fairly similar to sex standing up, holding Abby, without a wall or something to prop her against, and Kevin's a whole lot littler than she is. He's starting to feel a bit smug about this until Kevin gets all the way up his legs.

"Whoa," he says, wincing, almost dropping Kevin, when his left hand tries to swoop, automatically, to protect himself from a very badly placed foot. When he and Abby do this, she knows not to step on his balls. "Foot doesn't go there, Kevin." He manages to say.

Tony's nodding at him, looking smug. Apparently _harder than it looks_ means, _don't try this without a cup_.

Fortunately it doesn't take Kevin more than another second to flip and then land feet first, on the ground.

"Very cool trick."

"Thanks." He's grinning up at Tim. "Again?"

"Sure. Just..." Tim cups the area he doesn't want stepped on. "No feet there, okay? That hurts."

"Okay," Kevin says with a huge, bright smile, grabbing his hands, and starting to climb again.

* * *

The party whirls on, and he watches. And yes, it's a party. Yes, people are happy and on their best behavior.

But there are still a lot of kids running around being loud and rambunctious, and... kids. It's true, there are parents yelling here, kids being taken aside, lessons on sharing, not hitting each other, don't climb the credenza, no eating the flowers, the presents are for Kelly, you don't get to open them, stuff like that. But while voices get loud and there are certainly (especially as the party gets later) some very annoyed parental voices, there's no insult in those words. He notices that none of the kids have been called idiots, or screw ups, or anything, really. 'Share that with your cousin' (or variations on that theme) does not involve the child being called a greedy little pig. He hears some very exasperated versions of 'What on earth could _possibly_ make you think _that_ was a good idea?' He doesn't hear, 'Stop that, you moron!'

And sure, not all of the language is PG rated. Some of the laughing coming from the far corner of the dining room has to go with a very dirty joke, but no one is cursing at the kids or the teens.

And yes, not all of the teens look like they want to be here. It's very obvious from the way they've all congregated on the stairs with their phones to text with buddies that a family party for a baby they don't know is not making their day. But none of them look cowed, and he doesn't notice any of them jerking, scared when an adult calls their names.

He checks the house, doing a quick count. There are twenty-seven kids/teens in this house, and none of them look scared. (Okay, one is crying, but he just got bit by his little brother. And little brother is looking awfully pissed.) He can't imagine that with this many kids none of them are naturally shy or timid. At least one has to feel that way, and he can't imagine there isn't at least one introvert in this group. They can't all be fearless little extroverts.

They're just kids, being kids, being comfortable.

Best he can recall, the only time he felt like that was when he was at Pop's house. Without his parents.

* * *

_It was done with love. It was for your own good. You needed it._

NCIS doesn't work a whole lot of child abuse cases. Just doesn't. (Or maybe it's that his team doesn't. Smacking a small child around is likely to get you killed by Gibbs, and the rest of the team will all, simultaneously, go deaf, blind, dumb, and stupid about it.) So, maybe, at this point, he's been involved in two cases in twelve years.

And in both of them, the parents had the same line, it was for the kids own good.

John always said that. _Making a man out of him_. Because if there's one thing a seven-year-old needs to be; it's a man.

He imagines, if you were to ask him, that John would say he loved his kids. Maybe not now, not Tim, but back when they were kids and he was still living with them. John would have said he loved Tim.

He probably believed it, too.

Him mom believes it. That he could see, especially now, looking back at the memories of last night with a better emotional wall between him and what happened. She loves him. This whole thing hurts her. Bad. By the time he left, her palms were bleeding from digging her fingernails into them.

NCIS does work a decent number of spousal/partner abuse cases. Once again, his team not so much. (Or they tend to get called in when things have gone bad enough to leave a body.) But it's much more common than child abuse cases.

The abuser always has the same line, 'But I love him/her.'

Like most cops, his immediate response to that is _bullshit_. There are things you don't do to people you love. Hard and fast rule, you don't pull crap like that on people you love.

But maybe that's wrong. Maybe it is love. Twisted, warped, sad love. Destroying love, not uplifting love.

Or maybe it's that love isn't enough. On its own, love breeds obsession and pain. Maybe love has to be married to kindness and respect.

Maybe.

Doesn't much matter if she loves him or not. Not if her love could do that. Not if she could look at the child he was, see only weakness and decide that weakness wasn't worthy of either kindness or respect.

It's hitting him, as he's watching the party roll around him, that that's what 'Johns Hopkins, MIT, NCIS, writing, all of that was fine with me' meant. Until he could 'stand up for himself' he wasn't worth even basic kindness, let alone anything approaching respect.

That was the shift. He finally 'earned' the right to be treated as a real person.

He sees Ziva standing next to Tony, both of them talking with Breena's sister Amy and her boyfriend, Collin, and wonders, idly, how much eventually understanding Eli David hurt.

* * *

Eventually, the party wound down, and on his way out, he very sincerely thanked Jeannie for doing it for them, and for keeping him in a safe space the whole four hours they were out.

She nods at him, grasping his hands warmly. "It's okay. I love planning happy days. Kind of a nice change from the usual."

He can see that. "I'm glad you enjoy it. Thank you, for... all of it."

She smiles at him, hugs him, says, "If you ever want to talk, I'm a good listener."

"Thanks." He's not thinking of taking her up on that, but it was warmly and sincerely offered, and like the rest of what she's done for him, them, today, he appreciates it.


	33. Brother and Sister

They're driving home from the Slaters'. Gibbs in the backseat with Kelly. Abby's driving. Tim's more or less jelling in the front seat, not thinking about much of anything.

"Better than you expected?" Abby asks as they get closer to home.

"Yeah. It was. I don't know how the hell Ed managed to catch someone as awesome as Jeannie, but yeah, today went a whole lot better than I thought it was going to."

"Good," Gibbs says.

A few more minutes pass, Abby filling the quiet, chatting about how Jeannie had told her she loves parties, loves getting everyone together, and how every baby deserves a special day where everyone gets together to celebrate her. Apparently, for the girls, sweet sixteens are a huge deal at the Slater house, as well.

He's half-aware of Abby asking Gibbs if he wants to grab a pizza for dinner, and that triggers a memory.

"Dinner's at Penny's."

Abby glances over at him. "Oh. Um. I thought you might want to talk to Penny and Sarah on your own. I mean, if you want us to come..."

"Oh. Yeah." He thinks about that for a moment. He'd just assumed they'd be there, along with Ducky, and maybe Glenn.

"Will Ducky and Glenn be there?"

"I think Ducky and Glenn were thinking the three of you might just want to talk with each other," Abby says. "But, it doesn't have to just be you three."

"Glenn's working tonight. How about both of you go, and I'll babysit? Let you talk without interruption." Kelly's snoozing in her seat. "I don't think she'll mind some quiet time with her Pop."

"You sure you aren't babied out?" Tim asks. He knows after all the loud chaos of the party he's looking forward to some quiet, alone time.

"I'm good." Gibbs gently strokes Kelly's cheek, and she turns her face, nuzzling into his hand.

"So, we'll get home, get changed, crash a bit, and head off to Penny and Ducky's."

* * *

Tim's an introvert. This is not a shock to anyone who actually knows him. Abby is an extrovert. This is also not a shock to anyone who knows her.

One thing they have worked out over the twelve years they've known each other is that there really are times where Tim does need to be, literally, alone. Usually time doing something quiet with Abby around qualifies as alone time, but the more stressed he is the more he needs actual, literal alone time.

Now is definitely one of those times.

He strips out of his suit, tosses on jeans and a t-shirt, and vanishes into his office for jazz and alone time.

One of the things he loves about this family he's collected over the years is that for the next two hours, while he takes the time to recollect himself and recharge, no one knocks on the door or pokes a head in to check on him or see if he wants some company.

Here, he's allowed to just listen to music and veg.

He's not even gaming, just relaxing on the futon, head back, music flowing through him, resting.

It's possible he fell asleep. He doesn't remember falling asleep or waking, but the two hours went by awfully fast, and though he knows the first few pieces he listened to, and the last one, he doesn't know what the middle ones were.

Whatever happened, two hours later, when Abby did knock, with a, "We've got to get going," he felt like he could handle seeing people again.

* * *

When they get to Penny and Ducky's place, Tim does notice Ducky's Morgan parked in the lot next to his grandmother's Prius.

"So, Ducky's here, then?"

"Yeah, while you were napping I texted Penny to see who was going to be here. She wasn't sure if you'd want Ducky, and I told her you thought he was going to be around, so he is."

"Okay. Glenn?"

"Gibbs was right. He's on shift tonight, and it's the shift he already traded for to get off for the christening." Glenn's an arson investigator, and in his off time he volunteers as a firefighter. The shift he's on is at his station, waiting to see if he's got to go out and save people or put out fires. Tim doesn't see any reason to pull Glenn away from saving people just for their family drama. The drama will still be there tomorrow or the next day. The people Glenn might have otherwise saved may not.

* * *

Tim does like to see how Ducky's home has been shifting into Ducky and Penny's home.

When just Ducky lived there, it felt very much like a hybrid of library and an antiquities museum. Formal. Tidy. Hints of sternness. Very, very male in a stiff upper lip, leather armchairs, and brandy by the fire at the club sort of way.

Penny's home(s) have always felt more like an art gallery, flexible, wild, eclectic. And, honestly, temporary. With the exception of the fairly vague memories Tim has of the house she shared with his grandfather, Tim has never had any sense that any of the places she lived were "home."

But this is home.

It's grounded in Ducky's formal, old world, European style, but Penny's free spirit's been changing the place, freshening up. New colors on the walls, new art, more electronics to go with the books. The furniture is more comfortable now. (Though there is still a brass riveted leather arm chair near the fireplace. There's also an ergonomically correct, sleek, modern, armchair, with a built in desk for a laptop, on the other side.)

Sarah's already there, sitting curled into the modern armchair, laptop open, typing away. She's still in the same outfit she wore to the baptism, so Tim's thinking she went straight from there to here. She looks up at him, types a few more fast words, and then shuts down the computer.

He can hear some soft cookery sounds coming from the kitchen.

"They cooking?" he asks his sister.

"Unloading takeout."

He nods. Both Ducky and Penny can cook. But when they do they prefer to do it in the long, drawn out, huge meal with many components sort of way that takes three days to prepare for. They seem to think that if they are going to make an effort to cook the results should be lavish and grand. Quick meals are almost always take out.

Abby kisses Tim on the cheek while discretely bugging out to help in the kitchen, giving them some time alone with each other.

They stare at each other, neither really sure what to say. Tim sighs and looks around, he's got the idea that brass-riveted leather chairs belong to his dad or grandfather so firmly embedded into his subconscious that the idea that he might just sit down in the chair across from his sister never occurs to him.

Instead he ends up taking off his jacket and sitting on the low step in front of the fireplace. It's a bit warmer than he needs, but not horrendously so, the fire at his back is kind of nice, and it's close enough to his sister for easy conversation.

"So, she called you?" he finally says.

"Yeah. Bit after eight. She was sobbing. Most of what I got was she was trying so hard and somehow everything went wrong and you hate her and more sobbing and then some words I couldn't make out, by that point I told her to just come over, then there was more crying."

"She stay at your place?"

"I drove her back to Ben around midnight. They went home today."

"Great," he says, voice very flat.

"What happened?"

"You want the whole lifetime's worth or just last night?"

Penny came in, and sat next to Tim, wrapping an arm around him. "Hi."

He kissed her cheek and rested his head on her shoulder for a minute. "Hey. She call you, too?"

"Not yet. She probably will tomorrow or the next day. You want to talk and eat, or just talk?"

"Might as well eat, too." Tim says, though he's not feeling hungry, but it's about dinner time and making sure his nursing wife gets fed well, regularly is important to him.

"Okay, food's on the table."

Abby's setting the table as Ducky places serving bowls filled with, from the smell of it, take out curries. When naan and rice hits the table, Tim's sure about the curries.

He takes a little bit of everything, and pokes listlessly at it. Abby gently nudges his hand, and it occurs to him that the only things he can remember eating today is a cup of coffee, a few bites of eggs, one cupcake, and more coffee. He scoops up a bite of what he thinks is chicken korma with his naan, and she gently squeezes his knee.

He guesses it's his job to start, so he fills them in on his part of last night.

Then Sarah adds her part, mostly talking about Terri being heartbroken and sobbing and... and she stops talking mid-sentence.

Tim's just been listening, forcing himself to eat, but the pause, the way she seems to be thinking before letting more words comes out is very familiar. It's the sort of self-editing he does when he's talking too fast and only has a few seconds of lee-time before saying the wrong thing. She caught it before she said it, but it was noticeable, to him, at least.

Penny, Ducky, and Abby don't say anything about it. And Sarah's continued on, but he wonders what she left out.

"What'd you leave out?"

She shakes her head. "Not important."

"Really?"

He catches that look, too. He knows Penny does, too. It's the _should I lie or just refuse to answer?_ look.

"I can't imagine it helping, and it'll just piss you off," Sarah says after a second's thought.

He snorts at that. "Hit me with it."

"Really?"

"Why not? If she's going to trap you in the middle of this, I might as well know what she's telling you."

He sees Sarah look at Abby, making sure with her that she should keep talking, which he found perplexing and a bit annoying, but she nods too, so Sarah says, "That she was trying so hard to make you happy again, but you're being just like Dad because nothing she does is good enough."

Several second of blinding... hell... everything, rage, sorrow, snark, everything, jumps up and down and short circuits every single synapse in his head. Eventually he did calm back down enough to notice that Abby's holding his hand, and apparently he's gripping his fork so tightly his knuckles have gone white.

Finally, he does get himself under control and comes back with, "Sucks when the shoe's on the other fucking foot. Nothing I did was good enough, either, so maybe we're equal. Oh, wait, we're not, she's had to deal with it for one damn day!" Sarah winces at that. Seeing that makes him pull back a bit further. "I'm sorry. This isn't fair for you. If you don't want to be in the middle of this... I mean... I can't control her, but..."

"No, you can't." Sarah says, archly. "And if she's going to be calling me and crying on me, I might as well get your side, too."

Penny adds in, "If you don't want her calling about this, I'll see if I can get her to stop it. You shouldn't have to be in the middle. And it's entirely likely that she might listen to a 'you aren't doing Sarah any favors by dropping this on her' from me."

Sarah shakes her head. "Right now this is the biggest thing going on in her life, and it's in the top five in Tim's life. Assuming you're both actually my family, and you both love me, you'd be talking to me about it, right?"

Tim shrugs. "Maybe you don't need to see her the way I do. It's probably better if you don't."

"Maybe," Sarah allows. "But it's part of who she is, right?"

"But it's not part of who she is to you," he says, stabbing a lump of chicken with his fork.

"She's my mom, too. And if there's any shot of fixing this, I've got to know-"

"Sarah, it's not getting fixed," Tim says quietly, looking back up at her. "This is what it is."

There are tears in her eyes, and he can see she's finally letting her own armor, which has always been very thick, crack a bit, letting him see how distressing this whole mess has been to her, as well. "Tim, it's been twenty years-"

That hits his defensive button and he cuts in with, "You saying I don't have a right to be mad?"

"No! Just..." She looks frustrated, trying to find a way to say this that won't set him off. She wipes her eyes and straightens up, something that reminds him of himself a whole lot. "I don't want seventeen years of bad to outweigh twenty years of good. Don't want you burning this bridge and regretting it later." Sarah's looking at him earnestly. He sort of gets the idea of regretting not having people in your life. Like on an intellectual level, and on a practical level, how Jethro feels about the years he missed with Jackson. But right now, he can't feel that about her, and like with the decision to cut his dad out, he's not feeling like he will regret this.

"You really think I'm going to regret cutting ties with someone who thought it was appropriate to torment me my entire childhood?"

"Was that her or Dad?"

Tim shakes his head slightly. That was the lie. The comforting blanket of lies he told himself for all those years. "Doesn't matter. She knew he was doing it, and let him." He bites his lip. The light sting of tooth on flesh helping him stay calm for this. "Twenty years of good was based on a lie: she didn't know. Or that she was as much a victim as I was." He licks his lips, and smiles sadly, shaking his head again. "But she wasn't, and she did know, and worse, she approved. She thought I needed it."

"I'm not saying don't be mad. You deserve mad, and she deserves to take it, but don't rule her out."

"Why not?"

"Because she loves you. Because you love her. Because you told her you were going to have a baby and a week later you had little hand-knitted pink and blue booties in your mailbox. Because she stopped. Dad's still treating you like crap, but she's not. Because it has been _twenty years_."

On a rational level, those may be good points. But he's not a machine, and he can't be rational about this, not yet, at least. "I was thinking about that today and yesterday. About what I had to do to get to the point where she was willing to let us get to good. How far I had to go before she backed off and I earned her respect. Twenty years of good came from hitting the point where I was so scared, so broken that I didn't care if he killed me or not. That's how bad it had to get. That's what 'I had to stand up for myself' meant.

"That was their goal, to so totally destroy my sense of self-preservation that I'd be willing to let him kill me as long as it got me out of this situation. That's what I had to pay to get to good. And that wasn't fair or kind or right!"

"I know," she says, touching his hand.

"No, you don't!" He jerks away. "She didn't do it to _you_! You were allowed to be a child, to make messes, to get answers wrong. You didn't have to be perfect for her, and still not have it be enough!"

"I mean, I know it wasn't right. She does, too. Everyone but Dad's figured that out. But it's also not _now._ "

"Oh." He squeezes her hand. "I don't think it matters. You remember the summer I was fourteen?"

She thinks for a moment. "Not really. I was five then."

"Dad was home. That was the summer he decided I was going to stop being seasick or die trying, and I really don't think he cared one way or another which way it came out."

Sarah nods, that helps anchor it amid a lot of vague memories. "Tense. Sad. You spending every minute you could in your room." She leaves out sitting on the porch eating watermelon with their father, which, along with the memory of the smell of fresh cut grass and the sound of the lawn mower, is actually her most vivid memory of that summer. Not only would Tim not remember it because he was in his room, but she doesn't think highlighting, even further, the difference between them would be a good thing.

"Yeah. That's the summer. That's the summer he threatened to have me gang raped and mutilated by his crew. Okay, that's him fucking with me, fine, that's on him. She wasn't there. I didn't tell her. She didn't know. That's how I understood that for two decades. And I finally tell her about it, and oh, no she knew. She didn't _approve_." Acid sarcasm showed vibrant contempt for that. "It was _'too far.'_ But she knew he'd _'never actually hurt me.'_ No. That's the breaking point. He told her. She sat there and listened to him say that he threatened to have me sodomized and my dick cut off and she sent me back out with him again. Maybe I could forgive a lot of the rest of it... but... No."

He pokes his curry with his fork. Then looks her right in the eye and says, "If Glen ever does that to one of your kids, the right answer is you grab your kids, you come to my house, and you don't leave until you've got your own place, a divorce, and full custody with no visitation rights. You tell me about it, and I will beat him so hard he never walks again. _That's_ how you handle it. You don't just shrug that off as guys being guys.

"We should have been out of that house by nightfall. All three of us should have been at Gran and Pop's, and we should have never seen him again. But no, next day I was back on the boat with him again, but by then I was too scared to even think about fighting back, so he doubled down, grinding me down further, taking us out into rougher water, spending even longer days out there, making me sicker and sicker.

"I spent twenty years lying to myself about how she didn't know. I lost thirty pounds in two months that summer. I threw up so many times that at my next dental check-up I had three cavities. But in my head, she didn't know. She said she put a stop to it when it was clear that I wouldn't do it myself. Fuck that, I was fourteen. I shouldn't have _had_ to put a stop to it. She put a stop to it when it was clear that if I went back to school looking like I did in the beginning of August they were going to call Child Protective Services. She was covering for him. She was making sure I had enough time to look vaguely healthy again by start of school. She knew it was wrong, and she covered for him."

They're all quiet after that, thinking. Tim's got the feeling that Sarah doesn't fully believe that's what happened. Not that he's lying, but that he doesn't understand what their Mom thought she was doing. Wisely, though, she's not saying anything.

After another minute Sarah asks, "Has she done anything even vaguely like that since you've been out of the house?"

"No." And that's true. And that's what cemented the lie. Once he got out of the house, she's been perfectly supportive.

"She changed when she left. She left him, Pop died, and that was a rough year, but then it was a lot better. That's the part you weren't there for." Sarah looks over to Penny. "She was depressed, right?"

Penny shrugs. "Probably. But I wasn't there for a lot of it. Most of the time I was just talking on the phone with your mom, or reading letters. She sounded a whole lot better after they got divorced. Once she was on her own and working again, she sounded happier than she did at any time after the first year they were married." Both Tim and Sarah are listening with interest. "I know she was sad. I know she was angry. I don't know if she was actually depressed. But it wouldn't be a shock if she was.

"It's not a secret that none of us thought your parents were good marriage material. Her parents flat out told her not to marry him and wouldn't give him their blessing. By the time they'd been married five years both Nelson and I were encouraging your mom to leave. We loved her. We loved your dad. It was a bad match."

"That's not an excuse," Tim says.

"No, it's not. It's background. It's part of her not being the person she was."

"Feels like she's the same person to me."

"I know, honey. I know."

"I can't look at her now and not see her looking at me then, knowing that I've been crying, knowing that he's torturing me, and doing nothing. I don't want anything to do with someone who could do that. Even if it was twenty years ago. And..." He's making excuses for not forgiving her, and he doesn't want to. "Fuck that! I don't _need_ to make excuses for this." Abby squeezes his knee again, and he finds that touch comforting, but it doesn't slow his speech down. "It happened to _me!_ This isn't some stranger who I met as an adult with a bad past. She did it to _me_. She let him do it to _me_. And I don't owe her reasonable or logical or kind or adult or..." he's staring at his plate, stabbing his dinner again.

Abby's stroking his back and Penny and Sarah both pull back, looking at each other.

"You're right, Tim, you don't," Penny says gently. "You don't have to forgive or forget or any of it. You can be as angry as you want or need. It's okay. Just, none of us want to see angry bite you in the long run."

He takes a moment to calm himself back down again, putting down his fork, pushing his plate away. "Until I was talking to you two, I wasn't feeling angry. Just hurt. So damn hurt."

"Sorry," Sarah says quickly, knowing she brought up most of angry. "It's just... she's my mom."

He closes his eyes, feeling the tears seeping out. "Yeah, I know. And you feel defensive for her. And it's your family, too, ripped to bits. And, and... I know." He sniffs. "And like with Dad, I don't expect you to cut her out or burn any bridges. I get she... they didn't... not to you..." He swallows hard. "It just really hurts, okay? I thought if I got it, if she told me what and why it'd be better, but it wasn't. I wasn't worth patience, respect, or kindness until I was so fried I didn't care about my life anymore."

"But you are now. She loves you so much, and she's so proud of you." Sarah says.

He blinks, wipes away the tears. "It's not enough."

"She thinks you're punishing her."

He snorts at that. "Karma's punishing her. I'm doing what I need to to not melt down."

"You want me to tell her that?"

"I... I don't know. I don't care. Not really. I want you to do what you need to do to keep whatever sort of relationship you need with her. Like with Dad... I don't want you giving her hope that this is going to somehow get better. I don't want you giving her pictures or news or... whatever. I don't want her thinking there's some magical formula of right things that's somehow going to make it all right."

"Okay."

"What are you going to do?"

Sarah shrugs. "I'm not in a doing position here. I want you two to be better. Okay, so we never had happy Brady Bunch family time, but... I miss us."

"I know." And he does. He misses "us" too. He misses the lies that let "us" work.

"A year ago last week, we were all together, celebrating your wedding, all dressed up, and it was fun and happy and-" she sounds so eager to get that back, and so sad at the loss of it.

"And based on a lie."

"I liked the lie!" she says, sharply.

"You think I didn't?" he snaps. Not mad so much as irritated. And God, yes, he liked the lie. Right now he'd happily go running back to it if he could. "News flash, Sis, this isn't fun. I'm not doing this for kicks."

"I know, but..." He can see the ache in her eyes. The loss of something that she cherished is writ large on her face.

"Yeah." He nods, understanding, and sighs. "I just... I mean, what would forgiving her even look like? Saying that what she did was okay? Saying I'm okay with it? Hey, you and Dad abused the shit out of me as a kid, but it's a lot nicer if we all get along, so I'll just pretend that was okay and quietly have a nervous breakdown anytime you get close to my kid because I'm terrified you'll pull the same crap on her that you did on me?"

"No!" Penny says fast, but after that none of the rest of them have anything to add. People talk about forgiveness but in actual fact it's an awful nebulous concept.

Ducky says, calmly, after another very long, quiet moment, "Forgiveness is not approving of her behavior, nor is it giving it sanction. It's acknowledging it, and knowing that it's over. It's understanding the past, and firmly locating it there. It is recognizing that everyone who was involved in what happened is now gone. Neither you, nor your mother, are the same people. The woman she was and the child you were are gone. They're just memories, and hold only as much power over you as you chose to give them.

"For the sake of your own mental health, that part of your life has to die. It needs to be properly acknowledged, learned from, mourned, and let go. Beyond that, I do not know what forgiveness is for you and your mother. It might be trying to rebuild from the ground up, recognizing that she is someone who looks like someone you have a history with, but is not that person. It may be saying goodbye to that part of your life, and your relationship with her may be a casualty of that farewell.

"Right now, Timothy, I'd say you're still in the acknowledging phase of this. You're not ready to mourn or let go because you still don't have a full understanding of what happened. You say you're not angry, that you're hurt, and that may be true, right now, because you're still feeling your way through this.

"You're still naming, organizing, and understanding. You're building context. That's long work, and rushing it won't result in good things."

That made a whole lot of sense.

"I think it is safe to say, that the one thing we all want, is for you to be happy and whole. I'm sure Sarah would prefer happy and whole involved your family once again together. But if it doesn't, it doesn't."

"And no matter how it works out, this here," Penny gestures to the five of them, "And Kelly, and Gibbs, and Glenn, and any other babies that may join us, are family."

* * *

A/N: Yes, I know, these last few updates have been grim. Upside, tomorrow we've got Kelly and Pop, so light, fluffiness coming your way soon!


	34. Goodnight, Kelly

When they got home from the Slaters', Abby put Kelly in her crib, Tim vanished, and Gibbs realized he either needed to head home now, and grab stuff for tomorrow, or he was going to be getting up really early tomorrow to run home then.

He went up to the guest room, grabbed his bag, and headed down.

"Gonna run home, swap out my clothes."

Abby nods at that, she's on her computer, reading something. "You know, you could just leave stuff in that room. I know you don't live on the other side of the earth, but, for nights you don't feel like running home... It's fine with both of us if you want to treat that like your room. We've both been thinking of it as your room."

That actually would be really convenient. He nods, feeling a little surprised at how he's not feeling any sense of reticence towards grabbing some stuff and leaving it here. It doesn't feel like intruding.

"If you let me know what sort of pillows you like..."

"Everything you've got in there is fine."

"Okay. Just, feel free to make it comfortable. Anything you want, add to the grocery list. We'll keep it stocked for you."

* * *

When he got back a bit more than an hour later, Abby was pumping, watching something on TV, Kelly was still snoozing, and he could hear music coming from Tim's office.

He put his stuff upstairs, unpacked, didn't take too long to find a home for a few changes of clothing and one suit, and headed back down.

"Making sure we're all set for dinner?" he asks Abby as she wraps up with the breast pump.

"Yep. Heather tells me she gets irate when supper isn't breast milk."

"And we wouldn't want that."

"Not at all."

* * *

About three minutes after Tim and Abby headed out, Gibbs hears Kelly start to cry. He pauses the game, and heads up the stairs.

"Just you and me tonight," he says as he heads in, scooping her out of her crib.

She gurgles at him, looking like she approves.

He tickles her tummy as he gets her out of her extra-warm footy-pajamas for her diaper change. Unlike tights, these are easy. Just a zipper from neck to foot, and he can handle that one-handed. Pink with little kittens on it. He thinks he's seen this on Molly. Wouldn't surprise him. He does know that a pile of baby clothing migrated from the Palmer house to the McGee house when it was clear that Kelly was a girl, and he knows that clothing (along with some skull-bedecked onesies that he deeply doubts will ever end up on Anna) heads right back as Kelly outgrows it. Breena's got everything ready for Anna now, they're just waiting for her to show up. Though, he thinks, it'd be nice if she decided to cook for at least a few more weeks.

He gets Kelly cleaned up, and then gets him cleaned up, and in a matter of minutes they both head down for some dinner.

Abby did order him some pizza, which he's enjoying. And Kelly's propped against his chest, slurping happily on her bottle.

He turns the game back on, and both of them have dinner while the Redskins wipe the floor with the Steelers.

"Those guys in red are your Uncle Tony and Uncle Ed's team. The ones in black and yellow are our team. When the ones in red have the ball, we say 'Booooo!'" He stretches the sound out, exaggerating it. She gives him the perplexed look that seems to be her standard response to adults goofing with her. "We'll work on that whole sense of humor thing," he says as she drains the bottle dry. She fusses a bit, looking like she's still hungry.

"You want more?" She continues to fuss at him.

"Don't have more of this. I can get you formula."

More fussing.

"Formula it is." He makes up another bottle, one-handed, Kelly pressed against his chest. "I think you're getting ready for a growth spurt. Might be getting onto time to add some cereal to your diet, too."

He lifts the formula bottle to her lips, and she does that little, _uggh, this stuff_ face as she takes her first suck. "Yeah, I know, you don't love this. It's supposed to be really good for you."

She keeps sucking.

"Your mom tells me this is chemically identical to breast milk. Same fats and proteins and whatever. Doesn't have the micro-nutrients, but it's as close as she could get you."

Kelly doesn't appear to be impressed.

"Yeah. It's not the same, is it?"

More unimpressed suckling. He takes them back into the living room, and turns the game back on. "On the upside, you're not going hungry. And I'm not having to decide for myself if you're getting some cereal for the first time tonight."

They settle in for another quarter of the game. He's sitting there, enjoying the pleasant, warm weight of her against his tummy, as well as the little mwuf, mwuf, mwuf, sucking sound of a contently eating infant. He notices the sucking is slowing down and she's a good two-thirds of the way through her second bottle, so she's probably feeling full enough.

"Burp time?" He shifts the rag that had been tucked under her chin, catching the drips of milk and formula that hadn't been making it into Kelly, and drapes it over his shoulder. He props her against his chest, stands up, and starts his patting and slightly bouncy stroll of a walk.

It takes a minute or two, but he does coax a burp out of her, and she settles in more comfortably against him.

He shifts his hold, so she's in his arms, looking up at him. "Feeling better?" He nods for her. "Good. Tubby time. Someone's smelly, and it's not me."

When he did this last week, Kelly didn't get a bath. She didn't need one. But she is definitely a bit whiffy today, and bath time, when she needs one, is part of her bedtime routine. Plus it's not like he's never given a baby a bath before. He doesn't think Tim or Abby will mind.

So, up to the tubby they go. He gets the water going, gets her stripped off, and is in the process of putting her in the little bath caddy thing they've got in there for her when his knee sends him a loud and clear message that it will not be going along with any adventure that involves spending more than another thirty seconds kneeling, and that if he does not stand up or sit down right now, it is going to complain in a very loud and unfortunate manner, possibly involving him having to go back to wearing the brace all the damn time.

Which means he's sitting on the edge of the tub, naked baby in his arms, who is a human time bomb of sorts, just waiting to pee on him, having to figure out how to do this without kneeling. Sitting on the edge of the tub he's too high up to easily wash her off, and way too high up to keep a good grip on her.

So that leaves getting into the tub with her, either standing for a shower, or sitting in the tub. (Or putting the afore mentioned pretty whiffy baby back into her jammies and punting the problem to the next day. But in that he's a take-charge, Marine kind of guy, the idea of just ignoring it never occurs to him. The mission is washed baby, and he will not fail!)

He wonders, briefly, if it'll bug Tim or Abby that he's getting in the tub with Kelly. He's awfully sure it won't be a problem for Abby. Not as sure about Tim. He does know that Tim gets in with her, if he didn't know that, or if it wasn't true, he'd be eyeballing the baby wipes and just giving her a sponge bath. But, just because Tim gets in with her, doesn't mean Tim's cool with other naked guys around his baby daughter.

He carries Kelly over to her changing table, laying her down, and quickly strips out of his own clothing. (He leaves his boxers on as a compromise between naked and dressed. He knows Jimmy's been at the pool with Kelly, so it's not like she hasn't had some naked chest time with someone who wasn't Dad.) And picking her back up, snuggling her close, she made a very surprised sound, and immediately got both of her tiny hands gripped vice tight in his chest hair.

As he was gently prying her fingers open, hoping he doesn't have two bald patches on his chest from how tight she's grabbing him, he says, "I know; I'm a lot fuzzier than Dad and Uncle Jimmy. I'm also attached to that fuzz, so quit trying to yank it out."

Maybe she's listening, maybe not. But once he gets the second hand open, she stops trying to rip his chest hair out. She does keep pressing her cheek against his chest, making a sort of surprised squawking sound, pulling back, and doing it again.

He looks down at her the third time she does it, as he's testing the water to see if it's nicely warm. "Are you laughing?"

She does it one more time and makes that sound again. He rubs his chest a little and says, "Yeah, I guess it is kind of tickle-y."

She's eyeballing his nipple, trying to grab it. She doesn't have enough fine motor control to get it, but her hand keeps landing in the right general area. "Just like with Dad, that doesn't do anything you're interested in," he says as he notices that he's only got one towel in there, and it's hers. He takes her hand in his as when she gets his chest hair again, heading into the hall to find another towel. "Okay. Got it. We're all set for shower time."

He steps in, back to the spray, and then turns slowly. "We good?"

She doesn't fuss, so he thinks this is probably success and proceeds to get her washed off. She's a plump little thing, so washing off involves getting soap worked into knee folds and elbow folds and the like, which she seems to consider tickly, too, so there's a lot of pleased squirming as he's getting her lathered up, and then some not so pleased squirming, she's determined to not let him wash under her chin, but after about five minutes she's all cleaned up and rinsed off, and it's time to get out.

He gets her wrapped up in her towel. It has a little hood, which he thinks is a nice addition to baby gear, and also wings, a tail, and horns, (Of course it's a dragon, a little pink and pastel blue dragon. Molly's got a puppy one. There's a kitten one waiting for Anna for when she gets home.) which he's not seeing as much use for, but she does seem to enjoy chewing on one of the horns as he dries her off. He quickly dries himself off, slipping off the soaked boxers, wrapping his towel around his waist, and takes her to her bedroom.

Dried off, diaper on, fresh jammies on, pacifier in mouth, sleepy baby cuddled in his arms, slowly sucking her pacifier, eyes drooping: that feels good. He settles with her in the rocking chair, gently swaying back and forth. He doesn't pick up the book. She doesn't look at the pictures. These days, reading to Kelly is more about the sound than anything else.

Besides, he knows the words.

So, he gently strokes her back and starts with, "In the great green room, there was a telephone, a red balloon, and a picture of the cow jumping over the moon..."

Before Kelly, he hadn't thought about those words in decades. Didn't know he still knew them. But he does. And right now, words slipping off his lips, quietly, eyes closed, as he rocks back and forth, it could be, save for the dull ache in his knee, 1982, and he could be doing this in a small nursery in base housing at Lejeune.

He finishes up, adding 'Goodnight Kelly' the final line he always used, gently putting her down, and then heads to his room to get dressed.

* * *

Tim and Abby get home and find Gibbs on the sofa, reading, in his PJs. He's looking very comfy. (Game wrapped ten minutes earlier; Redskins (booo) won.)

Abby leads Tim into the living room, plunks him on the sofa next to Gibbs, tosses the Playstation controllers at them and says, "Fun. This has been a god-awful grim weekend and we are finishing it off with some fun!"

Tim's looking at her defeatedly, like he'll go along with this but all he really wants to do is sleep. Gibbs doesn't think dinner went badly, neither Tim nor Abby have that sort of feel about them, and he's sure that if it had been a disaster Ducky or Penny would have given him a heads up, but it's been a long two days, and Tim's fried. He doesn't look like he's thinking gaming will be fun, and Gibbs certainly isn't.

Gibbs is glaring at the controller; reading was fun. The game, even with the Redskins winning, was fun. Bedtime was fun. Anything that involves one of these confounded glowing electronic things is not fun.

She comes back a moment later with three ciders. One for each of them, all open. Tim drinks his pretty thankfully, right now some alcohol would be a good thing for him, blur the edges a bit, and Gibbs takes a deep drink, it'll make whatever it is she's got in mind easier.

She sits in Tim's lap, turns on the tv and the playstation, flips around for a few seconds and queues up a game. "This one's really easy."

Gibbs is staring at the tv. Then he blinks slowly and looks at her. "Plants Versus Zombies _III_? They needed _three_ of these?"

"Yes." She smiles brightly, but there's a brittleness to that smile, she's not as happy as she seems because she's trying to make things lighter than they are. "Because it's _fun_!"

Gibbs gets that message loud and clear. He is being shanghaied into fun, and he _will_ have fun or answer to a mope-y Abby. So, if enjoying whatever comes next will make them feel better, he can fake it for an hour or so. "Do you own all three?"

"Of course!" She flips it onto two players, taking another drink. "You're going to watch Tim and I play, then you get to."

Gibbs is staring at the screen, weak smile on his face. He's not loving the idea of playing this. But Tim's starting to grin.

"This one's pretty easy, Jethro. Just use three buttons," he says, taking a drink, starting to look a bit more alive.

"Yeah, simple controls, but it's a defensive strategy game. Your job is to use the plants to defend the house. If the Zombies get in, they eat your brains and you lose." A cartoon lawn with a hedge on one end and a house on the other pops up on the TV. Abby plants a smiling flower and starts moving the cursor around collecting smiling cartoon suns. "You just swoop around, collecting suns, and planting your plants, and then they kill the Zombies."

Tim starts to relax a bit. "It's a silly game. Simple controls, but not a simple game. Lots of different Zombies, lots of plants, everything does something different, and the terrain changes every level." He kisses his wife. This is exactly what he needs right now. Something completely unrelated to the rest of his life that will hold his attention, but is easy enough it doesn't involve adrenaline spikes. Win, lose, doesn't matter, this is cute and fun. "Thanks."

She kisses back. "Anytime, baby."

"Okay. So, these little flowers here," he starts explaining to Gibbs, "are like your banking system. You've got to plant them to make sure you can buy the stuff you need to defend with. These pea plants are like rifles. They shoot one pea at a time. The walnuts are a barrier defense..."

Gibbs listens to Tim explaining what's going on as he and Abby start building their fortress. They get a minute to put things in place before the Zombies start to shuffle their way through.

"So, you see how the pea keeps shooting and the Zombie dies?"

"Yeah, I can see that, Tim." _Not blind yet, even if I do need glasses all the time now._

"Good, so that's the game. More plants that do more damage. Bigger, faster, badder Zombies. You've got to make sure you've got enough sun for the plants and you've got to wait between plantings."

"I think I've got it. You need a rifle pit in the top line." There's nothing shooting up there, and a new Zombie's wandering toward the house.

"On it," Abby says, planting the pea shooter.

"What's that corn cob thing you've got?" Jethro asks Tim. (When they play Abby handles making sure they've got enough sunshine, and small arms fire, Tim handles barriers, big guns, and last ditch efforts.)

"Multi-directional mortar fire."

"Hmmm..." He can see the value of that. Especially as crowds of Zombies are starting to head toward the house. "The hot pepper?"

"Single line napalm fire."

"Hmp." Jethro keeps watching as horde after horde of Zombies die before getting into the house. But he's thinking he's getting the hang of this. The plants and Zombies are silly, but it looks like the strategy aspect is solid.

And he's good at strategy. After all, if you want someone to defend a house against a horde of anything, let alone Zombies, Leroy Jethro Gibbs is your man.

More importantly, this is the first time he's seen Tim laugh since work on Friday, so anything that'll help with that, he's willing to try.

Tim and Abby play three levels, while Gibbs watches intently. As the last Zombie on that level died, Gibbs says to Abby, "Okay, hand that over. Let me try."

That gets a smile out of Tim, and a happy laugh out of Abby, who shifts next to him, starting to point out what buttons do what.

And all in all, it's not that bad, kind of addictive, really. He might, possibly, be interested in playing this again.

They'd been at it for an hour, he and Abby swapping the controller, Tim playing straight through, when Kelly begins chirping for second dinner.

"And that's my call," Abby says, handing the controller over to Jethro.

"How'd it go?" he asks Tim as he plants landmines. (Some sort of potato thing. He has an easier time just thinking of them by what sort of weapon they are.)

"Better than yesterday."

"Not a high hurdle to clear."

"Nope." Tim shakes his head at that. "You and Kelly?"

"Fine. Realized half-way through my knee wasn't up for kneeling to give her a bath."

"Tubby tomorrow then?"

Gibbs looks appalled at the idea that mere knee issues may have waylaid him from his goal of a clean baby. "Got in with her. Figured I should make sure that was okay, though."

Tim shrugs. "Doesn't bug me. Can't imagine it'd bug Abby."

"Good. Just figured I should check."

Tim thinks about it for a second. "If it's something you would have done with your Kelly, it's okay to do it with mine." He goes very quiet after that, not saying anything, not paying attention to the game.

After a minute, Gibbs asks, "You okay?"

"As much as I've been any time since yesterday." He shakes his head. "We were talking a little about forgiveness and what it would look like. And I just said that to you. Just slipped right off my tongue without a second thought. And I don't need to give it a second thought. I know you'll be okay with her. Sun rises in the east. Gravity pulls stuff toward earth. Kelly is safe with Gibbs. Absolute truth." He smiles limply at Gibbs. "Assuming I ever did get to forgiving her, let alone allowing her back into our lives, that's something I'd never be sure of with my mom."

Gibbs puts the controller down and rubs Tim's shoulder. "You thinkin' about it?"

"My sister would really like it."

"I'm sure she would. Doesn't mean it's a good plan."

"I know."

"Doesn't mean it's a bad one, either."

"Thanks," Tim says dryly. And then, more seriously. "What would you do?"

"I'm not you."

"Which is why I'm asking. Sarah kept pointing out, it's been twenty years, she's not the person she used to be..."

Gibbs does think about it. He takes a few minutes to put the words together properly. "I think trust is what builds families. I think part of what makes our family different, stronger, is that our trust in each other was earned. It's not a matter of accident or blood. It's that every day, for years, we put ourselves on the line for each other. When push came to shove, we all stood up and shoved back for each other. Even when we're rubbing each other wrong, we all know, in our bones and souls, that we've got each other's backs to the end." He stops at that, takes a breath, sees Tim watching him, listening very intently, and continues on, "The best, most charitable version of what happened with you and your mom is that when push came to shove, she rolled on over and let your Dad steamroll you and her. The real version is worse. She broke your trust. And different person or not, twenty years or not, reformed or not, you'd be insane to trust her with you, your wife, or your child. And since that's true, she can't be family. Coming to terms with that, making peace with it, getting to the point where you can tolerate spending an afternoon with your sister's mom for your sister's sake, all of that is probably a good idea. But I don't think she's your family, and I know she's not mine."

Tim nods at that and stands up, shutting off the game. "Thanks." That time it was genuine. "Abby'll be wrapping up with Kelly soon, and I'm beat. 'Night."

"Good night, Tim."


	35. Cuckoo

In the six months since they began living together Ducky has learned quite a bit about Penny Langston. (He assumes the converse is true for her, as well.) He's also learned quite a bit about himself, among them, how much he enjoys the quiet intimacy of getting ready for bed with someone, followed by settling in to sleep.

He has, of course, had many bedmates over the years. Many great loves. Yet this moment now, preparing for rest, him sitting on the edge of his bed, undressing, watching Penny, who is sitting at one of her additions to their home, a vanity, taking off her jewelry and brushing her hair, has been a rarity in his life. And the moment to come, when they will lie in bed, resting, finishing off the night with gentle conversation and gentle, or depending on mood, maybe not so gentle touch, is one he eagerly anticipates.

Of course, for Ducky there is an added layer of learning this woman he has chosen to share his life with, namely, he's known her grandson for well over ten years now, and there are times where he finds himself staggered by how sharply she reminds him of Timothy. (Though, technically, it's Timothy reminding him of her, but he didn't meet Penny until he'd known Timothy for almost a decade. As a result he often has to remind himself of the correct direction in which that association lies.)

Right now, the quiet of her motions, the look on her face, the lack of her usual pre-bed conversation, all of that is reminding him of Timothy quite intensely.

Which makes quite a bit of sense, given what happened tonight.

He's been thinking about it, too.

Many thoughts, many ideas, family secrets, questions, and beloved, fragile hearts all in play.

For example, a thought: one that's struck him over and over with this whole thing is that he cannot fathom how two people who put Timothy so thoroughly through the ringer would be good parents to Sarah.

It's obvious watching how the two of them understand their parents, that John and Terri were very much not the same people for Timothy as they were for Sarah.

There is something else, that is, to Ducky, looking in from the outside, obvious. Something he's fairly sure that Penny has to be aware of, but he's equally certain that Timothy and Sarah are not.

And it's something that... he's not sure of. And less sure of voicing his suspicion out loud. If his suspicions are correct... If they are, everything becomes yet more confusing... Or possibly... though that's a version of John he's never contemplated before, a level of self-loathing he does not expect or suspect, less.

"You're thinking loudly." Penny says, looking at him in the mirror, putting her brush down.

"I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was speaking." he says, unbuttoning his shirt.

"You weren't. That's the dead give-away. You stop chattering when you're thinking hard. What has your gears turning?"

Family secrets... Well, given what they got together to talk about today, and that he was welcomed as an insider, as family, by both Penny and Tim... "A rather indelicate question, I'm afraid."

"Really?" Penny looks intrigued, turning to face him as she smoothes moisturizer onto her arms and neck. "What's sparking that?"

"I've been pondering how John and Terri could have been so hard on Timothy, and yet so kind to Sarah."

"Both of them would have told you that Sarah didn't need it. John especially would tell you that she was just fine the way she was."

"Yes. I imagine he would say that." The perversity of that man's mind is staggering to Ducky.

"Was that your indelicate question?"

"No. Though I suppose that one was indelicate, as well. This one, I suppose, is outright rude." Penny's looking very interested in where he's going with this. "I've met Terri twice, and if memory serves, she has blonde hair and green eyes. I saw John once, and I don't remember clearly, but my sense was he had light hair and blue eyes." Penny's nodding at that, and seems to know where this is going. "My sense was neither of them have a cleft chin, either." She nods at that, too. "And yet, Sarah has brown hair, brown eyes, and a bit of a cleft chin."

"She does," Penny says, watching him intently.

He tosses his shirt into the hamper, and turns to face her. "I would not have thought that John would be particularly kind to the cuckoo in his nest."

Penny nods, acknowledging that, then adds, "I'd imagine that would have quite a bit to do with how she got there. And no, I don't know the answer to that. Likewise, I do not specifically know if he's noticed or wondered about the fact that Sarah looks nothing like the rest of us, though I have a hard time believing he could have somehow missed that fact.

"I know they both wanted several children. I know Terri miscarried once before Tim and three times after. It's entirely possible that most of the difference was that Sarah came well after either of them had given up any hope of another child."

"The longed for second chance?" Ducky goes back to getting undressed, and then fetches his pajamas, pulling on the light blue, cotton drawers.

"Maybe." Penny begins dabbing another potion of some sort on her face. "Things were already tense with John and Tim. But, at least as I remember it, they were only tense. But, I also wasn't there for a lot of it. I was there enough to know they got worse after Sarah was born."

"Pre-adolescent hormones making things worse?" Ducky asks, pulling on the matching, long-sleeved buttoned pajama top. Like much of what he owns there's a certain formality to his pajamas, but at the same time, they are old, worn, well-loved and exceptionally well-made cotton.

"Possibly." She shrugs, grabbing yet another bottle and starting to apply a new fluid to her feet and legs. "I think it was more that it was becoming clear that Tim wasn't going to grow out of being quiet or shy, and was still showing absolutely no interest at all in the Navy and John knew the window was closing, fast."

Ducky's still thinking. He just cannot imagine that John would have, on any level, been accepting to a child who wasn't his. And if Terri miscarried over and over... Timothy would have been young, but... not young enough to spring a baby out of nowhere with. A visible pregnancy would have had to happen.

"You didn't live near them when Terri was pregnant with Sarah, did you?"

"No, they were in California that year."

"Are you sure Sarah is Terri's?"

That got a very surprised look out of Penny, she opened her mouth and then closed it, and then opened it again and closed it again. _That_ was an angle that she'd never considered. That was an angle no one (and yes, if she and Nelson were talking about it, other people must have, too) considered. Penny thought about it, remembering everything she could. "We only knew she was pregnant for three months. After four miscarriages we didn't expect them to say anything until Terri was sure the baby was healthy. So, when we found out she was supposed to be twenty weeks along. Sarah was a very large preemie. Almost seven pounds at thirty-two weeks gestation. If she was full term, John was on a float when Sarah would have been conceived. He was on a float when she was born, too. Shipped out the month before she was born. He was home for two of the months in the middle, though.

"If she isn't Terri's, her parents were in on it. They stayed with Tim while she was in the hospital, helped with her when she was brand new."

"Would she have been willing to raise another woman's child?" Ducky asks, heading to the foot of the bed, sitting on the chest in front of their bed, closer to Penny.

She's thinking hard, tapping her fingers against the handle of her brush. "I think by that point, she would have been willing to have done pretty much anything that involved another baby. She talked a bit about adopting when Tim was younger, but nothing ever happened." Penny thinks about it more. "She didn't nurse Sarah. She did for Tim. But with Sarah she was saying it hurt too much and took too long and bottle feeding meant Tim could get a meal or two and she could get a few more hours of sleep. Unlike with Tim, who was born two weeks before John got back for a two-year stint at home, she was basically a single parent for the first year Sarah was alive. He was gone her first four months, home for sixty days, gone for another six months."

"So, like sailors everywhere and through all time, he had ample opportunity to make friends."

"Of course. And he was captain of his own ship by then. If he wanted or needed to swing an unscheduled detour, he could have done it. He also, if memory serves, had female members on his crew then."

"I thought women weren't on combat ships in the US Navy until 1991."

She nods, always impressed by how much information about everything Ducky seems to have. "You're right, _combat_ ships. They started serving in non-combat, non-hospital ships in '78. John wasn't on a combat ship then. Like Tim and I he was always good with technology, and he was running a test ship, all of the latest goodies were floating around under his command, so the closest he ever got to combat on that tour was war gaming. No one wanted the stuff he had getting anywhere near the USSR's navy."

"Ah."

Penny nods, and he can see on her face the idea that this is suddenly making a whole lot of sense. And it's making a whole lot of sense to Ducky, too. Too much sense.

"Their marriage was already more than strained at that point?"

"Their marriage was strained by the time they finished cutting the cake at the wedding."

"But they were also Catholic, and a divorce looks bad for an ambitious officer climbing fast and hard toward Admiral."

"Exactly. Especially on that last push. Everything needs to look perfect when you're trying to get that last jump between Captain and Admiral. Can't run your own house, how can you run a fleet? Can't have people saying that."

"And, would I be remiss in assuming everything he didn't like about Timothy came from Terri, at least according to John?"

"If he felt that way, he was smart enough to never say it in my presence. But I wouldn't be surprised if he eventually felt that way. And..." She shakes her head. "I hate saying this, but it was likely true, too. Terri was quieter, more timid. She thinks first, thinks again, and then does things. She's not a social butterfly; she has a few friends she's very loyal to, her family, and that's it. Given the option of fighting or finding a way to smooth things over, she'll smooth. Tim also looked a lot like her then. The shape of the face and the eyes especially, and the same longish blond hair. God, that hair drove John crazy. Tim liked it longer. John didn't want any of it more than two inches long. Getting it cut off right before his Dad got back was always a fight."

Ducky nods, feeling like the pieces are shifting into place. "So for John the first child, Timothy, is the symbol of a failed marriage and wasted potential. His seed ruined by inferior breeding stock. The second child, Sarah, doesn't have the taint of Terri's genes. Perhaps her mother was one of his shipmates. She's unlimited potential unmarred by a woman he's grown to resent. For Terri, Timothy is a long nightmare of nothing she does, because how he behaves is the yardstick her husband is using to measure her actions, ever being good enough. He's the symbol of her failure as a mother, because she can't force her round peg into the square hole. She wanted more babies, her husband wanted her to have more babies, but she cannot have any more children, yet another marker of failure. For her, Sarah is the fulfilled yearning for another child, and because Sarah delights John, she's a reprieve from the constant grinding of only being judged by how good a job she does of making Timothy into someone he was never suited to become."

That's probably not dead on, but it fits. Penny adds, "And when Sarah is born, John loses the restraint that kept him from fully opening up on Tim. Yes, he's the only boy, so he can't go as hard on Tim as he wants, someone's got to carry on the family name and traditions, but he's not the only child anymore so he can push harder, if it doesn't work out, there's always another shot."

"Add in Timothy's more traditionally feminine traits, and Sarah's more masculine devil-may-care tomboyishness..."

"And it's the perfect storm of everything that could go wrong, going wrong."

Ducky buttons the shirt of his pajamas, and steps over to Penny, leaning down to kiss her. Yes, this feels solid, like a puzzle well-solved, but the glow of putting the pieces together is rapidly cooling in the light of this is his love, and her son, and his children, all warped by this morass of pain.

These are not unknown pieces on a board being shifted around to come to a conclusion for the purpose of solving a crime.

This is her family, and for that matter, his. "But it is only speculation."

She smiles, grimly, a very Timothy gesture. She appreciates the fact that he's trying to soften the idea of it, but also knows the softening isn't real. "It fits. It wasn't the way I was thinking it worked, this works better with who John and Terri are, but... Two years ago Sarah was really excited about that DNA company that let you do your own testing. Learn all about your genome."

Ducky nods. He remembers Jimmy talking about it with Abby.

"She asked all of us if we wanted to do it. Tim seemed interested, but those fascists at FDA shut the company down before we got around to it. Which worked out just fine, because I was fairly certain the results would have been quite surprising to the kids."

"I was thinking that this did not appear to be something that's occurred to either of them."

"If it had ever crossed Tim's mind, he would have said something to me..." She pauses, considering that. "No. He would have had Abby test it, and he'd already know, and then he would have said something to me. If it had ever crossed Sarah's mind, she would have said something to me, her mom, her dad, and Tim."

Ducky nods, that strikes him as how Sarah would handle it. Penny stands, pressing into Ducky's embrace, stroking his face gently. "So, profiler, what do you think? Should he know? Would understanding why Sarah got to be the golden child while he was Cinderella help?"

Ducky shakes his head. "I can't imagine it would. Short of finding out he's not actually John's son, I don't think there's any information along those lines that Timothy would find comforting."

"No. Probably not."


	36. A Week

On Monday, before going to the Bullpen, Tim went down to the basement, unplugged the old coffee machine, poured out the scorched battery acid that was masquerading as coffee, set the drip pot under the counter, and then set up the Keurig, put the box of assorted flavor cups next to it along with a whiteboard and a dry erase marker.

He wrote on the board, _What kind of coffee do you like?_ and left plenty of room for them to add their favorites.

He's not the Boss yet, but he can sure as hell get his Minions some decent coffee.

* * *

On Tuesday, during lunch, Tim headed down to see Jimmy. Monday night, after work, he and Abby began opening all of Kelly's christening presents, and while a few of them were cute little onesies and stuff, most of them were cards.

They were expecting greeting cards.

They were not expecting (in that most of these people are near strangers) money in those cards.

So, he pulls Jimmy out of the morgue and they head off in search of lunch, and for Tim, pointers on correct responses to this level of family generosity.

Once they were seated with food in front of them, he says, "Jimmy, everyone gave us money for Kelly."

And Jimmy nods.

"Like, a few thousand dollars all told."

And he keeps nodding.

"Is this usual?"

"Welcome to the Slater Funeral Home Family Mafia. You get in, but you never get out." Tim's just staring at him. "They take this family wealth thing _really_ seriously. We're all supposed to add to it, help it grow, and then lavish it on the kids, making sure they've got everything they need to build the business further and keep all of us in the black. Christmas, birthdays, all the kids get little presents, and mom and dad get cash for them which is supposed to go toward making sure they get a good education or having seed money to go start a business for themselves/build onto the family business."

"That's what every baby needs a party means?"

Jimmy nods. "Something like that. All of the kids getting out of college with no debt is a _big_ deal. I was talking about how I was able to refi and consolidate my student loans, and they all stared at me like I was talking about how proud I was of getting a good rate to finance my prostitution ring. By the end of that night Ed, Jeannie, and two of the Uncles had offered to pay them off."

"Is that a good thing?"

"It was nice... I guess. At the time I was kind of insulted, because, you know, it's mine, so paying it off is my job. Especially when Ed hit me with it first, I saw it more as a 'he didn't think I'd be able to do it' sort of thing. But the more time I'm with them, the more I get they really don't see it like that. The money, the debts, the businesses, the houses, it's all sort of ours. We hold onto the wealth for the kids, try to build it up, and pass more of it to them than we started with. So, they're offering to pay it off rather than let interest payments eat even further away at our capital." Jimmy eats a bite of his salad. "That's part of me not being son-in-law of the year material. I don't add to the wealth pool."

"You've got a job."

"Yeah, but I bring in cash. Cash on its own is useless. You've got to do something with it, make something of value that makes its own cash. Ed thinks you're a dork, too, but you write books and get royalties and whatnot, so you're higher on the value scale than I am. I get fired, I'm screwed. You get fired, your royalties keep coming and you go spend more time at the typewriter turning out more books and making yet more royalties. You're financially independent in a way I'm not."

"So, you leave NCIS and open a medical practice…" Tim leads as he cuts his chicken.

"Yeah, up to Son-In-Law-of-the-Year I go, along with suddenly having a hundred patients, a pile of seed money, and three or four accountants to make sure my books are in great shape, while a financial planner or two goes over everything and makes sure all of my assets are sheltered."

"And let me guess, if you got into hospice care..."

"I'd get the gold star to go with my shiny new Son-In-Law-of-the-Year Award," Jimmy says dryly. "Did you ever read The Godfather?"

"Million years ago."

"They don't kill people or steal stuff, but I married into the real world Corleone family."

"And now I'm part, too?"

Jimmy smiles. "Breena and I are godparents to your daughter. You're godparents to ours, so, yes."

"You couldn't have mentioned this _before_ we got into it?"

"I figured if Ed didn't scare you off, this wasn't going to be a big deal."

"Okay, that's probably true."

"Just, don't forget thank you notes. They're a really big deal. Actual, real, on paper, in the mail, handwritten, thank you notes. Lack of thank you notes results in nagging."

"I think we can swing some thank you notes."

"Good."

* * *

On Wednesday: they worked a case. And worked some more. And then worked a bit after that. It was technically Thursday when they headed home.

* * *

On Thursday, Tony let them off early. Tuesday they worked late. Wednesday they worked early and late. So when 12:30 rolled around and they had the perp in booking, he sent them all home.

He and Ziva went home and crashed.

A nap felt good. Sex after the nap felt fantastic. Post-sex, shower-time snuggles were awesome. They made dinner together, lazy, relaxed, nibbling half of the ingredients before they got into the oven.

All in all, it was a really grand afternoon.

But, after dinner, as Ziva was curling up with a book, Tony was feeling a bit out of sorts and edgy. He also wasn't having an easy time putting his finger on why. Everything had gone just fine today. He should be warm, content, earbuds in, happily watching a movie while Ziva reads, curled up against him.

But she's not settling, either. Which is probably what's setting his senses on edge.

He can feel it. She looks settled. They're on the sofa. He's got his feet up on the coffee table. She's lying with her head in his lap, book in hand. She's still, very, very still. Which is usually a dead give-away that something is wrong. It's not that she's fidgety or anything. But when Ziva goes stock still, she's either on full alert or thinking hard, and neither of them are appropriate for a second read of her current book. (Among other things, book reading involves turning pages, which hasn't happened for at least five minutes.)

"You okay?" he asks after another tense moment.

"Yes. I'm just thinking."

"Good thinking?" That makes him nervous. He can't help it. Women "thinking" is a deeply ingrained warning sensor for him.

"Just thinking."

"Okay. Work thinking or us thinking?"

"A bit of both."

"Uh huh..." He'd really rather she just told him what was going on, but as they've talked about in counseling, making sure she's got time to get big things right in her head, before he drags them out of her, is important. So, he doesn't push. He wants to. All of his little curious sensors are tingling. But he's not pushing.

He puts his earbuds back in, unpauses the movie, and lets her think.

He didn't have to wait long. Twenty minutes, half an hour maybe. Long enough for him to begin to get sucked into the movie. But, sucked into the movie or not, he certainly notices when Ziva marks her page, rolls onto her stomach, chin resting on her hands, hands on his thigh, and looks up at him. He's not entirely sure, because it doesn't happen a lot (okay, ever) but he thinks this could be Ziva's version of puppy-dog eyes.

He pulls the earbuds out. "Done thinking?"

"For now."

"Okay. So, do I get to find out what you've been thinking about?"

"Yes." She doesn't say anything after that.

"Maybe you could say a bit more than that. You're starting to scare me."

"No. It's not bad, just..." And she pauses, taking a breath, making him more nervous, and then jumps in with what she's been thinking about. "We've been talking about a baby, and I was thinking, once we hire Gibbs' replacement, that might be a good time to start trying."

"Oh." And yeah, that's not bad or anything, it's just...

_Yeah._

He's not got much of anything going through his head. The spasm of 'Holy shit, a kid!' terror didn't fire, so that was a good thing. A step in the right direction. But, when they hire Gibbs' replacement is a whole lot more concrete that the somewhat nebulous 'eventually' they'd been bouncing around before.

But, like he let her think, she's letting him think, too. Which is a good thing, because right now, he doesn't know what he's thinking.

Unfortunately, he doesn't feel like he's pulling things together. There's just this huge, vague, something, and he's not sure how to deal with it.

So, he's gently stroking her back, not saying anything, kind of wishing he was saying something, though right now rambling on like a twit probably wouldn't win him any points.

After a good ten silent minutes, he comes up with, "So, like, as soon as we hire the guy, or when he joins the team, or once we know he's sticking around?"

"I was thinking when we hired him. But if you want to wait a bit longer, make sure he's blending in well, we could do that. Say, March or April at the latest."

"Ah... Really celebrate our first anniversary?"

"I was hoping we'd know by then, but, yes."

"Okay." He doesn't exactly sound excited, but there's no dread in his voice.

"Okay?" She double checks. He has the sense she was more than half-expecting him to freak out and melt down at this.

"Yeah, okay." He nods, tries to smile reassuringly.

"Are you really sure?"

They'd been talking about honesty, and that it's all right to be vulnerable with each other, and that actually discussing fears is better than pretending they aren't there, so unlike what he would have done this time last year, he answers honestly. "I don't know."

She smiles a bit, and nods, expecting that.

"Half of me is excited. Half feels like I'm marching off to face the firing squad."

She's not sure what to say to that. She knows, because they've talked about this, that he's, at best, wary about children. And he knows that she wants them.

"I just... I like our life. And, it feels really... something... to have a solid end to that."

"I understand." And she does.

"But I meant it when I said I'd do this with you. When we got married, this... kid thing, was part of it. So, yeah, I'm nervous about it, but, sure, when we get Gibbs' replacement. I'd like to make sure he gets a bit of time to settle in, make sure we're keeping him, but then, sure. We'll do this. Baby DiNozzo, show Palmer and McGee what a beautiful baby really looks like."

She half-smiles at his joke, and then sits up to kiss him.

* * *

On Friday, after they got home from Shabbos, after Molly was put to bed, Breena is kneeling on the floor, leaning her upper body against an exercise ball while Jimmy rubs her hips.

"I forgot how much I hate this part."

"Mmm..." He makes an agreeing noise, gently pressing the balls of his thumbs into her sacrum.

"I really don't think I can do forty-two weeks of this again. Everything hurts all over."

He nods.

"Hear that Anna, any time after thirty-six weeks. No hanging around forever like your sister did. When they say your lungs are done, out you come. The sooner the better."

He kisses the small of her back, fingers gently trailing down her spine.

"November 27th. That's thirty-six weeks." She says, hands rubbing her stomach. "That's when we're aiming for. Two more weeks and then out you go. Okay?"

He ripples his knuckles against her back, stroking his palms down her spine, cradling her hips in his hands and squeezing gently. "You want to flip around, sit on the ball, and I'll get your hips and thighs?"

"Sure."

He helps her get up, and seated on the ball, sitting cross-legged between her legs, gently rubbing her thighs and hips. He's resting his forehead (lightly) against her belly, feeling Anna squirming around in there.

He kisses again, lips brushing lightly above the waistband of Breena's leggings, trailing along the line from her now flat belly button to just above her pubic bone.

"Wouldn't mind a little bit longer with her on the inside." He kisses again, hands cradling her butt, and pulls back, smiling up at her. "Don't get to do this," he mouths gently over her. "For far too long once she's out."

Breena chuckles, a visible combination of exasperation (sex, now, really?) on her face as well as approval (I'm very glad you still find me sexy and attractive). "It's a good thing you're awfully cute," she says, ruffling his hair.

He smiles up at her again. "Well, you know, endorphins are good for pain, and for keeping your mood happy, and semen is supposed to help ripen the cervix. And if you want to stay on schedule for the 27th..."

"Uh huh." She's smiling, and takes off his glasses, resting them on the sofa behind him. "I don't remember that working all that hot last time."

"Obviously, we didn't do it nearly enough." He's inching her leggings off, and she stands up to make it easier.

"Obviously."

* * *

On Saturday, Gibbs had cleared out his basement and set up the band saw.

It's one of the only power tools he's willing to use. Especially on his own, especially for long pieces of wood, ripping boards is just not a good plan with a hand saw.

All of his wood is stripped. The finish is off.

He's built the guides that will keep each board straight and true as the saw goes through them.

Gibbs takes a deep breath, picks up the first of the beams that will soon be repurposed into bed legs, flips on the saw, places the board into the guide and gently pushes, feeling the saw go tearing through the wood with the sweet hum of destruction that creates.

A moment later, holding two, even, clean-cut pieces, he exhales, realizing he wasn't breathing as he cut.

And holding them, he realizes that he is ready to start to rebuild. The pain he thought he'd experience as he took blade to wood never materialized.

He picks up another of the beams, settles it into the guide, and gets to work.


	37. McSuperfreak

"Okay, this guy's a psychopath!"

"Why you saying that, Draga?" Tim asks as he's photographing the scene.

"Look at his browser history." So Tim goes over and does, reading over Drag's shoulder.

Then he laughs and shakes his head. "Not a freak, just a writer."

"They aren't one and the same?" Tony asks as he breezes in.

"Not this time."

"How do you know he's a writer?" Draga asks. "Because nothing about this says writer to me. Aspiring Hannibal Lecter, sure, but not writer."

"Because you haven't been in his bedroom, yet, so you missed the fact that he's got an MLA handbook; Eats, Shoot, and Leaves; and Strunk and White on his bedside table. This guy's a wanna be crime writer."

"You really sure?" Draga doesn't seem to believe that, at all. "I mean, I'm looking at an in-depth discussion of how boric acid reacts to human flesh."

Tim laughs at that, remembering some of the things he researched for his first book. "Yeah, you should have seen my browser history back when I was working on my first novel. Would have blown your mind."

"Would have blown his mind because you're McSuperfreak, not because you're a writer," Tony adds. Tim rolls his eyes. "Got this room done?"

"Just about," Tim answers. "Got a few more shots and I'm done."

"Good."

"McSuperfreak?" Draga asks.

Tony winces, shaking his head. "You don't want to know, on like fifty different levels."

Draga's looking really curious about that, looking from Tony to Tim and back again.

Tim shrugs; he doesn't want to share, but Tony still needs a smack for making a big deal out of this, so he calls out, "Hey Ziva, wanna know what Tony was on the last time his computer crashed?"

Tony's eyes went wide as Tim did that. "You wouldn't dare!" he says very, very quietly.

"McGee?" Ziva asks, interested and curious, coming into the computer room where the three men were. According to Tony, his computer just mysteriously crashed one night, and the next morning Tim did something magical to it, and it started working again. She has been, _suspicious_ , to say the least, as to the veracity of Tony's story about that.

Tony stares at him in a blind panic.

"Did you know he was on a file sharing site?"

Tony's giving him the _I'm going to kill you slowly and no one is ever going to find all the body parts_ look.

"No, McGee, I did not," she says, little smile on her face; she's enjoying watching Tony squirm.

"Yeah. You'd think an adult, with a real income wouldn't need to share movie downloads," Tony's suddenly looking a whole lot more relaxed, yeah, they were movie downloads, but not the sort of movie Tim's implying, "but for some reason his cheap side kicked in and he decided torpedoing your computer was worth saving twenty bucks."

Ziva's not looking like she believes that, but Tony jumps on it like a lifesaver tossed to a drowning man. "They were uncut footage of the original Shining. You can't get them legally. Not unless you're willing to take out a second mortgage."

She stares at him coolly, and shrugs, seeming to file this in the _men are weird_ column, and let it go to continue working the case. But as she heads out, she raises an eyebrow at Tim. He flashes her a _just wanted to make him sweat_ look. She nods at that.

Tim turns to Tony as soon as she's gone, very smug smile on his face. "Wanna call me a freak again?"

Draga just looks at both of them and then says, "McGee, that was just not cool. That's… I mean… There's a code and… That was _not_ cool."

Tim shrugs again. "Don't mess with the guy who regularly saves your marriage because you're so damn dumb with a computer you can't figure out how not to get infected with every piece of malware on earth."

"Remind me not to call you for tech support!"

"Hey, I'm great tech support! I'm the best damn tech support you've ever met. I make house calls and work for coffee. Just don't rag on me after. Especially not two days after. Especially when your wife is twenty feet away."

Draga snorts at that, looks back at Tony, and then finishes packing up their vic's laptop.

* * *

"So… are you a freak?" Draga asks as they're working their way through William Wade (the vic's) electronics.

Tim rolls his eyes, both at the question and that Draga'd ask. He's not sure if this is part of Draga being the no privacy generation, or if he's just not got a very well-developed sense of appropriate. (Or maybe all that time on an aircraft carrier where you can't help but know everything about everyone else is coming into play.) Whatever it is, he's just staring at him, waiting for an answer, so Tim says, dryly, "I doubt I'm into anything that'd make you blush. Tony's vanilla."

"Uh huh. So, you're saying I need to ask Palmer to get an unbiased opinion."

Tim chuckles at that, imagining Jimmy's face if Draga wandered down to autopsy to ask that. "If you do, let me know what he said."

* * *

He and Ziva are heading off to talk to Wade's CO when she asks, "So, what was it?"

"Ziva?"

"Uncut footage of the Shining he would have not just told me about, for hours, but he would have dragged me over to watch it."

There are certain, tacit, unspoken agreements their little family has. One of those agreements is that, while it is true that Tim is tech support, and that he will fix up whatever issues Tony or Jimmy's computers 'mysteriously' develop, Breena and Ziva won't ask what caused the problem, but, if it's anything troublesome, he'll tell them about it.

He assumes that Tony and Jimmy have a similar deal with Abby, everything is confidential, unless keeping it confidential would cause real problems.

"Nothing bad."

"I know that. Lesbian cheerleaders or curious Catholic school girls?" Say whatever you like about Ziva, she knows Tony inside and out.

Tim nods, small smirk on his face, mostly expressing that he thinks the level of secret Tony thinks is necessary in regards to this is silly. "Curious lesbian Catholic school girls."

She shakes her head. "Why do men do that?"

"Look at porn?" He thinks that one's fairly obvious and is surprised she'd ask.

She's giving Tim her, _do you think I'm an idiot?_ look. "I know why men look at porn. Why do they think it is such a big, dark secret?"

"I don't know why Tony thinks it's some sort of deep, dark secret. I know a lot of guys don't want to get yelled at because of what they like. And I know a lot of women aren't cool with their guys looking at it."

Ziva rolls her eyes. "I am not a lot of women."

"I know it. He does, too. But it's like being afraid of spiders, it's deeply ingrained behavior."

She's still looking frustrated and kicks at the carpet on the floor of the car.

He sighs, signals, switches lanes and then says, "I don't know if this is Tony's thing, but… most of us have had this experience. You're home, decide you want some…" he flails around for a second for a good euphemism, " _quiet time_ , and in the midst of said quiet time, as you're enjoying yourself, your mom, sister, girlfriend, or wife suddenly decides that she needs you right that second, and for whatever reason you don't have the door locked, and she walks in, sees what you're doing, and has a fit."

Ziva thinks that's pretty funny. At least, the way she's gasping for breath between episodes of hysterical laughter indicates that.

"Who caught you?" she finally asks, wiping tears from her eyes.

"Not saying."

"Oh, come on, you have got to. You cannot tell a story like that and not say."

Tim rolls his eyes. Long experience with Ziva has taught him that he can answer the question, or have her investigate it. Might as well answer, because he's got no idea how Abby might answer it if Ziva asks her, but he's sure, like with the Diane rumors, that whatever version Abby comes up with will be significantly more salacious than what really happened. "Penny."

Ziva's quivering she's laughing so hard.

Tim nods, and says sarcastically, "Oh yeah, single _best_ day of my life. The three hour long lecture about how pornography objectifies women was torture. Now, this was the same women who was fine with me dressing up in her shoes, and actually flat out told my dad, while I was listening, that if I was gay it was fine, who prefaced the lecture with the longest twenty minutes in the history of time on how self-pleasure was fine and normal and natural, but a teenage, heterosexual male looking at pictures of naked women, oh noooo! End of the world."

Apparently, Ziva thinks that is a riot, too. Much more laughing ensues. Finally Ziva gets calmed down enough to say, "I didn't think Penny was that… restrained?"

"Good word. And no, she's not. You can do pretty much whatever you want with a real person, but ogling pictures of them turns sex into a commodity and that wasn't cool with her."

"Huh?"

"Yeah. Anyway, most of us have had something similar happen, so we tend to be cagy about what we're looking at when we're on our own."

"But Abby knows what you like."

"Yeah, she… Wait, why do _you_ know that?"

"We talk."

He glances away from traffic to give her his, _really?_ look. "You guys talk about what kind of porn we watch?"

"Of course."

Tim winces and rubs his forehead. "Really?"

"Yes. We talk about everything."

He sighs.

"We don't tell you guys about it, though."

"Small favors." He supposes he's not allowed to get upset about this. He thought it was an absolute riot when the girls added stuff to Tony's honeymoon box, so the idea that they were talking about all of the intimate details of Tony's sex life was just fine with him. "Really, everything?"

"Yes, McGee, everything."

"And, _everything_ doesn't freak you out?"

"Why would it freak me out? You like what you like, and that's it."

He squeezes her hand. " _Everything_ has freaked a whole lot of women out."

Ziva nods at that. "As I said, I am not a lot of other women. But, you don't hide what you like from her."

"No. I don't."

"Why?"

"I did the first time we dated, because we didn't know each other that well then. But we know each other a lot better now, so I knew it wouldn't freak her out, and that she'd probably like it. She did…" He thinks about the other reason, which is… very personal, but… maybe useful… especially seeing what Tony and Ziva are doing with marriage counseling and all… "You like porn or smut?"

Ziva's surprised he's asking that, but answers anyway, "Yes."

"You watch it with him?"

"Read."

"You read it to him?" If the girls really do talk, then this idea won't shock her, because he knows Breena and Jimmy do that.

"No."

"Okay, here's the deal. I like porn. I don't care if it's objectifying, not anymore." Okay, that sounds really bad. "I mean, I don't think it is," he can see Ziva's not particularly interested in this debate, "but that's an argument I can have with my grandmother, later. Or not, because… Anyway… But I like sex with Abby a whole lot better. And I'm not a machine so there's only so much sex I can have. So, I think it's important that if I am going to be getting off, that I do it with her."

"You don't…" Ziva's hand gesture is unmistakable.

Tim rolls his eyes. "Not saying I don't, just, not very often. And not if there's any shot of real sex with her. Not saying there's anything wrong with jerking off, either, but… if I blow off some steam after dinner, I'm not in shape for anything at bedtime, and being in shape for bedtime matters.

"Anyway, the reason I mention this is because she isn't freaked out by what I like, it doesn't have to be an either/or thing. We can watch it together, or if it's smut, read it together, and that's a lot of fun and has led to a lot of good things."

Ziva nods at that. "And, if I wanted to get him to share…"

Tim's eyes go wide. "Ummm…" Obviously he and Abby somehow negotiated this, but he's not really remembering who brought it up or why. Probably Abby, because that's more an Abby thing, but he just doesn't remember the first time it happened. "Read him your favorite story?"

"It has two men in it."

He probably didn't need to know that about Ziva. "Okay, don't read him that! That'd freak him out. But, you get my point."

"Yes. I do."

* * *

Two days later, Tim's picking up some files from Jimmy, when Jimmy asks him, "Okay, so why is Draga asking me if you're a freak or Tony's just vanilla?"

"Oh, God, I didn't think he actually would. There's something seriously wrong with that kid."

"Tim…" So Tim explains how they got there. Jimmy seems to agree with Draga that what he pulled on Tony was a very low blow. "So, you're telling me I need to think twice about calling you when my computer dies."

"I didn't actually do it. And it's not like Ziva doesn't know what Tony's into. Hell, not like Breena doesn't know what you like, either. And, because they talk about 'everything' apparently the girls all know what all of us are into, too."

That's not news to Jimmy. He knows what the girls talk about. "Yeah, but there's knowing and there's _knowing._ "

"Fine." A few beats go by. "So… what'd you say?"

"What?" Jimmy looks up from collecting the files for Tim, surprise in his face.

"I'm curious."

"I told him to mind his own business."

_Really?_ is loud and clear on Tim's face. Gossip is the bread and butter of NCIS, keeping all hands happy and running smoothly. The idea that Jimmy wasn't contributing to it didn't sound right to Tim.

Jimmy rolls his eyes a bit. "I told him that if he really wanted to know, he needed to talk to Abby and Ziva, because, you know, I've never had sex with either of you and wasn't planning on starting anytime soon, in that I'm both married and straight, and for that matter, could not physically care less how kinky you are or how not kinky he is."

_Really?_

"Fine. I may have also said, that if you were going to ask me to bet, I'd say you were pretty far off the standard path. I mean, you wear kilts and makeup, and have how many tattoos now? And, come on, you're married to Abby! Not that Ziva's boring or anything, but... different sort of thing. And that Tony on a really frisky day went looking for a redhead to go with his blonde and Asian lesbian cheerleaders."

Tim snerks at that. "Well, that at least explains why he's been looking at me weird all day."

"Yeah, well, I'm gonna be looking at you weird all day, too. Why on earth would you tell him to talk to _me_ when he's standing twenty feet away from Tony's _wife?_ "

"He suggested it."

"Now, I'm gonna be looking weird at him, too. Why would he think that I'd know?"

Tim just stares at Jimmy. "Because you do?"

Jimmy shakes his head. "God, talk about conversations I never expected to have." They stand there for a few more seconds before Jimmy says, "So... um... what would you say about me?"

"Uh…" Tim thinks about it for a second, working on some sort of shoe related comment, and then comes up with an even better one. "Out of deference to your wife, whom I both respect and adore, I have no comment on that subject." And then he smiles, pleased and cocky.

Jimmy whacks him on the shoulder with the back of his hand. "Yeah, you know it's coming and think about it and come up with a good answer. I got blindsided."

Tim shrugs with a smirk.

Jimmy stands there, thinking, fingers tapping on the files in front of him. "Actually, what would you say?"

"Jimmy?" That's a much more intimate question than Tim's expecting.

He half-shrugs. "You know more about me than any other guy. Draga asks you if I'm a freak, what's your take?"

"Uh… I don't know. I don't spend a lot of time pondering your sex life."

"Yeah, I know, but…"

"Like Ziva told me, you like what you like, not a big deal."

"Even the shoes?" He had given Jimmy a lot of ribbing about the shoes back when they hypnotized him.

"Doesn't freak me out, if that's what you mean. I mean, I don't get the thing with the shoes. They're shoes..." Which are awfully low on the list of things that turn Tim on. He likes the whole finished effect of an entire outfit, and yes, as of yet, there has never been a time when he wasn't in favor of just stockings and stilettos, but he figures most guys feel that way, and he knows that's not how Jimmy likes shoes. Of course, he doesn't actually know what it is about shoes that Jimmy likes. "So, do you wear them, or like looking at them, or is the feet in them, or…"

Jimmy brushes that aside. "I don't get tattoos."

"I don't _like_ tattoos, not like that." He thinks about that for a moment. "Okay, I liked getting the first one like that, because it was... you know, kind of dangerous and wild and so not 'me.'"

"Your first tattoo is computer code. That was dangerous?"

"Says the guy who breaks out in hives at henna. It felt dangerous to me. But that wore off about the time it had healed up. I know some people get off on them. Some people _really_ like getting them. But, that's not me. I like the kind of people who tend to have them. The actual tattoos I can take or leave. But they usually mark people who are into the same things I am. But everyone wears shoes. You're not narrowing down the pool by picking shoes."

Jimmy shrugs. "As long as I can remember, I liked them. I always knew what all the women around me were wearing. You like butts, right?"

Tim nods.

"Do you remember choosing to like butts?"

"Nope. Just, 'round about the age of eleven I started noticing them."

"Exactly."

"So, you like shoes on girls?"

"Yeah."

"What about on their own? Like just sitting in a box?"

"They're significantly less interesting to me then. Mostly, if I'm staring at them in a store, it's because I'm thinking about them on a woman."

"Do you do anything with them?"

Jimmy looks bothered by that idea. "Like what? Wear them?"

Tim nods. "Or _anything_?"

Jimmy's looking at him very curiously, _what the hell would I do with them besides wear them?,_ and Tim's staring back with _if you don't know, I don't need to enlighten you_ on his face.

"I don't wear them. They look dumb on me."

Tim thinks about that for a second, and then realizes exactly what Jimmy just said. "So, wait, you actually know that?"

Jimmy looks at him, long and cool. "I've seen you in eyeliner, nail polish, and a skirt, and you're going to act surprised by me in pumps?"

"Not judging or anything... Just didn't expect it from you."

"Just like with drugs, I've tried just about everything, at least once. On me... I look like Klinger from MASH. Not sexy at all. On her..." Jimmy nods happily, "much better! I like the way they look on her, and I like the way they feel against me if she wears them when we're fooling around. Especially, if we're doing it fast and public, she usually keeps them on, and those are some good memories"

"I get that." Granted not for shoes, but he figures liking Abby tied up is probably a kin to that. "I get liking almost getting caught."

Jimmy chuckles at that. "Yeah, but you suck at it. I've caught you twice already."

"You walk into my house without knocking when the girls smell like that, what do you expect?"

Jimmy shrugs.

"Like you weren't doing the same thing as soon as you could once you got home."

He grins at that. "Not the exact same thing."

"Uh huh." Tim's doubting that intensely. Then he notices that Jimmy said, 'exact same.' "You get all the way to bed?"

He smiles again, enjoying that memory. "I did tell Breena to wear that perfume with caution."

"Told Abby something similar."

"Found out Sunday night the other scent was just as good. Different, but…"

"Yeah. I can guess. Gonna start saving up for a big one?"

"I don't know. Variety is nice. Checked the website, that lady makes like two hundred scents; I made a list of ones that looked good. They sell the massage oil, too, suggested eight ounces of that to one of those little vials I got Breena. Might be a very good Valentine's Day present."

Tim thinks about that, nodding, enjoying the idea of rubbing some sort of silky, slippery oil all over Abby that smells like that perfume. Yeah, that's going on the list.

As he was thinking about that, and scents in general, he gets out his phone and makes a quick note for the McGee Dragons. Lady Skye is an alchemist, maybe perfumery is how she made her fortune and used it to move onto bigger and better things.

"Are you actually making a note of that?" Jimmy didn't go along on his little mental trip for how he got from massage oil to _perfume? alchemy? kind of related, right? Beguiling magical scents that make spying easier, scents that pull the truth out of a man..._

"Yes." He tucks his phone back into his pocket. "For the story. Been trying to think of how Skye made her fortune, and perfume would be a good way to do it. I'm not writing down what you're thinking of doing for Valentine's Day."

"Good, cause that'd be kind of creepy."

Tim nods, agreeing on the creepy factor for that. "Why you thinking that far ahead?" Jimmy flashes Tim his _think about it for a second and it'll come to you_ look. And it did. "Oh."

"Yeah. Anna'll be out mid-December, so Valentine's Day, in addition to Molly's birthday, will probably be around when things start happening again, so…"

"I get you."

"Yeah. If there's ever a year where you don't want to muff Valentine's..."

"No kidding. Speaking of presents, Abby said something to me about you guys sticking Molly's Christmas presents at our place... Take it from someone who mastered it, she's too young to peek."

"Not like that. If Anna hangs around the way Molly did, she won't be coming out until Christmas, so, if the presents are at your place, that means someone who's actually had six hours of sleep in a row will be in charge of making sure Molly gets them."

"You're putting me on assembly duty, aren't you?"

"Of course. I can barely plug my phone in to charge with a new baby in the house. Let alone a new baby, a twenty-two month old, and Christmas all at once. So, this year, you're putting together the toys."

Tim salutes. "Yes, sir." He takes the files from Jimmy. "I should probably get these up before I get head slapped for messing around."

"Up you go."


	38. Scent

When Tim got home, he spent a few minutes writing up a quick sketch for Skye, then did some research on how perfuming works and very rapidly came to the conclusion that this is not something five minutes on Wikipedia was going to take care of. He figures he needs to know something about alchemy for this to work in the first place, since he's got a vague idea of Gabe and Skye eventually both leaving the sides they were fighting for, combining his magic with hers, and the whole McGee clan taking over their own land/island/whatever. He's fuzzy on what the eventual stakes of this war are, but he does like the idea of several different sides all fighting with each other and blending will-base magic with component-based magic.

Besides, that seems to be pretty standard fantasy fare these days. Team Good and Team Evil are about twenty years out of date, unless you're writing for kiddies. (As Sarah explained to him in extremely complex detail last week while they worked on cooking Thanksgiving dinner.)

It occurs to him as he's quickly jotting notes, that the scent he got Abby hits him really, really hard. It also occurs to him that while Abby likes the way his soap/shampoo/deodorant combo smells, and seems to like the cologne he wears on occasion, he has also noticed that this does not seem to produce the same result as the perfume he got her does for him.

It also occurs to him that, should he find himself in possession of some downtime later tonight, say, after Kelly goes to bed, that he could research this further and see if there were any scents that might produce said result.

* * *

Once upon a time, Tim wore cologne every day. Get up, shower, soap, deodorant, moisturizer, cologne. Having been the kind of guy who read Redbook and Marie Claire and similar publications he was well aware of the fact that women are significantly more sensitive to, and aware of, how men smell then men are for women. And that while it was true they didn't want guys to completely douse themselves in scent, that making an effort not to smell like sweat, ball funk, and unwashed clothing was a good plan.

So, he always aspired to smell good. Clean. Fresh. But not so covered in cologne that visible smell rays poured off his skin. And when it turned out the only moisturizer that kept his skin from feeling like sandpaper was FemmeGlow (He did, eventually, with Abby's help, locate a much better replacement.) which smelled like a combination of candy and pink flowers, he decided that it would be nice if he didn't smell like a sixteen-year-old girl.

So, cologne. And yes, it helped. He usually smelled good. (Though still like flowers. "Lilacs," Ziva said. Might be right, he doesn't know what a lilac smells like. Wasn't precisely the scent he was going for, though.) Or, at the very least, Gibbs has never said anything about him "reeking" or made any off-color comments about "a French cat house." (Though he does remember the 'trying too hard' comment in regards to him wearing Old Spice.)

Two things changed that daily habit, first up Jimmy's "If you don't want everyone on earth to know you're sleeping with her, not having her smell like your cologne is a good plan." That was the first step in maybe not needing cologne every day. (It was, by then, several years since Abby introduced him to the skin oil one of her buddies made that kept his skin happy and was, blessedly, unscented.)

The second part was a few months later, when he and Abby were just bumming around his apartment, enjoying a lazy weekend. Nothing to do, didn't go anywhere, he'd been writing, she'd been gaming or messing around on his computer. Spent the day in their pajamas. And when that day came to a close, he was heading to the shower (hadn't gotten one earlier) when Abby said to him, "You know, it's okay to smell like you. With as sensitive as your skin is, it'd probably be a lot happier if you didn't scrub it every day, and you don't need to do it to keep me happy. I wasn't kidding, I like how you smell."

That brought him up short, because as well as he could tell that was the first time in the history of womanhood that a girlfriend was asking her guy to shower less. "So, wait, you want me to get fewer showers?"

"Some bits of you probably need a daily wash, but not all of you. I mean, you're really conscientious about it, and if it's for you, that's fine, but if it's for me, I'm okay with you smelling like you."

It turned out that she was right. So, just like his hair gets a daily rinse but only gets washed twice a week, that's what happens with most of his skin (yes, certain smelly bits get washed every day) but (barring dealing with dead bodies) the rest of him gets washed every three days or so, and his skin is significantly happier for it.

And that's pretty much how it's been for the last two plus years, but now, as he's sitting in front of his computer, searching through the website of the company that made Abby's perfume, he's rapidly coming to the conclusion that there probably are scents out there that will make her jump him, and that he might enjoy locating them.

Plus, it's not like the whole sleeping with him thing is much of a secret anymore. Married, live together, kid that looks like both of them, that cat's well and truly out of the bag, so, if he did locate the male equivalent of the scent he got her, it wouldn't be an issue if, on occasion (a little wicked smile lit his face) say, at work possibly, Abby smelled like him.

Just like he's never felt self-conscious about walking around with her perfume on his skin.

On the site, he finds lot of different options, (Jimmy wasn't kidding, there are at least two hundred scents. And, no, there isn't a "men's" section.) and most of the tiny vials were in the ten to twenty dollar range, and there were even smaller tester sizes (one milliliter) in the five dollar range, so… He ends up spending a very pleasant twoish hours looking through everything. He's on the verge of going kind of bonkers and getting like twenty-five testers, when it occurs to him, that yes, the write ups on all of these scents sound great, and the names are fabulous, but he still has no idea what any of them smell like, and maybe, since there is an actual store that sells this stuff less than ten miles from his house, that going there and investigating would be a good plan.

Saturday morning, he and Kelly have a mission.

* * *

Okay, so there are probably some things that you shouldn't do with a baby. Scent shopping may be one of those things. It's hitting him as he's heading through the parking lot toward a tiny closet of a store that Kelly might not love this. It's also hitting him that if there's a space in this store large enough to turn the stroller around he'll be shocked.

But in he goes, and it is small, tight quarters. It's pretty much empty, just a lot of goth posters on the walls, and a glass counter with a laptop on it. He's not seeing bottles all over the place, or vials, or any of the rest of it. And, what's really surprising to him: it doesn't smell like anything.

He does see the blue-haired woman (though now it's green) who sold him Abby's perfume.

She looks up at him and smiles, seeming to remember him, as well. "I read your books."

Definitely remembers him.

"Thanks."

"Least I could do. Sold out of Thousand And One Nights after your tweet. Got a whole bunch of new customers all at once that day. That was a very good day."

"Good to hear it worked for you."

"Yeah, it did. So, what brings you back? No way you went through two ounces of Thousand and One Nights in less than a month."

"No."

"Christmas shopping?"

He hadn't thought of that, but probably should have. "Maybe. Wanted to find something for me. I went on your site, found a bunch of things that looked good, and then realized I liked the way they sounded but had no idea how they smelled."

She looks him over, head to toes, seeming very amused and surprised at the idea that he'd check out her site or like anything on it. "What sort of things caught your interest?"

He unfolds the list of scents he'd almost ordered online before the idea of trying them came to mind. "I was thinking of these."

She looks through it, hmmming, quietly, and then heads off. A minute later she's back with a collection of amber colored glass bottles and a box of coffee beans. "You picked a lot of wood scents, leather scents, or dragon's blood scents. Do you know what Dragon's Blood smells like?"

He shakes his head. Then he pulls up the leg of his pants enough for her to see the calf tattoo. "I like dragons."

She nods approvingly. "Cool. That your only ink?"

"No. Only one that's easy to see." It's cold out, he's wearing long sleeves, and a coat. "Got knot here." He taps his right arm. "Bit of code there." He taps his left. "Abby, my wife's, lips here," and touches his wrist.

"Mind showing me the knot?"

"No." Though he's a bit puzzled for why it'd matter. He shrugs out of his jacket and button down, and pushes up the sleeve of his t-shirt.

She eyes the knot appreciatively. "That's beautiful. Sam Onthan's?"

"Yes, actually. You know him?"

"Yeah. I thought the dragon might have been his, too. He did the piece on my back, and he's a customer of mine."

"Oh." He does remember that Sam, and his studio, have a fairly unique scent, though beyond 'kind of like incense and ink' he'd be hard pressed to explain what it smells like. "So... is seeing this useful?"

"Yes. Scent is very personal. Better I know you, the better I can figure out what'll blend with you," she says while opening one of the bottles, pushing it toward him. "This is Dragon's Blood."

Like any guy who's spent more than ten minutes in a lab he wafts a bit toward himself, instead of sticking it right under his nose and snorking it up.

Green haired-woman... Okay, he needs a name for her. "I'm Tim, in real life. Thom's my penname. Little girl here is Kelly."

"Hi, Tim." She leaned over the counter so Kelly could get a good view of her. "Hello Kelly. I'm Janice." He's a little surprised her name is so... normal, and she catches that. "What were you expecting? Raven?"

"Or Phoenix or Soibhan or something."

She half-smiles at that. "What can I say? Not too many Ravens in 1979. So, what do you think of it?"

He wafts more of it toward him, and Janice appears to approve of his technique. "Sweet. Incense-y. Fruity? Flowers? Little dark on the edges. Maybe something woody? The way dark red is supposed to smell? Puts me in mind of the store I used to get my roleplaying books at."

"Okay." She closes that up and hands him the box with the coffee.

"I know what that smells like."

"You and everyone else. Helps you get off one scent and onto the next."

"Okay."

She pushes the next bottle toward him, but doesn't take her hand off of it. "Just about everything you picked has a sandalwood note to it."

"Yeah, one of my partners wears sandalwood a lot; I like it."

"Then you probably know the scent, sort of." She opens the bottle. "That's real sandalwood. Remember the costs more than gold thing?" He nods. "This is one of them. Sandalwood trees have to be fifty-years-old before they're any good for perfumes, they're endangered, and finding responsibly sourced sandalwood is a bitch. But this is it, the real deal. I'm hooked up with a plantation that's doing it right, so they only harvest four trees a year, which means this stuff is more expensive than gold."

He leans closer and wafts it toward him. "Wow. That..."

"Doesn't smell like you expected it to, does it?"

"No," And that's not a bad thing, at all. This is... just... really. Yeah, he likes it a _lot_. She's looking at him expectantly, so he tries to explain how it smells to him, as she closes it and tucks it back nice and safe. "This is... buttery almost. Dry. Woody certainly. Not..." He doesn't have a word for the scent he thought sandalwood was, but isn't.

"Much at all like what you thought it'd smell like?" He nods. "It's so hard to get the real stuff, it's usually not actually in sandalwood blends. Usually it's a synthetic version. Don't get me wrong, there are some good synthetics out there, but you don't get the depth from the synthetics. If the real stuff is in a blend, it's at way less than one part per thousand."

"So, do you use the synthetics in your blends?"

"In some of them. Depends on if it's a base note. If Sandalwood is supposed to carry the scent, then I use the real stuff. If it's a nuance, then I'll use the synthetics. No need to use the real stuff if you won't be able to smell all of it."

Tim nods with that. It makes sense to him. "I like it."

"You and just about everyone else. There's a reason it's endangered, and unlike the Pandas it's not because it doesn't want to reproduce."

She looks him over again, and right now he's in his classic bumming around with Kelly gear. Jeans, t-shirt, button down, jacket, sneakers. She's looking a little doubtful, but her eyes flick back to his wrist, where the wrist cuff is visible.

"A lot of the ones you like have leather notes. Do you actually like leather, or do you like the _idea_ of it?"

He knows he looks like a mild-mannered suburban dad right now, so it's a fair question. "I like actual leather. Actual leather doesn't like an almost six-month-old drooling on it, and baby spit up isn't good for it."

She looks at Kelly, who is sitting in her stroller, gnawing on her pacifier, and watching the two of them intently. "Good point. What color?"

He thinks that's a pretty weird question, can't imagine how the color effects this, but what the hell, why not? "Both of my jackets are black. My boots and most of the shoes are black. I've got one brown belt, one brown pair of shoes. The wrist cuff is black." He pauses, debating adding the last bit of leather he owns. But, it's not like he's ashamed of it. It's just private. But, so's what he's hoping to find a scent for. "My collar is black."

Her eyebrows shoot up. "Interesting."

He smiles a little, appreciating the sudden added respect he's seeing in her face. Like between that and the tattoos he's identified himself as someone who belongs in this shop. "Wouldn't have pegged you for that."

"I switch."

"Lucky wife."

"She thinks so."

Janice smiles and makes a little note on the pad next to her. "How do you feel about patchouli?"

"Hippies? Pot?" He shrugs. It's nothing he's ever contemplated. "Don't feel anything about it. My day job is in law enforcement, so might be nice not to smell like a head shop."

"You're a cop? Those stories real?"

"No. They're more a love letter to my job and team. The people are real, the cases aren't. And I'm a cop for another month, and then I'm moving up the food chain."

She looks at him for another few seconds. "So, are you MacGregor?"

"Enough. Some of the time. I'm MacGregor, and I'm Thom, and I'm Tim, and a few other guys, too. Are you always Janice?"

She seems to understand that. "Not always. So, when you said code..."

"I meant I've got a few lines of python on my bicep. It's my master's thesis in forensic computing."

"Huh." She took out bottles, opening them carefully. "Left is real patchouli, right is oakmoss."

He wafts and sniffs. "I prefer the oakmoss. Earthy, kind of cool, forrest-y? The patchouli smells like dirt to me."

"Okay. That's a genetic thing. Some people smell patchouli as a deep, earthy, spicy scent. For some people it's a pile of dirt. How's it smell to your wife?"

"No idea. Never noticed her wearing it."

"Do you usually wear cologne?" She's marking off scents on his list.

"Not for a few years."

"What did you used to like?"

"Burberry Classic. Polo Black."

That also surprises her. "That's a lot lighter and crisper than anything you've got on this list." She doesn't say, _kind of generic_ , but he's got the sense she's thinking that, too.

"Used to wear it every day. Also used to care a whole lot more about blending in with everyone else. I was thinking of some sort of special occasion-"

"Like night out, or night in?"

"Both. Thousand and One Nights is... really good on my wife."

Janice smiles smugly at him. "Makes you want to eat her alive?"

"Yeah. I was thinking about something along those lines for me, well, not for me... Thousand and One Nights is for me. On me?" Janice nods. "Little, black, lacy things look dumb as hell on men, so the scent equivalent of that."

She's giggling slightly at that. "I bet you'd be awfully cute in some sort of little, black, lacy thing."

He looks her over coolly, wondering if she's trying to see if he'll blush, and says, dryly, "My wife didn't agree. And I didn't, either."

She laughs at that answer, pleased by it. "So, you want something sexy?"

"Something for date night or work would be fine, too. But mostly I'm looking for good night at home, or very good night clubbing."

"What kind of club?"

He thinks through the different places they've been, and are likely to go again. Hell, if they ever all get babysitting again, it's their turn to pick the place. And he knows where they're going. He smiles. "For the night I'm thinking of, Enoch's Cove."

Now she's blinking in shock, apparently she knows the Goth club he's thinking of. "You're a member?"

"Since 2012. We don't get there very often, especially not since Kelly joined us, but, yes, we're members. Abby's been since '99."

"I feel like I should already know you, or her, at least."

He smiles at that. "Abby knows everyone. She's probably on your Facebook feed. Friend of a friend or something like that."

"Maybe. Okay, last thing." She opens three vials. "Which one do you like best."

They all smell the same to him, he's not sure if he can smell a difference, or if he thinks there's supposed to be a difference so he's imagining one. He tries burying his nose in the coffee beans between sniffing, but it doesn't help. "I honestly can't tell the difference."

"That's fine. I'm just checking how sensitive your sense of smell is. They pretty much are the same. One on the left leans sweeter, middle has more bitter notes, right is musky." She puts the stoppers back into the vials and packs everything up. "Okay, back in a bit."

She comes back with seven of the tiny tester vials, two of them already filled, five pipettes, and five amber bottles. One of the little testers she set aside. "Not for you. Present for your wife, for her, when you're wearing the collar."

"Oh."

"Every day wear." She pushes two of the amber bottles toward him. "One's a blending in with everyone else scent. Think fresh air and ocean." He sniffs and yes, it does put him in mind of sitting on the beach. Really, literal beach. Not that vaguely blue "beach" scent that so many home scents/perfumes have. It's freaky how much that smells like the ocean. He's not sure how it'd smell on him, or if he wants to smell like the literal ocean, but it's interesting.

"One not so much blending in scent, still light and appealing, but not sexy, good work scent. Woods: cedar, sandalwood, little pine, rosewood, all well-aged and clean."

"Might have Gibbs sniffing my neck." He mutters, inhaling, and this is definitely woody, in a good way. Actually does make him think of Gibbs's basement a bit. "Add some bourbon to that, and it'd be the perfect scent for my dad."

"I've got a version like that."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Wood, bourbon, little bit of sea spray. It's very popular."

"I need one of those, too. He build boats."

She smiles, heads back for a moment, and puts a small bottle of that next to the tester that's for Abby.

"Date night. Out somewhere nice." She pushes the next bottle toward him.

"Family wedding?"

"Something like that. Something you'd wear a suit, or better yet, tux to." She opens the bottle. "Little sexy, restrained. Nothing's happening until you get home, but you're probably cutting out early." He nods along, liking that description quite a bit. "Little sweet, little heavy: sweet myrrh, frankincense, black amber, jasmine, mandarin orange, three woods, drop of vanilla to smooth it together."

He really, really likes that. It's very male and sophisticated, expensive, lush. When she was listing myrrh and frankincense he was afraid it was going to be a bottle of Christmas, but this really isn't. This is the man DiNozzo Sr. thinks he is, but isn't. Hell, this is the man James Bond thinks he is, but isn't. "Just grab a big one of that."

"Try it on your skin first. Can't do returns on these. That's why you're going home with testers. These will smell different on you than they do in the glass."

He looks away from the tiny vial and up at her. "Let me guess, this is another one where the full-sized bottle is frighteningly expensive?"

There's that smile again, sharp and amused. "It's not cheap."

"Then I'll make sure it works on my skin."

"Good plan." She recaps the bottle and opens another. "Enoch's Cove night. Dead sexy, for you. Dragon's blood, leather, smoke. This one wears close to the skin. She's got to get in your lap before she'll smell it, but once she does, she won't want to leave." He sniffs and blinks. It's his jacket. The original leather jacket. The first piece of really good leather, really good clothing, he ever bought. The one he adored, that Abby had to cut to test for radiation. Soft, supple, black leather that felt like a warm, sexy hug draped over his body. His jacket, but better, whole, warmed by the sun, worn outside on a really splendid fall day, ripe with harvest scents, little hints of smoke in the air. He's just sort of gaping at it, stunned that there's that much... response in him from a smell. "I take it you like that one."

"Oh, God, yeah."

She caps it and hands him the coffee beans to clear his sense of smell, making a few more notes. Then opened the next bottle. "The metaphorical something black and lacy. Got any plans for this afternoon?"

He shakes his head.

"You do now. Give me your wrists." He does, taking off his cuff and watch. "This isn't the stuff you got at the men's department at JC Penny's. Little bit goes a long way." She takes the pipette, deposits a milliliter of the scent into one of the testers, dips the wand that's attached to the cap into the scent, and strokes it across his wrist. "Just what's on the wand, rub it over your wrist." She closes up the vial. "Rub wrist together, then wrists on throat. You can add a bit more to thighs or ankles if you feel like it's too light, but much more and you'll start to knock people over."

He was half-paying attention to her words, half-wondering what he'd just put on. It smells like... he's got no clue. It smells good. Not sweet, not sharp, not anything he can name, but it smells really good to him. It's a much more 'classic cologne' scent than the date night scent, but it's somehow deeper, richer, more 'him' than any one he's tried before. He'd make out with himself wearing this, if he could.

"White musk, white sandalwood, Spanish moss, few florals, little herbal so it's not too femme, slight hint of ocean. You've got a pretty strong ocean vibe to you."

He laughs at that.

"What?"

"I'm a Navy cop."

She laughs, too. "I think this one's going to get along well with you."

He's nodding along, no idea how it'll smell to Abby, but it's making him feel sexy and eager. "What's that last one?" he asks looking at the little, already filled tester, sitting next to them.

"For you to test on your own." She taps the tester, not opening it. "He's got no middle gears. Depending on your body chemistry he's just very, very animal male lust, full-on grab her by the hair and take her off to ravish her, or he's dirty goats and cat pee."

Tim was all in favor of that until she got to the downside. "Doesn't sound very appealing."

"He's not, if he doesn't agree with you. If he does... Well, let's put it this way, he's the only thing that's ever gotten my wife to look at a guy twice. Helps if you're already leaning in that direction to begin with. But he usually takes at least ten minutes to warm up, sometimes closer to half an hour, and in the bottle he reeks, so he doesn't get opened in here."

"And does he wash off easily if he doesn't agree with you?"

"Eh..." _No_ is clear on her face. "Maybe don't rub him on your neck until you know if he agrees with your chemistry."

"Okay." He looks at the little collection of vials in front of him. "So any of the things I liked the sound of in front of me?"

She circled two of the names on his list, while affixing little stickers to each vial with their names, and pipetting the scents into them. "Some of the others," she put little stars next to three of them, "Will probably be good choices, too. But how about you go play with these, test them out, see how they work with your skin, before adding much new stuff. Only so much your nose can take before it shuts down."

And with that, she tidied everything up into a small bag and with a swipe of the credit card, sent him on his way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a huge fan of the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. All of the scents here are either stolen from them, or inspired by them. (I've got links to what scent is what up on my blog.)


	39. The Metaphorical Something Black and Lacy

"So, successful trip?" Abby asks, looking up from her laptop as he and Kelly head in. He had told her what he was off to do. And before he can answer, she inhales deeply and says, "Oh, yes!"

She's up, draped around him, purring in a very content sort of way, sniffing along his jaw and throat. "What is _that_?"

"Apparently, exactly what I asked for." He hands over Kelly, who's fussing a bit, wanting some lunch right that second, as he smiles at her and takes his jacket and hers off.

"Hello to you, too." Abby says to her daughter once she's out of her cold weather gear, taking her into the kitchen, putting her in the highchair. Lunchtime is a cereal and formula meal. "Lunch'll be ready soon, little girl."

Kelly smiles.

"You think she understood that, or does she just know that highchair time means food soon?" Abby notices she's drifting closer to Tim as she asks, wanting to strip him down and rub all over him.

"No idea." He takes two steps closer to her, kissing her gently, and put his collection of tiny vials and the list on the table, next to Abby's seat. She presses against him, and his hands are in the process of wandering away from putting the scents on the table, looking to find some soft, warm, curvy Abby bits to cup, when Kelly interjects with some definitive, 'Feed Me Now' sounds.

They break apart with another quick kiss, and Tim starts to get some lunch for them, as well.

* * *

Being a parent is a balancing act. For example, right now, if this was a year ago, and Kelly was still on the inside, Abby knows that the absolute last thing they'd be doing right now is making lunch.

But Kelly is hungry, and she's fussing. When it was clear that being set in the highchair would not make food immediately appear, her smile fell and the little wa wa wa cry of 'Hey, food, now! C'mon, hurry up! I'm starving here!' came back out again.

But, as Abby's moving around the kitchen, mixing up formula and getting the cereal, Tim's also in there, moving around, grabbing sandwich stuff for them, and he's close and smells amazing, and looking like walking sex and just...

God...

Not pinning him to the counter and just getting to it is killing her.

And if she's got to be this turned on and distracted while baby wrangling, she thinks he should be, too.

Saturday morning, laying around the house. She's in jammy pants, t-shirt, and a bra. She gets the formula into the bottle, adds the water, and caps it, shaking the mix up, while slipping off the pants.

She knows Tim loves her ass, and the t-shirt is just long enough to almost, but not quite, cover it. And yes, she's smiling as she heads to Kelly, mixed-bottle in hand, well aware of the fact that he's staring at her, eyes glued to the little glimpses of her rear as she walks toward their daughter, lunch utterly forgotten.

And it's also true, that usually, if they're feeding Kelly in the highchair, that whoever's doing the feeding sits in one of the chairs next to her, so, the fact that she's standing next to the chair, leaning a little, bent just a bit, so that the shirt rides up just another inch higher, is not in any way shape or form an accident.

She looks over her shoulder to him, once Kelly's got the bottle in her mouth, and smiles, happy, wicked, _come and get me_ on her face.

His eyes are hot, devouring her, and sending back a very clear, _oh yes, I am definitely coming to get you!_ message as he bites his lips and adjusts himself in his jeans.

He picks up the cereal, mixes it with water, and then brings that over to her at the table. Tim presses right up behind her, rubbing against her back, nuzzling her neck, as he sets the bowl on the table.

Abby wants to melt into him, strong arms around her, that delicious scent wrapping into her skin. He's still wearing his shoes, and she's barefoot, so he's enough taller than she is that she's feeling small and very femme. She turns her face to kiss him, and he kisses back, teasing, flicking her lip with his tongue, and then steps away, quickly. "Gotta get a spoon for her."

She sighs, that's right. "And a bib." One thing they have both noticed in the week since they started feeding it to her, is that cereal meals are a hell of a lot messier than formula or nursing.

He comes back a second later, putting the spoon on the high chair, and wrapping the bib around Kelly's neck. Then leaves again, gently stroking Abby's rear as he heads back over to the counter to make them some lunch.

She sits in the chair, facing Kelly. That makes holding the bottle she's eagerly sucking down a bit easier. (Not that it's difficult, but it's easy to kind of miss Kelly's mouth if she's not paying enough attention.)

"So, which one of these are you wearing?" Abby asks, pulling the vials towards her. "Whip?"

He shakes his head. "That's a present for you. Janice, the perfume lady, told me it's yours, for when I'm wearing my collar."

"You told her you've got one?" Abby's pretty surprised by that. It's not the sort of thing that tends to come up in general conversation.

"We were talking about leather scents and if I liked real leather or the idea of it, and she wanted to know what color the leather I owned was, so I told her what I had and what color it was."

"Uh huh." She can't open the little vials one handed, and Kelly does not look like she wants to take a break. "This'll be easier when you can hold up your own bottle," she says to her daughter, who keeps contentedly sucking away. She does pick it up, and sniff, hoping to get an idea through the cap, and she does get a hint of roses and leather. That makes her smile.

She does keep picking up the vials, sniffing the caps, getting a hint as to what is what. "Vicomte De Valmont?"

"I think that's what I've got on. Kind of fluffy name."

"You don't know who is he, do you?"

He looks up from laying pieces of bread on the counter. "Not a clue. Real guy? Character?" He's making up corned beef on rye for both of them.

"Character. Dangerous Liaisons."

Tim shakes his head. "Never saw it or read it."

She nods, expecting that.

"He one of the good guys?"

"I think it's fair to say that story doesn't have good guys. He's a protagonist, but not, by any stretch, a good guy."

"Okay, what sort of bad guy is he? Am I wearing eau de murdering-psycho?"

"Would you stop wearing it if it was?"

He thinks about that for a moment, eyes skimming over her legs, thinking about how much she seems to approve of this. "How much do you like it?"

She licks her lips, staring him straight in the eye, and then lets her eyes travel slowly down his body, settling on his erection, and dragging back up again after a long, deep breath. "I _really_ like it."

"Then I don't care what it's called," he says, shaking his head. "So, what'd he do?"

"He's a sadist. Seduces women and breaks their hearts for amusement."

"Lovely. This is a movie millions of women thought was achingly romantic?"

"He eventually falls in love with one of them, and then screws it up, ends up fighting a duel with this other guy, and dies, but not before the woman he falls for dies, too, and... actually, everyone dies."

She didn't sound very certain about that. "You weren't really paying attention when you saw it, were you?"

"More like I was supposed to read it for a French class, but I never got good enough at French to get the nuances."

"Ah." He finishes up their sandwiches and places them in front of her, and then takes her free hand, lifting gently, letting her know he wants her to stand. He sits on the chair, and tugs her into his lap. She settles in, wriggling in a very pleasant sort of way, leans in closer to his neck, and inhales deeply. "I really like this."

"Thanks. I do, too." He nips gently at her shoulder, before lifting his sandwich and taking a bite. He's thinking that getting done lunch as soon as possible, and Kelly in bed as soon as possible after that is an exceptionally good plan.

She continues sniffing at the vials, and then looks at the bigger one. "You bought a bottle of something called Jolly Roger?"

He put his sandwich down, and opened it for her. "For Gibbs. One Christmas present down, all the rest to go."

Her eyes went wide as she inhaled. "That's... God, that's a boat, a handmade wood boat, at sea, and the guy on it is drinking rum."

"And now you know why I thought of him when I smelled it."

"Rum?"

"It's close enough to bourbon."

She sniffs it again. "Might want to smell this on you, too."

"Not really a boat guy."

"Exactly. Unless it's in dry dock, this is the closest I'm getting to you on a boat voluntarily."

He laughs at that. "Wanna play pirate?"

She grins and rocks against him. "I might."

He gently strokes the tip of his index finger from her ear to the collar of the shirt, and then much less gently squeezes her breast. "Arrgh." He bites her ear lightly, and she laughs. "I've got a wishlist set up on her site. You can add it for me, or anything you want for you."

"Good." She picks up another vial, sniffs at the lid, and winces. "Ulgh! What on earth made you buy this?"

"Oh. That one." He took it in hand and twisted it around so he could see the name. Satyr. _Fitting._

He explains why he brought that one home, and Abby does look intrigued, but exceptionally doubtful as well. "So, you're telling me this woman could sell ice to Eskimos?"

"I'm telling you she could sell ice perfume to Eskimos."

She sniffs him again. "Sexy ice perfume."

He kisses her shoulder, his fingers sliding up her inner thigh, just barely brushing her pubic hair, making her shiver. "Very sexy ice perfume. Wicked ice. Cold and sparkling, glittering on your skin, slowly melting with your heat into soft, full drops of water, quivering with each gasped breath and I lick them off your skin."

"Mmmm..." Abby squirms against him again, eyeballing Kelly's bottle. She's almost done. Then cereal. Then naptime. Then sex.

She pulls the highchair a bit closer, and then stands, handing the bottle to Tim. Kelly looks confused at this. "You hold on." And Tim does, quickly getting the bottle back in his daughter's mouth. Abby straddles his lap, facing him, unbuttoning his button down, pulling the collar of his t-shirt aside, and nibbling on his collar bone, rocking gently on his lap.

"Oh, god, baby, you're killing me!"

"You think you weren't fucking with me?"

He bites his lip, resisting rocking back against her. Then he nips hers, wanting to suck it between his lips, lick it, taste her slow and deep, but he's also feeding their child right now, so he pulls back and says, "Not that bad."

She shifts from rocking to an exceedingly slow roll of her hips, circling against him with exquisite pressure. "Better?"

His head falls to her shoulder. "God, yes." He puts the bottle down and grabs her hips, stilling them. "And no. Got a baby to feed here, don't need to be cumming in my pants to go with it."

"You're not that close," she says, knowing his sexual response cycle in and out.

And she's right, he's not. " _Yet._ I will be if you keep doing that!"

Kelly starts fussing again. Yes, the bottle is just about done, but she's not full, and she can see the bowl with the cereal in it in front of her, but though she's grabbing for it, she's not able to succeed in getting the food into her mouth.

Tim lets go of Abby's hips. Then he kisses her, hard, fast, deep. Too fast. That should have been a long, thorough, full-out making love kiss. Instead it was a promise of love to come.

"I want you upstairs, in our bed, naked, spread out and waiting for me. I'll feed her and get up there as soon as I can."

Abby grins at that. "Can I be looking at pictures, too?"

"As long as they're of us, yes."

She brushes his lips with one more kiss, and bounces (God, that's killing him, too, that soft, pert bounce of her ass as she heads out) out of the kitchen toward their room.

Tim closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, counts to five, and then opens them, grabs the bowl of cereal that Kelly's just about to flip over, gets the spoon into it, and starts to feed her.

* * *

Being a parent is about patience. There's the patience of allowing your child to learn to do whatever it is. Not jumping in and taking over because it's faster and easier if you do it.

But that's patience for parents of older children.

For parents of babies, the key to patience is accepting that babies move at their own speed, and that speed is slow.

So, even though Tim had time to eat his own sandwich, and get a drink, and mess around with the wishlist he set up, Kelly is still, slowly, munching her way through her cereal. In that she's only been eating "solid" (though how you could possibly consider something that is only marginally thicker than formula a solid boggles Tim's mind) food for a week, she's still in the this is really new part of eating, and hasn't quite gotten down the whole food goes in mouth, swallow thing.

She keeps trying to use her tongue to nurse it, which results in spitting a good deal of each spoonful out.

This morning, the fact that at least two thirds of all food gets pushed out of her mouth, then spooned back in, and then spit out again, and over and over until enough calories have been absorbed by her skin to do the job, did not bug him. That was just feeding a baby.

Right now, when there is something he'd much, _much_ rather be doing, it's driving him buggy.

And this is the patience of a small baby. It's the balancing act of your needs and wants versus hers. It's knowing that if you rush and do a half-assed job she's going to fuss and cry and not properly nap.

So, as lunch is stretching out, and out, and the little pile of cereal in the bowl gets smaller in microscopic increments, Tim is being _patient._

* * *

Eventually, after three quarters of forever (real elapsed time: twenty-nine minutes) Kelly was fed, cleaned up, sung to, and sleeping.

And Tim is standing, at the door to his room, watching, feeling the blood cascade back into his dick.

She's naked, and spread out, sort of.

She's on her elbows and knees. Ass high, legs spread, glistening wet pussy on display. She's gently, slowly fingering herself. Just the tip of her middle finger circling lightly over her clit. He knows that move, that's the just staying on the edge of getting off stroke.

If there's a more deliberate _fuck me now_ pose, he's got no idea what it would be.

He sees she's got her earbuds in, and just knows she's watching one of the videos of them. He doesn't know which, obviously, but they usually do still pictures, so there's only a few videos to pick from, and he knows all of them by heart.

Between what he's seeing, and the memories in his head that go with the different videos, his pants are frightfully tight.

And then they're on the floor, along with his boxers.

He doesn't know if she's got the volume up high enough she can't hear him, or if she's playing with him, pretending she doesn't know he's in their room. Either way, with that pose, he figures this is welcome.

He gets onto their bed fast, and she has to feel that, but she doesn't respond, other than to wiggle her ass at him. He gets that she's pretending to be so engrossed in the video she's lost to everything else. That's fine. She wants to pretend they're fucking and get "surprised," he's happy to play along and add the real thing. In a second, he's kneeling behind her, grabs his dick, squeezing and stroking himself just bit, (That feels too damn good right now, too.) lines up, and slips in, groaning at how good she feels.

She makes a surprised squeaking sound. He pulls her up, so she's kneeling too, back against his chest, then yanks the cord on the earbuds, so they jerk out of her ears.

"Good?"

"Fuck yes!" she moans, turning to kiss him. He feasts on her lips as one hand finds a breast, and the other one slips to her clit, replacing her barely touching caress with a firm, fast stroke.

She's close, a lot closer than he is. He can feel it in the tightness in her body, the panting of her breath, the way she's frantically sucking his tongue. And, God, by all that is or ever was good and holy, that feels good. Feels amazing.

He breaks the kiss, licking her jaw and throat. "Wanna feel you come, baby."

She's rocking against him, pressing herself into his fingers, grinding on his cock, and he rubs a little faster, little harder, and she goes just a hair tighter before her whole body ripples against him.

She's moaning, and he gentles his stroke. "That's it! So beautiful, Abby."

For a few seconds, she rests against him, cradled in his arms, his head resting on her shoulder as her body twitches and her breathing slows. Then she kisses him, long and slow and deep. The kiss they should have had downstairs.

She breaks the kiss, squeezing around him deliberately. "You're not done, are you?"

He shakes his head, grinning. "Not yet."

"Good." She drops onto her elbows and wiggles her hips in a very encouraging, very, very, insanely good sort of way, and he growls quietly. "Want you to go as hard and fast as you like."

He grunts, the pleasure of those words and the feel of doing it short-circuiting the part of his brain that comes up with words, stroking into her fast and hard.

"Ohhh... Just like that, Tim. Want your finger marks on my hips."

He grabs her hips, pulling her back as he thrusts. She meets him, arching back against him, hard and deep. She's rocking fast, and so is he, encouraging him with a steady stream of "Fuck/God, yes/So good/Fuck!/Please!" as he groans with each stroke.

He can see his fingers leaving little pink marks on her hips, and watch his body slipping into hers, high as a kite on the feel and sight of this. He doesn't go quite as fast as he can, he wants another minute here, hovering between the intense erotic pleasure of almost-there-but-still-in-control and the free fall of climax.

A minute's enough. He moves faster, savoring her half-moaned words, plunging over and over into her, reveling in the wet slide of her body on his and the bursting, pulsing ecstasy of climax.

* * *

Three days later, he's in the car with Gibbs, who's been looking at him all day, trying to figure out why he smells the way he does. At one of the stop lights, Gibbs looks over at him and says, "Did you start woodworking?"

Tim just grins.


	40. Stockings By The Chimney

 

Last year, when Tim relieved Abby of her Christmas decorating gear, and valiantly went out into the snowy cold to apply said gear to the house, he did not realize he was setting up a pattern for future Christmasses.

But he was.

And thus, this year, in somewhat less cold and no snow, he's once again out there, with a ladder and lights, bedecking the house, grumbling about it the whole way through.

It is one thing to grab the lights and prevent your pregnant wife from getting up on a ladder.

It's something else all-together when she just pouts at you about how cold it is and how nice the house looked last year and how good you are with that sort of thing.

But he's out there, doing it, because…

Because it's Abby and she's already got everything in the world she wants, and he's not exactly swimming in Christmas present ideas, and the house all lit up makes her happy, so he's doing it.

* * *

When he got in, he found out that ultra-rich, ultra-dark, ultra-yummy hot chocolate waiting for him was also part of the tradition.

And this year, he noticed something else, stockings hung by the chimney with care.

Three of them.

And a darling baby girl, sitting in front of the fireplace, looking up at them.

So, once he got his cold weather gear off, and warmed his hands up on the hot chocolate, he sat down behind Kelly, picking her up and cuddling her against his chest.

"Looks like Mama's getting ready for Santa to visit."

Abby, who had been putting the lights on the tree, turned and smiled at him. "Oh yes. Kelly's first Christmas, can't not have stockings for that."

He stood up. There are three of them, one is white with silver snowflakes on it, one is green with darker green holly, and one is blue with white snowmen.

"Whose is whose?"

"You get to pick."

"What do you think Kelly, should I have green or blue? I think Mama gets white." Kelly reached out and grabbed the snowman. "Green one's mine. I think she likes blue."

* * *

One of the things about being in possession of a small baby is that it's really difficult to not go overboard with the cute.

Tim had never thought he was a particularly cute person, (Tony and Jimmy both thought that given how Halloween went, this was an utterly hilarious self-assessment.) but as the Christmas season rolled around, and being in possession of an almost six-month-old daughter, he's noticed that he has a very difficult time going to Target for supplies and not coming out with some sort of painfully cute little thing to put her in.

Unfortunately this problem is not alleviated by sending Abby in, because she's even worse at it than he is.

Kelly already has winter gear. She doesn't need a furry little bear suit. Not at all.

But gosh, it was so _cute_. And little, though it's kind of big on her. (It's size 6-12mo) And fuzzy, did he mention fuzzy? And look (here's where Abby started cooing) it's got _ears_! Oh, and look, _paws_!

Fortunately, in that she is six months old, and has no idea how overboard her parents are going, Kelly is willing to tolerate being stuffed into a variety of painfully cute little outfits.

And her Pop has shots of all of them on his phone, and a few of the really good ones on the wall behind his desk. And it might be possible that he's… maybe... made some Christmas tree ornaments… that sort of have her pictures, in her painfully cute little bear suit, in them, hanging on his tree. First grandbaby, he's allowed to go a bit bonkers, too. (It's also possible that very similar ornaments will be given to the rest of the family as Christmas presents.)

* * *

"Okay, so I understand how I got wrangled into doing this to my house, but why am I decorating yours?" Tim asks Jimmy as he hands him another string of lights.

"Because Breena's about to pop, and when she told Abby she didn't have the energy to do any decorating she bundled you and Kelly into the car and over you came."

"Yeah, sounds about right."

"And next thing I knew they were staring at both of us, and you volunteered to do the outside." Jimmy leans a bit further over, and Tim steadies the ladder while he tacks up another few feet of lights.

"That's not how I remember it."

"Breena's on the sofa with Molly and Kelly, Abby's putting up the tree, they both keep looking at us, and then you say, 'I guess we should go do the outside.' That doesn't sound like volunteering to you?"

"Yeah it does. I remember _you_ saying it."

Jimmy snorts. "Just keep telling yourself that."

"At least it's not so god-awful cold this year."

"That's true." High thirties isn't comfortable, but it's not bad either. "And just think, in fifteen or so years we'll say, 'Kids, go decorate the house!'"

"And they'll complain, whine, and flip us off because house decorating is something old people do, and they want to be out with their buddies."

Jimmy laughs at that, places one more tack, and says, "Okay, roofline and windows are done. Wrap some lights on the porch railing, stick the wreath on the door, and we're done."

"Amen."

Jimmy descends the ladder, and Tim hands him another string of lights, and between the two of them, getting the porch wrapped up went pretty fast.

"So, I thought you really liked this stuff. Last few years you've helped Abby decorate the lab," Tim says as they're stepping back to look at the finished house, noticing that there are still two full boxes of outside decorations.

Jimmy shrugs.

"You okay?"

"Enough."

"Jimmy?"

Jimmy looks at his house, as if he could see through the wall to where Breena is. "It's different this time. I know it. I really, really do know it. But she's starting to have contractions, you know that one an hour, two the next hour, nothing for three hours just getting revved up thing?"

Tim nods. "Yeah, I remember that."

"So, it's different. She's full term. Anna's fine. She's healthy. They did an extra just-checking scan last week, and she's perfect. Everything is going to be fine." He's as much convincing himself as telling Tim. "But, sometime in the next few weeks, we're going back to that hospital," Jimmy half-smiles, then takes his glasses off and wipes his eyes, and clears his throat, "and we're going to do the whole labor thing all over again, and... just... lots of memories."

"Oh."

"And our OB said this would be part of it. That it's normal. And it's part of both grieving and moving on. And that we have to work on anchoring ourselves in the present, so we don't get lost in the past. But, yeah, kind of nervous, distracted, sad, and scared, which sort of cuts into my Jolly-Old-Elf-Christmas-Spirit."

"Yeah." Tim doesn't tell him it's going to be fine. He didn't find 'it's going to be fine' even remotely comforting when they were dealing with the previa. He thought for a moment. "You remember telling me, not long after you lost Jon, that you needed all the happy you could get?"

"Yeah." He nods.

"That still true?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Then I'll scrounge up some Jolly-Old-Elf for both of us. C'mon, we've got a whole box of lights here, let's go do the trees."


	41. Anna Victoria Palmer

December 7th, yet another Monday at work. Tim stops down in the basement, noticing that one of the Minions had donated a K-cup caddy to the coffee station, and the rest of them weren't shy about listing what they liked on the whiteboard.

He's getting into the habit of buying more coffee for them each weekend, and bringing it in on Monday mornings. He can't really tell, because he's not down there all the time, but they seem to like it.

He's also getting more of a sense of the people who'll be working for him. If he had his way, he'd fire four of them, reassign another two, and start rebuilding from the six that don't seem satisfied with how the department is working.

But he's a government employee, with twelve other government employees, short of them stealing the computers, sexually harassing each other, or leaking NCIS secrets to the media, he basically can't fire them.

Which means he's got to somehow make four guys he'd rather not work with because they're under the impression that a nine-to-five, crime works on my schedule, not the other way around attitude is enough, turn into real cops, or decide to leave this cushy, safe, well-paid position.

He's hoping they leave.

He's guessing that if Manner heads off after he shows up, they'll follow. But he's not sure about that.

Either way, it's not happening today. He stops by Ingram's desk (one of the dissatisfied-looking ones) and spends (like he's been doing with each of them, whenever he gets the chance) an hour or so talking with her, finding out what case she's on, how it's going, which cases she's worked in the past.

She's pleasant, competent, and he gets the sense that dissatisfied comes from being a hacker stuck on a database job. He makes a mental note to find out who's best at what, and try to make sure cases get sorted that way.

There's no reason why someone's who's main specialty is getting in and out fast and sneaky should be sorting fifteen million data points looking for a pattern. Especially not when the person in the cubical one over specializes in sorting data.

* * *

_You going to grace us with your presence today?_ Tim reads off his phone.

_On the elevator, heading up. I'm not leaving you with all the paperwork._ He sends back to Tony.

_Good._

_Just making sure the Minions are kept properly caffeinated._ He can feel Tony snigger at that.

_You going to let them know you're calling them the Minions?_

Tim's turn to laugh. The doors open, and he heads over to his desk, saying, "I don't know. It'll depend a lot on how they do," as he passes Tony's desk. "Don't want to horrify them." He pulls the stack of papers toward him.

"Maybe you do. Might help keep them in line." Tony replies.

"What are we talking about?" Draga asks.

"The care and feeding of Minions," Tony replies.

Draga and Ziva roll their eyes.

"How about it, Gibbs? Is being feared the secret to success?" Tony asks. It still feels weird to Tim to hear Tony address Gibbs like that, instead of the usual Boss, but... yeah, everything changes.

"Kept you three in line," Gibbs says calmly. "But horrified isn't scared."

Tim's nodding at that. "Scary's fine. _Oh my god, he's such a dork!_ isn't what I'm aiming for."

Tony looks like he's about to say something along the lines of, "If the shoe fits..." But he doesn't. He nods to the papers on Tim's desk. "They're not filling themselves out."

"On it."

* * *

"And how was this morning, Jimmy?"

Jimmy's noticed, that for the last year or so, when Ducky is talking about personal things, he refers to him as Jimmy, but when they talk professionally, especially if someone else is around, he's still Mr. Palmer.

So, by the use of his first name, Jimmy knows that's a question about home and family, and not the stack of paperwork he's wading through.

"Breena's tired. She's not really sleeping. She seemed pretty relieved to get Molly and I out of the house."

"Enjoying what is hopefully a last few minutes of restful solitude before the upcoming excitement?"

"I hope so. She had pretty steady contractions all weekend long, not a lot of them, but I don't think more than two hours went by without one. Then last night they just stopped. I think Anna's trying to go full term."

"She will come when she's ready."

"Yeah. I know, trust me. But this part is wearying. Especially for Breena. But weeks of being on high alert aren't easy for me, either."

Ducky nods, understanding what Jimmy is saying, and isn't. "Is everything ready?"

"Oh yeah, since Thanksgiving."

Ducky pats his bag. "And I, too, am ready."

"Good." Jimmy looks down at the form in front of him, and goes back to filling it out. They work that way for several more minutes, Jimmy filling out the paperwork, Ducky reading through a cold-case, working up a psychological profile of their perp.

Then Jimmy's phone buzzes. He answers it absently, not checking the name, eyes on the form. "Palmer."

"Jimmy." Breena's voice, with a certain breathy quality he immediately recognizes.

"Time?"

"Water broke a minute ago."

"I'll be home in twenty minutes."

Ducky's already tidying up his files, getting ready to go, huge grin on his face.

* * *

Tim is filling out paperwork when Jimmy rushes over, Molly's car seat in hand, plunks it down next to Tim's chair, grins at all four of them, and then rushes back out again.

Different variations of "Good luck!" follow his rapidly retreating form.

Tim picks up his phone and sends down to Abby, _Detour en route home. Picking up Molly, too!_

_Just got the text from Breena!_ Comes back to him. He looks up and notices the rest of his team is also reading off of their cells, so it seems that Team Gibbs is all on the same page.

Sometime, hopefully in the next 24 hours, Anna Palmer would be on the outside!

* * *

At twenty-two months old Molly Palmer can (mostly) feed herself. She has very definite ideas as to what she will or will not eat. She has a well-chewed stuffed-corgi (Named Doggy, she's not really imaginative with names.) she adores and will not sleep without. She prefers her hair down, likes dresses more than pants, and will have a literal hissy fit if you attempt to make her wear something other than pink shoes.

She is, in other words, a perfectly normal toddler.

She is also pretty firmly mired in the part of life where she likes surprises, but she also starts to get edgy and irritable if too many of them pile on top of each other.

She does much better with a certain routine.

And the addition of a little sister to the mix means routine will never be the same.

And, while it is true that she has no idea how things are about to change, it is also true that she is well aware of the general vibe of things being different around her house lately, and to say that she's been a bit on edge is not an exaggeration.

* * *

Molly is pleased to see them when they go to her daycare to pick her up. Jimmy and Breena'd been telling her for few days, since the contractions started kicking up, that one day Uncle Tim or Aunt Abby might be picking her up from daycare, and if that happened, then very soon she'd get to meet her little sister.

Meeting little sister doesn't mean much to her.

Sleepover at Uncle Tim and Aunt Abby's on the other hand… That interests her.

So, she's excited, babbling away about the baby as Uncle Tim fetches her stuff and Aunt Abby gets her into her winter clothing. And, on the car ride home, they've gone through about six versions of "When's baby coming?" when a new concern surfaces, "Doggy!"

Abby looks to Tim, who was in charge of packing things up, and he looks to the back seat, valiantly hoping that Molly carried her pet doggy into the car with her, because he knows he didn't touch it.

But, of course, Doggy is not back there.

And while it's true that two seconds ago she was in a pretty good mood, she's tearing up at the lack of Doggy.

Abby makes a quick executive decision, and whips them through a u-turn as soon as she can make one. Trying to get an excited toddler to sleep in a new place is almost impossible. Trying to get an excited toddler to sleep in a new place without her beloved Doggy is impossible.

"We're getting Doggy."

Tim quickly texts Heather, lets her know they're going to be a little bit later than expected. And, five minutes later, back at the daycare center, he hops out, locates Doggy (He was in the far back of her cubby.) and brings him back to what is now a full on sobbing toddler, who is, until Doggy appears, inconsolable at the idea that her precious may be lost.

Abby looks over at him, and Tim shakes his head, well aware of the fact that they've got a VERY excited little girl on their hands, and that all plans for tonight are going to revolve around being as calm, and quiet, and boring as possible.

* * *

_One day shy of eleven months_ , Jimmy thinks.

In a lot of ways, it feels very different. Everyone who comes in is happy to see them. That's a huge difference. Everyone is smiling. Ducky's here, so are Breena's parents (just like last time) but this time no one is crying. That's a step in the right direction, right?

They're in the maternity ward this time. Another huge difference. (Their OB had thought delivering a still born baby in the maternity ward, where they'd be able to hear other new babies crying, would be an extra layer of trauma on top of what was already the worst day of their lives. They'd been in the general ward last time.)

Their pediatrician has stopped by to look in on them. Very, very big (and welcome) difference.

There's a little warmer and bassinette waiting for Anna. (That's a massive relief.)

The monitor sounds different, and this time three lines, Breena's heartbeat, her contractions, and Anna's heartbeat are all zig zagging across the monitor.

But it smells the same, and Breena's in a gown, in a bed, again. Same sort of bed. And contractions, no matter the state of the child being slowly pushed out, feel the same. And what you do to deal with those contractions, the walking, the back rubbing, all of it, is exactly the same. So it's easy, for both of them, to slip in time, lost in the shockingly fresh memories of Jon's delivery.

Their doctor and Ducky had mentioned that this would happen. They both knew it, felt it, the fear, the sorrow, during each step of Anna's pregnancy, as they went through the same motions, but it's hitting harder here.

The happiness of this, the rational knowledge that Anna is fine, is tempered with the memory of doing this with Jon, when everything wasn't fine, and both of their hearts broke as they said goodbye to the dream of their son.

* * *

Don't give an excited toddler choices. Not if you don't want a melt-down.

Tim and Abby are learning this the hard way. They'd gotten Molly home, taken her and her things upstairs, showed her the little bed they had made up for her on the floor right next to Kelly's crib. (Sleeping in the same room as Kelly is a big deal. They used to just put both of them in the crib together, but at six months and not quite two, they don't both fit anymore.) Showed her the bathroom where she'd be getting her tubby that night (and tomorrow night, maybe the night after that if Jimmy and Breena want a bit more time on their own with Anna), how they had a special bottle of (pink!) shampoo waiting for her as well as her very own toothbrush and toothpaste (also pink!) and a brand new (more pink!) unicorn towel.

(It's possible that Tim might be remembering a bit of how it felt to have a new baby come home, and how no one paid much attention to him for, oh, a month after that, and so he's gone a little too far in the other direction for Molly.)

All of that goes well. Abby gets Kelly fed while Tim lingers with Molly, letting her take her time to explore everything. She's been upstairs in their house before, but this is the first time she's done it sans parents. Plus, he's not sure how good her memory is and how well she's got the idea of their upstairs in her mind.

But, eventually she's bored with messing around in the bathroom and nursery, so he takes her hand, helping her stay steady as she heads down the steps, and they go to get some dinner.

Molly loves chicken nuggets. Molly loves pizza. Both of those foods are occasional treats at Jimmy and Breena's. And, of course, Tim got both for her.

"Do you want pizza or nuggets for dinner?" he asks as he puts her in the booster seat they've got on one of the chairs next to Kelly in her highchair.

"Nuggets!"

"Then we'll have nuggets."

He gets them out, while Abby continues to feed Kelly her cereal, talking with Molly a bit about that, then she notices that he's putting the nuggets on a baking sheet, and says, "Pizza!"

"Okay, fine, we can do pizza."

He puts the nuggets back in the bag, seals it up, tucks it back into the freezer, and grabs the pizza. "See, yummy pizza."

"No. No. No."

"No?"

"No pizza!" She's extremely definite at that, frowning at him in a very determined way.

"Do you want nuggets?" Tim asks.

"Pizza!"

He holds up the pizza. "I'm holding the pizza. Do you want the nuggets?"

"Nuggets."

Okay, fine, they can do nuggets. He turns to put the pizza back in the freezer and was met with a teary chorus of "Pizza!"

Tim feels like he's about to rip his hair out when Abby has a brainstorm and says, "Molly, do you want both?"

"Yes!" (sniffle, sniffle, snort, cry)

"I will make you both."

That got a tiny smile.

* * *

"You're making great progress, Breena. You're at six centimeters. Do you want to start some medication for the pain?" Dr. Jun, their OB asks.

"God, yes!"

"Okay. I'll get the anesthesiologist in, and we'll get you hooked up with an epidural."

"Thank you." Her hand grips tighter against Jimmy's as she says that, yet another contraction cresting through her hips and back. They've been here seven hours and gone from one centimeter to six centimeters, that's making good time, and more than far enough along that the risk of the anesthetic slowing things down is minimal.

She's tired, she's hurting, and right now having something to take all of that away, and let both of them get something of a nap before the pushing starts, probably, given the speed things have been moving, around eleven or twelve tonight, sounds like a really good plan.

* * *

Molly Palmer is normally a sunny, happy, and fun little girl. She's normally in possession of a pleasant and laid-back temperament, able to roll with the punches.

She's also, normally, not in a strange house, unable to have her Mommy read her her goodnight story, with a whole lot of excitement about this whole, 'baby' thing.

So, she's pretty fried, and though bath time went well (she and Kelly both enjoyed being in the tubby together, while Abby got them soaped up and rinsed off), and the first part of story time (Tim with Kelly cuddled on his chest, Molly in his lap, quietly reading Goodnight Moon) went well, there was this point, when he laid Kelly down to sleep, and then tucked Molly in, that it finally occurred to her that Mommy and Daddy are not going to put her to bed, and they will not be reading her any stories and she just completely melted down.

Which set off Kelly.

And just about set off Tim.

He gets Molly out of the nursery, and Abby goes in to get Kelly calmed down, while he holds onto Molly, cuddling her, patting her back, quietly telling her about how she's going to get to see Mommy and Daddy tomorrow, while she wails inconsolably for her Mama.

He's having no luck, at all, getting her quieted down.

So, he takes his phone out, one handed, and begins to text, while walking Molly around his living room.

_Can you leave long enough to tell a story or two?_

He doesn't hear anything back for a minute, and then gets. _Breena's at six centimeters. I can get away for a bit. Any particular story?_

"Thank you," Tim whispers.

_Molly's completely fried, and we're having no luck calming her down. I'm thinking that telling her that her Ducky is coming might help._

_I'll be there as soon as I can, Timothy._

* * *

Ducky, like Jeannie and Ed, has been hovering around the edges of the birth. In the room some, offering support and comfort. In the waiting room some, offering them privacy, as well.

Ed looks over at him as he tucks his phone back into his pocket. "Someone die?"

"No." Ducky smiles. "Fortunately. It seems our Miss Molly has just realized her mother and father will not be providing her usual good night tuck in, and she is complaining vigorously at that."

Jeannie smiles, knowing how that works. She nods briefly at Ed, and then at Ducky, as well. And while it is true that Ed and Ducky are not overwhelmingly fond of each other, they are both extraordinarily fond of Molly, and emergency story-time tuck ins sounds like a job for the Grandpa squad.

Or as Molly calls them "My Ducky" and "Papa!"

* * *

Tim didn't expect to see Ducky and Ed show up at his house, but he has to admit Molly is pleased to see them, and between Ducky taking her in his arms, saying, "Oh, my Molly, what has you so sad, dear?" and Ed petting the back of her head, kissing her cheek, cooing over his darling girl, that they did get her calmed down.

Eventually, she ends up in Ed's arms, sucking her thumb, eyes drooping as Ducky tells her the story of how giraffes ended up so tall.

And they did get her tucked in about twenty minutes later, dead asleep.

"Thank you," Tim says, very sincerely, to both of them, as they get ready to head out.

"She was so wound up, we just couldn't get her calmed down," Abby adds.

Ed smiles. "They call them terrible twos for a reason. Angelo, Jeannie's dad, did the same thing for me when Amy was born. Everything was upside down. Jeannie was still in the hospital. And it was the first time I had Breena all on my own, and I managed to set fire to dinner. Just about ripping my hair out by bedtime, and when she realized that Jeannie wasn't coming home, she completely flipped out."

"How are things going?" Abby asks, and it's clear that by things she means not only the delivery, but Jimmy and Breena's mental health, too.

"Very well, though we want to get back quickly. She was at six centimeters when we left and the anesthesiologist was due in soon. With any luck they'll both get some rest, and then Anna will make her grand debut," Ducky replies.

"Okay." Abby hugs both Ducky and Ed. "You both give them some hugs from me."

Ed looks surprised by the hug, but Ducky smiles and says, "Certainly, Abigail."

* * *

There's the last hard push, the feeling of intense, focused effort, everything in Breena's world narrowing down to one goal, pressure, lots and lots of pressure, and then release followed by tiny, high-pitched wailing.

They'd already talked to Jun about this, she'd overseen Molly and Jon's delivery and understood exactly how fragile this moment was, how much both of them needed to touch, see, hear, but mostly feel their child, alive and whole and precious and real as soon as they could.

So, before Anna is cleaned up, bare seconds after the cord was cut, she is lying, wet, gooey with vernix and a little blood, crying, tiny body vibrating with indignation and shock at her new surroundings, on Breena's chest.

And they are both holding her, kissing her, crying, laughing some, awash in so many emotions they'd have had a difficult time sorting them out.

She's here, and real, and healthy and whole. Her eyes are open, squinting at them, mouth open, wailing, breathing tiny puffs of air against Breena's chest, pink hands clenched, little brown curls smeary with birth fluids.

After a few more seconds, she calms down, seems to get the lay of the land so to speak, maybe she hears Breena's heartbeat and recognizes it, maybe the sound of Jimmy's voice is familiar (though, not distorted by a watery background). But for whatever reason she stops crying, (though her parents don't) while Breena holds her in her arms, and Jimmy has one arm around Breena, his head pressed to her shoulder, looking close at his daughter, his hand on the back of her somewhat pointy head.

They touch ears, lips, and chin, stroke her face, petting her skin and hair, kissing fingers and toes, marveling at her finally being here, reveling in each breath she takes.

Once the placenta is delivered and Breena's all stitched up, their pediatrician gently takes Anna from them, and Jimmy follows, keeping her in view as they clean her up, weigh her (six pounds twelve ounces) measure her (seventeen inches) print her feet, put the tags on her, along with a diaper, onesie, hat, and then swaddle her into a tiny bundle and hand her back to Jimmy.

He carries her to his wife, and snuggles up as close to her as he can, while she gets Anna settled on her breast to nurse.

And for the first time since the pregnancy test turned positive, Breena and Jimmy Palmer felt all traces of fear drain away.

* * *

Between being a field agent and rule number three, Tim always has his phone nearby, and it's always on.

He also, because of these things, cannot sleep through a text or it ringing.

Which means he wakes up shortly after one, as his phone buzzes, and sees: _Anna Victoria Palmer. 12/7/15 11:47 PM Six pounds, twelve ounces, seventeen inches long. Mama and baby are fine!_ Along with a picture of a tiny, pink newborn, one eye peering curiously at the world, swaddled in the traditional white hospital blanket with the pink and blue stripes, snuggled in Breena's arms.

Abby pokes her head up, seeing him standing next to his dresser looking at his phone.

"Anna?"

He's grinning. "Oh yeah!" Then he takes the phone over, and shows it to Abby.

"Oh, she's beautiful."

"I was thinking that."

* * *

It's not the same.

Can't be, because he's not the same man, and Breena's not the same woman, not anymore, and it's not Jon, but the feel of it, the fantasy, is still there. Tempered, morphed by time and grief and life and now, joy.

So, it's not the same. But that doesn't mean it isn't good. Doesn't mean his eyes don't tear up, this time from joy, as Tim and Abby, Molly and Kelly come in, and Tim sets Molly on the bed, where he's sitting next to Breena, who has Anna in her arms, and he finally gets to say, "Molly, this is your little sister."

She creeps closer, and he picks her up, holding her, partially just to touch her, to have real, physical proof of all of his girls, partially because she's not quite two and he doesn't want her accidentally shoving or smushing Anna. And cuddled in his arms, her hand extends, gently, and she touches Anna's face, puzzled look on hers.

"Baby."

"This is your baby sister, Anna." Breena says.

Molly's confused, she looks back to Kelly. "Baby?"

"They're both babies," Abby says, having kissed Breena and Jimmy hello.

"My baby!" Though it's clear from how she's looking from Anna to Kelly she means both of them.

Tim nods solemnly, leaning down to kiss Breena, and give Jimmy a hug. "Your babies."

Molly grins, a sort of _well, all right then, as long as we've got that sorted, this is all good,_ expression on her face.

Jimmy and Breena see it. They look from Molly to Anna, who's staring at her big sister with the somewhat standard look of newborn confusion, back to Molly, who's leaning in to kiss (slobber on, she doesn't quite have the kissing thing down yet) her baby sister. They look at each other, each holding a baby girl, and laugh.


	42. The Bitter Pill

He's fired the text off before it occurs to Gibbs that just maybe doing it was a little odd.

Well, maybe not odd.

_Telling?_

_God-awful stupid?_ He sighs, pocketing his phone.

Like the rest of the crew, he got the text at one in the morning with the picture of Anna. He was still up, working on his bed, (no shot of him sleeping until he knew they were out of the woods, so to speak) so he sent a quick one back to Jimmy asking if they wanted visitors now, or later, and got one back saying that morning was soon enough.

So he went to sleep, looking forward to seeing his newest girl. (And of course there is never a second's doubt that this is one of _his_ girls. He's kind of like Molly in that.)

As he was falling asleep, he found himself feeling especially happy, and really, sincerely looking forward to telling Rachel about this. And sure, he's looking forward to telling Fornell and LJ and Vance about it, but he's just lighting up at the idea of telling Rachel, imagining showing her the pictures, and the look on her face as he does it.

He got there in the morning after the McGees, but before Tony and Ziva, and once he got a chance to hold Anna, he asked Abby to take a picture of them, and she did, and once he handed her back to Breena, he sent the shot to Rachel, feeling very pleased about the world in general, and showing her his newest baby in specific.

Which is when it occurs to him that the person, the _woman_ , he most wants to share this with is not his friend or girlfriend, but his _therapist_.

He doesn't want to show Anna off in a _Look, I'm making progress_ sort of way, because adopting baby girls was never an area where he felt like he needed any help. No, the feeling that's going with this is one that he remembers, most recently from Susan, and before her, Hollis, that desire to share the good parts of your life with someone who you enjoy. Someone who will enjoy them with you.

A friend.

(If he's being honest, a more than friend.)

Everyone else is cooing over Anna, so he makes some sort of excuse, and heads off, none of them really paying attention to him, because he's not the star of the show, not today.

He's pacing the hallway feeling fairly black about the whole thing when he gets back: _Congratulations! She's beautiful, Jethro. Everyone okay?_

 _Yeah. Tired, sore, but you know how that goes._ He's aware of the fact that her youngest child, a son, is a sophomore in high school right now.

_Yes, I do. Bring more pictures Monday?_

The question mark means it's a request, not an assignment. So he texts back. _Sure._

_Good! See you then._

Warm, polite, focused. Enthusiastic about the good things in his life, but even with that, she's drawing the lines. She'll see him on Monday, during their appointment, because she's his _therapist_ , not his friend (or more than friend.)

He's leaning against the wall, slipping his phone into his pocket, head back, and eyes closed when he hears, "Are you all right, Jethro?"

"Fine, Penny."

She's not buying that, at all. And, if he's the clan's patriarch, she's the matriarch, and anyone with an ounce of sense in his head knows pulling bullshit on grandma isn't going to fly. "You were fine five minutes ago, and then you weren't. Really, are you okay? Get some bad news?"

He shakes his head and says, "Yeah, I'm fine."

She snorts at that, leans next to him against the wall, and squeezes his hand. "Want some company while you stew in your 'fine'?" He is suddenly well-aware of where Tim got his font of sarcasm.

"Nah. Go, enjoy Anna. Nothing going on with me that's that interesting."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. She won't be brand new forever, and I'll still be old and kind of stupid tomorrow."

"How about you come with me? You're right, she won't be brand new forever, and snuggling tiny, little babies tends to help with feeling stupid and old."

"I'll be there in a minute."

"Okay," she says as she walks off. One of the things he appreciates about Penny is that she's well aware of the fact that he's full of shit right now, and she's offering to help him with it, but she also recognizes and respects the fact that he's a grown-up, one of her equals, and she doesn't push when he makes it clear he'd like to be alone in his stupid.

He sighs again, wondering how the hell to get himself out of this, without actually doing what he needs to do to get himself out of it, because right now, the idea of cutting Rachel out of his life, stopping seeing her, is just too depressing to bear for more than a second.

Of course, at the same time, he knows what's going to happen if he keeps seeing her, and that's depressing, too.

He's fifty-six, fifty-seven and mandatory retirement coming up in a month. Three ex-wives. More ex-girlfriends than he wants to count. He thought he'd made every emotional mistake a man could make. Thought he was done getting himself into stupid emotional tangles that weren't good for anyone.

But, of course, he's not.

Noooo... He's the dumb fuck falling in love with his therapist. The same woman who just about flat out told him not to fall in love with her.

His _married_ therapist.

It hits him; he doesn't actually know that for a fact. Rachel will, occasionally, talk about her children (there are three of them, one out of the house, one in college, one in high school) but she never mentions Cranston. He's never specifically asked about him, but they'll often talk a bit about what both of them were doing over the weekend, and while she'll mention things with the kids, she doesn't mention him.

She also doesn't have any pictures of him up in her office. There's a few graduation shots, two high school, one college, of her and the three kids, but not any with him in them.

Which would make sense, if he's the one taking the pictures.

But...

There is a... Tim would call it a meta voice, but Gibbs is not Tim, so he doesn't have much of a name for it, but whatever this thing is, it's well aware of the fact that he's desperately grasping at straws, because he knows what the right thing to do is (stop seeing Rachel), but he doesn't want to do the right thing.

For that matter, since he said it to Fornell, mentioned that he couldn't ask the one he was interested in out, he's known what the right thing to do is.

But he doesn't want to do it.

He wants to go see her on Mondays (and the other days of the week, too, but he can't, so he'll settle for Mondays) and talk with her, watch the way the early morning sun lights her face and hair, enjoy the sound of her voice, the way she watches him as he speaks, the way her fingers stroke over the cup of coffee, and the expression on her face when he brings her a flavor combination she especially likes, revel in time spent with an attractive woman he can say absolutely anything to without fear.

He hasn't let his interior fantasies go past just talking to her. Probably because she is married. (You don't know that. Stop kidding yourself, Gunny. That is one _married_ woman!) Definitely because if he breaks that line, even in his mind, he stops being able to say that she's just a friend, and this is how friends feel about each other, and all the rest of the lies he's been telling himself since Fornell looked at him and said, "God, you are so lonely, aren't you?"

He sighs and straightens up. He can hear voices coming from Jimmy and Breena's room, and his internal clock is good enough that he knows his team is getting ready to head to work.

He slaps a happy smile on his face, marches himself into their room, kisses Breena goodbye, pets Anna one last time, gives Molly a big, whirling hug, and promises to come over to Tim and Abby's tonight to read her a very special goodnight story picked out especially for her, Jimmy gets a slap on the shoulder and a one-armed hug, and then he heads off with Tim, Abby, Tony and Ziva. Time to go to work and, hopefully, stop some bad guys.

* * *

Or spend a rather contemplative day doing paperwork.

Probably a bad day for it. A good case would have gotten his mind off it. (You know you're distracted when Draga, who still has to read the forms, and look up information to fill them out, is going through them faster than you are.)

But there wasn't a good case, or a bad one, or any sort of case at all.

Tim spent two hours on the paperwork, and then vanished down to the basement to mingle with the Minions some more.

And Tony, who is usually good for a distraction, is also musing something. He's going through his paperwork even slower than Gibbs is. Gibbs can feel something is up with him, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put together Tony's fear of babies, visiting Anna, and the way he keeps looking at Ziva whenever she's got her head down filling out the forms, and come up with Tony's got babies on his mind.

So, instead of a juicy murder, and bad guys to hunt down, there was paperwork, and showing Draga and Leon baby pictures. And, in that he can fill a lot of this paperwork out on automatic, not needing to think much about it, there was time to come up with something of a plan.

It's a bad plan. It's a goddamn awful stupid plan. That little voice knows it. Is telling him it's a bad plan. But it's not as bad as it could be. And it is as much as a middle ground as he can stand right now.

* * *

So, after a day of paperwork, he heads home, and it hits him while driving there, that now, Tim and Abby's house is home, too. There's a shift. He knew he was going there, so he could lend a hand on baby wrangling, and he drove it on automatic, not needing to think the way there. But today was the first time he realized that he was heading _home._ His house is still home, too. Anywhere his tools live is home. But, this house with the kids is home, too.

He beats them there, because he's not picking up Molly.

He spends a few minutes playing with Kelly and talking to Heather, seeing how today went. (About average. Looks like that first tooth might be thinking of popping out soon. Kelly's been extra-drooly and kind of irritable today, but the little white mark on the gums that means tooth soon isn't there. Either way, Heather's on top of it; she's got teething rings in the freezer and baby Orajel in the medicine cabinet, ready to go. In that Kelly's gnawing on his knuckle, Gibbs is thinking Heather may be onto something with the whole teething soon thing.)

Heather's looking at him expectantly, not really sure about something, when it hits him that what she's not really sure about is if him showing up means she can head home for the day.

He smiles at her, trying to put her at ease, and says, "How about you head off, get out of here before traffic gets too nasty? I'll give them the teething report."

"You sure it's okay?"

"Yeah." He nods, smiles reassuringly. "They're only a few minutes behind me, picking up Molly, but they won't mind if you leave Kelly with me. Baby girl and I get along fine."

She stares at him, sees the obvious ease with which he's holding Kelly, and the peaceful way she's chewing on his fingers, and decides, that yes, he'll do on his own, for a few minutes at least. "Okay."

* * *

Tim and Abby do show up a few minutes later, and the five of them have a calm dinner. Having learned their lesson last night, dinner was offered as an accomplished fact. "Molly, dinner time. We're having chicken and broccoli!"

And he does whip out a "special story" for Molly.

Okay, technically he's been reading it to Kelly every now and again, when she's not quite restful and he wants something a bit longer than Goodnight Moon, but he's also pretty sure she won't rat him out.

It's a story one of Shannon's friends had written, self-published, sold probably twenty-five copies, but they got one of them. It's a little girl and her daddy sailing. (He's fairly sure that's why Shannon bought it.) It's basically an introduction to a boat, and all the parts, and, honestly, kind of boring if you don't like to sail. (Okay, honestly, even if you do like to sail, it's kind of boring.)

But it's quiet, and long (ish), and he can read it in a dulled-down voice that puts babies to sleep nice and easy. And both of them are seconds away from asleep when he finishes, gets them laid down, and creeps out to the sound of two little girls breathing deep and easy.

He heads down the stairs, hears typing from Tim's office, and the TV from the living room. He feels marginally bad about cutting into Tim's writing time, but he figures by this point, Tim knows that he can just toss him if it's terribly inconvenient.

(And he also knows that he asks for help so rarely, especially on something personal, that there's no way Tim'll toss him unless he's literally in the middle of the thrilling climax of whatever he's writing.)

But, this'll hold for a moment or two. Hold for him to get a little more loosened up, more comfortable actually saying the words in his head. So, he heads to the kitchen, finds the bottle of bourbon they keep in the pantry for him, realizes that since this isn't his basement he should probably find a glass for it, so he does, pours himself some, and then finds himself walking into the living room and sitting next to Abby instead of seeing what Tim's up to.

She's watching TV. Pretty intently from the looks of it. He kind of recognizes the characters, he's seen her watching them before. The two pretty boys who keep pretending to be FBI agents but aren't.

"Is it good?" he asks her.

"It's awesome, Gibbs."

"Didn't know you liked cop shows." Then something weird happened, some sort of monster popped out of nowhere and one of the pretty boys, the one with the really long and not even remotely FBI approved hair killed the absolute living hell out of it. "This isn't a cop show, is it?"

"Nope. Those two, the one with all the blood on him is Sam, and the other one is Dean, pretend to be Feds sometimes, but they aren't really."

Gibbs nods, wondering what that thing Sam just killed was. "I'm getting that. Why are they pretending to be cops?"

"It's a long story. Mostly so they can get information, find the monsters, and kill them."

"Ah." He stands back up. He doesn't actually like horror movies or shows. He's experienced more fear than any one man ever needs, and feels no need for adding any more to his life.

"We can watch something else if you want. I've seen this once already. Newest one starts in an hour, and I'm just refreshing my memory on what happened last week."

"No. I'm good. Might drop in on Tim for a sec, then maybe turn in early."

"Okay."

* * *

The door to Tim's office is shut. From what he's seen doors are almost never shut in this house, so that means knock. So he does.

"Come in."

"Hey. Am I interrupting?" He hadn't heard any typing before he knocked, but he still wants to check.

Tim had been lounging back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, but he sits up and says, "Thinking, but I can take a break. What's up?"

"Can you do something for me?" Gibbs asks as he heads into Tim's office.

"Probably." Tim's looking a bit alarmed, and it hits Gibbs that he's sounding nervous. He takes a breath, and summons his No Shame vibe. "What do you need?"

"It's kind of personal."

He might now be sounding nervous anymore, but he did for a second there, and between that and personal, he's got all of Tim's attention riveted to him. "Okay, what's up?"

He tells Tim, and sees Tim wince as he's going through it. He wraps up with his great brainstorm: "She never, ever mentions Cranston, I… If she's really married, Monday's our last session and I'll cut it off, I'm not gonna… I mean, either way, Monday's the last day, but… if she's not married… Maybe, in a while…"

Tim's never seen Gibbs look this indecisive. "You want me to check and see if she's really married?"

"Yeah." He feels dumb as hell saying it, but if she is, he'll cut it off and not see her again. If she isn't, he'll cut if off, let her go for a good six months, at least, try to date some in the meantime, and if no one else catches his fancy, he'll call her up and ask her out. "She's got no pictures of him in her office. I ask her, sometimes, about how her life is going, and she never mentions him. I don't even know his first name. So…"

Tim drags his chair to his computer, and pulls the other one in front of it for Jethro to sit. And he does.

Tim turns everything on, and then sits back, looking at him, and Gibbs can read that look, half-sad, half-warning, all concern. And once the computer's finished booting up, Tim says to him, "Jethro… If she's a widow, or divorced, or if there never was a Cranston… if he's just a shield she put in place to help keep patients in line… It's a bad idea. She knows everything about you. You know nothing about her. I know she's kind and a good listener and probably the closest, most intimate relationship you've had with a woman in decades, but it's her JOB. You are _paying_ her to be kind and listen." He shuts the door and says very quietly, once he's sitting again, "It's like falling in love with a hooker."

"I know." And he does. He really does, and feels stupid as hell for it, but, it's real. And the fact that it's stupid doesn't make it any less real, and… well, not like he's never met a guy who fell for his favorite hooker before, or… whatever this is. "Will you check for me?"

"Sure." Tim nods, gets online, and hits his first best guess of how to find this out.

It doesn't take long. Few seconds to get into Facebook, and from there to find her personal page. (Rachel Todd) Gibbs is sitting right next to him, watching him search, which means he can't lie about what he finds, but… God he's tempted. If there's no actual Cranston, he was ready to lie his ass off and say there was.

But, a few minutes into it, he does find her Facebook page, and he does find the little married heart, and a few more seconds located a bunch of pictures of the two of them.

Gibbs is smiling at the page, and Tim has the sense he's doing it because he can smile or curse, and he's not willing to start cursing up a blue streak in the middle of his office, with Abby right nearby.

Tim squeezes his hand. He doesn't say anything, just gets up, and a minute later is back with a drink of his own (tea) and the bottle of bourbon.

Gibbs adds another inch to his glass, nods, smile still on his face, eyes so sad. "They look happy, don't they?"

Gibbs has focused in on a shot of Rachel, a man with blue eyes and gray hair, both of them sitting on what looks like someone's back porch, his arms around her, her head leaning on his shoulder, both of them smiling.

"Yeah. They do," Tim answers.

Gibbs takes a big gulp of the drink. "She basically told me not to fall in love with her."

Tim smiles, gently, and nods.

"She flat out told me we weren't dating."

"Looks like she knew you pretty well."

"Yeah." He rubs his forehead, running his hand through his hair, and takes another drink. "She had me pegged before I got in the room."

"She's good at her job, good at people."

"And beautiful, and smart, and funny, and…" He's not sure how to finish that.

"Comfortable? Intimate?"

"Yeah."

"That's her job."

Gibbs sighs, drinking a bit more. "I know. Doesn't make it hurt less."

"Yeah. What do you want to do? We can sit here and drink if you like. We can head into the living room and play some Plants Versus Zombies. Won't fix a broken heart, but it might distract you some."

He shakes his head. "Don't want to explain this to Abby."

"Okay. I won't tell her, either. But she'll understand if you do tell her."

"I know she will... Just feel so god-awful stupid about this. It's almost as bad as falling for her in the first place. I can't have her. I knew I couldn't have her. She told me not to fall for her, and I did anyway. I feel like I shot myself in the ass, intentionally."

"The single man who doesn't fall in love with a smart, funny, beautiful woman who listens to him, encourages him to be the man he wants to be, never judges him, and accepts everything he has to offer is _gay_. And he'd fall the for handsome _man_ who did the same thing for him. That's just who we are."

Gibbs shrugs.

"Seriously. It's not stupid to want someone who gives you almost everything you crave."

Gibbs shakes his head at that. It feels stupid. Just because it's normal doesn't make it any easier. "Told Abby I'd drop in on you and then turn in early," Jethro says, standing and picking up his glass.

"Okay." Tim nods, squeezes his hand again.

* * *

If you name a problem, if you admit it's there, you have to deal with it. At least, if you're Leroy Jethro Gibbs, you do.

So, he knows, as he drags himself into Rachel's office Monday morning, his usual going-to-see-her spring in his step completely absent, that this is it. It's not fair to him to keep going, keep pretending that there's more here than there actually is. It's not fair to her, because if he keeps wrapping himself in this fantasy, he'll eventually do something (even more) monumentally stupid with it.

So, today's it. The end. And that hurts so much more than he thought it would, and vastly more than he's willing to admit to anyone.

"So, Jethro, same time next week?"

He smiles sadly at her, been doing it all morning, not really talking, just looking at her and the way the light hits her face and hair. "Nah. Think this was it."

"Oh." He sees it in her face, that she knew this was happening and that it was a problem, and that she appreciates him backing off without having to do it herself, and she very much appreciates that he's not going to push it, not going to make her deal with some sort of awkward and embarrassing I-love-you… type thing.

He sees that she trusted him to let her help him as much as she could, and then to back off when he got in too deep. He respects that, but it doesn't make it hurt less.

"Yeah."

She doesn't make him say why he's done, which he thinks is a kindness. Of course, she is kind, that's part of the problem. He stands up to leave, and she takes both of his hands in hers, looks him in the eye, and says, "You're going to be okay."

He nods, still sad, swallows hard, and says, "Sure. Eventually." And as much as right now hurts, he knows that's true. He will, eventually, be okay. Then he turns away and heads out of her office.


	43. Babies

_Babies._

_Why does it always have to be babies?_

Five years ago, Tony never expected to have to deal with being hip deep in babies. Let alone babies of his co-workers. Because hip deep in babies meant that his co-workers would have had to have developed lives outside of work, and he just wasn't expecting that, at all.

But they have.

Resulting in three tiny Palmers and one tiny McGee in the last two years.

Resulting in _his wife_ (speaking of things he didn't expect five years ago!) getting all _yay! babies_ on him.

* * *

On the upside, he's used to them now. He can hold Molly or Kelly and not want to run away. (He's still nervous with Anna. Little floppy people who look like they'll break if you breathe on them wrong make him really nervous.) But he's not comfortable with it. Fortunately, everyone clamoring to hold the new baby, means he only had Anna for about ten seconds before handing her off to Penny. (Who, just like everyone else, took one look at her, snuggled in close, closed her eyes, hummed a little, and fell, instantly and irrevocably, in love.)

And, God, he feels like a total asshole for this, but he did not and has not fallen instantly, madly in love with any of the little gremlins. (They are not, as per Gibbs' prediction, the lights of his life.) He's got three nieces and sure, he doesn't want anything bad to happen to them, and yes, when they lost Jon, he cried just as long and hard as the rest of them, and he will throw his physical body in front of any of the girls to protect them, but all of that's about his love for their parents.

That instant, utter, chemical adoration that the rest of them seem to have as soon as they hear that one of the girls is pregnant, just doesn't happen to him.

Yes, he's warming up to Molly significantly. There are things he likes about her. (He's got the sense she's going to be a lot of fun when she grows up. Goofy like Jimmy, but not willing to take any crap, like Breena. He's looking forward to that.) But Kelly and Anna don't exactly have personalities, yet, so… He kind of sees them like exceptionally precious pets. He'll go to his grave to protect them, because that's what a good guy does, but he's not feeling any sort of instant connection to them.

And that scares the shit out of him.

_Everyone says it's different when it's your kid._

Great, wonderful. Well, these are his nieces, as close to his kids as it's possible to be without knocking Ziva up, and… he's not feeling it.

* * *

He's cooking with Ziva that night. Part of being a good friend is taking care of your buddies when they need taking care of. When Jimmy and Breena get home, their fridge and freezer will be stocked with food that just needs to be heated up.

He hasn't been willing to say it out loud to her. Because it does scare him. And because he's afraid it will disappoint her.

But, he has talked to their counselor about it, and he does know that he really should talk to Ziva about it, honesty and all…

So, he's cutting up onions as Ziva's browning up sliced beef (Tacos. Breena'll eat hers in the tortillas they'll provide; Jimmy eats his as a salad topping.) he says, kind of quietly, "What if I never feel it?"

"Tony?"

"You picked up Anna, snuggled her close, sniffed her head, and fell in love. You did it with Molly and Kelly, too. Complete and utter love. I could see it on your face. I picked up Anna and tried to figure out the fastest way to give her to someone else. They say it's different with your own kids, but… what if it's not? What if this is it? That the best I get is fond?"

She thinks about that for a long time. He's not sure what's going on in her head. Not sure if that's her looking for a rebuttal, disappointment, or what. But, eventually she says to him, "My father loved me." She looks away from the beef to him. "And your father loved you. McGee's father loved him. But it didn't help much, did it?"

"No. I guess not."

"If you can be kind, respectful, _fond_ … If you can be there with me through this, wake up in the middle of the night for feedings, change diapers, bandage skinned knees, show up for dance recitals, remember birthdays… If you can protect this child, serve him, devote your life to making sure she grows up happy and well-rounded… If you can do the job, if you can be a _father_ , then I don't think it matters if you never get past fond."

"Really?" That's an angle he's never even imagined on this. Their counselor was more interested in talking about why he might not love his child than how to deal with it.

"Really." She nods. "How does a child know love? By your actions. Be here for us. Be a good father. Be a good husband. And that's all that will matter on this."

He doesn't look convinced by that, at all. "It should be more than that."

"Maybe." She shrugs. "But none of us got that, and it's what we wanted more than anything else. If you talk to Abby about her father, or Breena about Ed, they'll both tell you pretty much the same thing: their fathers took the time to be with them. They listened, and accepted, and invested time in them. Can you do that?"

"I will do it."

"Then we'll be fine."

"I'm so scared of fucking this up."

She brushes his face with her fingers, and then kisses his lips. "I know. And you're not going to."

He smiles limply at that. He's fairly certain that, given the shot, he could fuck this up to levels of fuckage that Ziva has never imagined.

She smiles brightly at him, trying to fill his uncertainty with her certainty, and then they both smell the meat starting to scorch, so she refocuses on the beef, and he goes back to cutting up onions, moving onto peppers.

As he's cutting up the yellow bell pepper level one of not fucking this up hits him. "Ziva… How do I do this and run the team? Be there. That's your number one suggestion. If I'm running the team… McGee had to leave. Draga doesn't have Kevin most of the time. Jimmy's doesn't hang around to just help out anymore. At the end of the day, if the autopsy is done, he's out of the office. I just said I'd do it, and I will, but…"

There's a look in her eyes, and he doesn't know what that means, at all, but it simultaneously terrifying and breathtaking.

"Ziva…"

"We'll figure it out. I have an idea, but I need to think about it more."

"A good idea?"

"Yes, I think so. But… Like the rest of this, scary. Let me think some more."

"Okay."

* * *

Thinking.

Ziva's not saying whatever it is that's got her brain ticking, but he can see it's whirling away.

He's tempted to chat with Gibbs about it, but…

Honestly, Gibbs has just been pretty weird lately. He was fine on Monday, and then something happened on Tuesday (which should have been an over-the-moon good day for him) and he's been in a funk ever since.

If it wasn't for the fact that Tony knows that Gibbs isn't dating anyone, he'd think Gibbs had just been dumped. He's not exactly doing that passing out head-slaps to anyone who gets too near thing, but he's a whole lot more bear-with-a-thorn-in-his-paw than usual.

He asked McGee about it, and he just shook his head. "It'll pass."

Tony rolled his eyes. He didn't ask if it would pass. He asked what was up. "That's not useful."

"I know." _Don't poke it_ is really clear on McGee's face. "But it will pass."

"Great." He could feel the frustration of that answer. "I need to keep an extra eye on him?"

"No! He'll be fine. Just having…" He could see McGee censor himself. "It'll pass."

He's a bit annoyed that Gibbs and McGee have this thing now that he's not part of, but… Well, if it is something female oriented, because this really, really does feel like dumped Gibbs, he did send Tim in to handle it last time, and if that's the case, maybe it just stuck…

Whatever it is, right now Gibbs is out for people to talk to. Hopefully 'it'll pass' means that Gibbs'll be Gibbs again soon enough for him to have a chat with him about this before he gets Ziva pregnant, but…

 _Whatever._ It's not happening today. It won't happen tomorrow. And the day after is looking remarkably unlikely, too.

* * *

He'd kind of like to talk to Jimmy. But the last thing he's going to do is go barging in on them right now. Autopsy Gremlin is more than busy enough right now.

But, on Tuesday, when Anna was a week old, he heads down to Autopsy to talk to Ducky about the case he's wrapping up, and was very surprised to see Jimmy napping on one of the tables, no one else around.

"Jimmy?"

"I'm up," he says, lurching into a sitting position, rubbing his eyes. He's in jeans and a Christmas sweater, sneakers on the floor next to him, so he's not here in a professional capacity.

"Yeah, you look it. Shouldn't you be home?"

"I will be soon. Molly wanted some Ducky time. I called in. No dead bodies today. So they're out… Hell, I don't know what they're doing. I'm grabbing a nap."

"I should let you get back to it."

Jimmy squints toward the clock, feels around, puts his glasses on, and looks again. "Nah. They'll probably be back in ten minutes. I'll feel even more tired if I go back to sleep."

"Okay."

"So, what do you need?"

"Nothing you're helping me with." Their current case began after Jimmy left for Anna. He hadn't been there for any of it. They spend a moment, quiet, comfortable, and then Tony thinks of something Jimmy could help him with.

"You weren't really 'Yay! kids' before you had them, right?"

Jimmy shrugs at that. "I knew I wanted some eventually, but it wasn't any sort of burning need. Tim's more the 'Yay! kids' guy."

"I know that. Just… Okay… Look. I don't love kids."

"Tony, everyone on earth knows that."

"Yeah, thanks. I wasn't saying it was a secret. But… Everyone says it's different when it's your kid. But… I mean… Is it? Really?"

Jimmy thinks about that. He likes kids okay. He's not afraid of them the way Tony is. But he'd been to more than enough Slater family gatherings before Breena got pregnant, and sure, playing with the kiddos was fine, but it did not instill an instant, _oh yes, let's go have seventeen of them_ , sort of vibe. (Getting kidnapped and almost dying, on the other hand, _that_ kicked up his and Breena's _let's have a whole mess of babies_ desire.)

He thinks about how seeing the pregnancy test turn positive felt.

"Okay. I'm kind of fried right now, so if this is a little loopy…"

Tony waves that away.

"If I call Abby in here and snog the living daylights out of her, what would you do?"

"Snog?"

Jimmy glares at him. "I've had four hours of sleep today. It's the first word that came to mind."

"Okay. You're _snogging_ Abby. I'm gonna pull you off her, slap you upside the back of your head, lecture you about adultery, slap you upside the back of the head again, lecture you more about breaking Breena's heart, slap you a third time, and then, because you are my friend and I love you, I'll give you a good five minute head-start before telling McGee and Breena about it, so there's a _shot_ you don't get killed."

Jimmy nods. "Thanks for the head-start. Okay. I call Ziva down here and _kiss_ the living daylights out of her. Let me guess, you walk in on that, and I better hope there's no bullets in your gun, right?"

For a second Tony's tempted to brush it off. Not really deal with how that would feel, but as he's doing that he gets how that would feel. That insane rush of pain and jealous and betrayal and just every sick making, heartbreaking, punched in the gut and kicked in the balls while gasping for breath feeling of it.

So, instead of brushing it off, he nods. "I always have bullets in the gun. You've just got to hope it's not in reach."

"Fair enough. Well, Abby's as close to your wife as you can get without being your wife. You love her. She's your friend. You think she's attractive. She's your best friend's wife. And sure, you'd get angry on his behalf, and worried about the pain that'd cause us all, but it doesn't hit you in the balls, does it?"

"No."

"But me kissing Ziva does."

"Yeah."

"And that's the difference between someone else's kid and your kid. It's you and Ziva and everything you've ever felt for each other turned into a person. Trust me, you may not feel it the second the pregnancy test turns positive, but at some point it will hit you who this child is, and you will fall in love with it."

"Thanks, Jimmy."

* * *

"So, good birthday?" Tony asks Tim.

He's still thinking. Talking to Jimmy helped. That was the most _concrete_ description he's run into, and it's good perspective. But it didn't put his worries to rest, just calmed them some, so he's thinking, and since he's got some free time, getting lunch with Tim on the way back from talking to a suspect, now seems like a good time to gather more intel on the ins and outs of life with a baby.

"Yeah, it was," Tim replies as he hands Tony his hot dog.

Tony smirks at him. "Get a little something special?"

Tim rolls his eyes a bit. Okay, honestly, no. Birthday celebrations have never been a really big deal for Tim in the first place, and in the second place they both worked late, Kelly was fussy, that first tooth is well on its way to poking out, along with tooth number two, so when it came to bedtime, they both just crashed. But he doesn't want to actually say that, so he intentionally misunderstands the question.

"Double chocolate mocha cupcake."

Tony looks appalled by that. "Dessert? It's your thirty-eighth birthday and you get dessert? That's depressing." And does not bode well for the whole life goes on post-baby front. If you can't get laid on your birthday, something is very wrong.

"It was a really good cupcake," Tim says with a grin, and it was. He's kind of hoping that'll be enough of a brush off.

"You know what I was asking you."

Apparently not. "Why you asking?" He takes a bite of his grilled chicken wrap. "You haven't done that a long time."

"Well Mr.-I-Get-Laid-Every-Day, I was wondering how the whole having a kid thing was effecting that."

Ah... that makes more sense. He knows from Abby, who's been talking with Ziva about it, that she and Tony are creeping closer to parenthood, and with Anna less than two weeks old, it's probably on Tony's mind more, too.

So, as Tony's watching him, taking a sip of his Coke, Tim says, "Like Jimmy said, new baby, not great for sex. Things are getting better. She's sleeping through the night most nights, or she was until that tooth began to poke out, and we're starting to really feel human again, but not back to every day, yet."

"So, what's better mean?"

"You want this much detail?" _Stop being nosy_ is clear in his expression.

Tony rolls his eyes. No, he's not particularly interested in how often Tim has sex. What he actually wants is reassurance that everything he loves about being married isn't about to end. But he can't ask that; that's just way too damn vulnerable. He can ask about sex though, so he does. "I want a better idea of what comes after. It's really easy to just look and see tired, covered in baby puke, crabby, and in love. Those aren't hidden. When you get your sex life back is buried a lot deeper."

Okay, all of that is true, but... "Yeah, but, I don't think how much sex Abby and I are having is going to be really enlightening in regards as to how things'll be for you and Ziva. I mean… when do you like to do it… and no, do not actually answer that question for me. Just in general, if you tend to aim for a time your baby wants to be awake, that's going to cut your numbers a lot deeper than if you like times when she sleeps. Kelly's bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and wants attention at one of the times that used to really work well for us, so that complicates thing. One of our favorite places is out now, too, so that's cutting the numbers down.

"What happens when the baby comes out'll effect things. How she thinks she looks, how she feels, all of that goes into it. If she thinks she's repulsive, nothing's happening.

"How well you function tired'll be a big thing. If you can't get it up on no sleep, you're never getting laid again."

"That's not encouraging."

Tim sort of shrugs at him. "Okay. It'll be fine. You have a baby, and you barely notice the difference. It's all sunshine and roses and lots of sleep and hours of lazy sex."

Tony squints at him. It's not quite a glare, not enough heat for that, but talking with Jimmy was a hell of a lot more useful. "That's really not encouraging. When did you get that sarcastic?"

Tim snorts and says dryly, "Probably when I had a baby and stopped getting laid every day. So, really, why are you checking up?"

"We're talking about it more, and..." Tony's never said this out loud to anyone who isn't Ziva, and even saying it, letting the rest of the world know to expect it is scary. "The idea is when we get Gibbs' replacement we'll start trying."

"That's great!" Tim says with a wide smile.

Tony just sort of stares at him, irked. He supposes Tim could do a better job of not getting what he's not saying, but it'd be awfully difficult.

"Or not?" Tim's starting to get more of what Tony's not saying, tuning in more on the body language and less on the words. "Is that why you've turned down every resume that's passed your desk?"

"None of them have been good enough. I mean, I'm finding a replacement for Gibbs. This guy's got to walk on water."

"Tony, _you're_ replacing Gibbs. All this new guy has to do is fill in your missing skill slots."

Tony rolls his eyes. "Am I telling you how to run your team?"

"Nope."

Tony looks at him.

"I'm laying off. So, is this not great?"

"Yes, it's great, but..." That sounds remarkably unconvincing, even to Tony.

"No." Tim shakes his head. "That's not what great looks like. Great doesn't have a big, nervous 'but' hanging on it. What's going on?"

"It's fucking terrifying, okay? She knows that, but..."

"But..." Tim leads, trying to get more detail than fear of lack of sex out of Tony.

"Okay, you move in together, and that's scary as shit because she'll be there all the time, in all your stuff, learning everything there is to know about you. But at least with that, you know that if it doesn't work out, you head off, pack up your stuff, and find a new home. And you get married, and that's scary, too, but you still know you can get out of it. Things go south, and out you go. But if you have a kid, there's never an exit. You're tied to that woman for the rest of your life. And if you screw it up bad enough, she will always have a weapon to cut your heart out with."

Tim's not sure what to say to that. Probably because he doesn't think of his relationship with Abby as a collection of levels in which his different exits are being cut off. It's not even something that hits him on any level. Fifty years from now, they'll be the old couple down the street with the gray hair and the tattoos. They're forever, and that's just it.

"Tony… Why do you always think you're going to screw it up?" Then something else hits him, something Tony said when they were fighting. He's not a womanizer, he's a sex addict. Between that and the number of women who have left Tony in the past… _Shit._

Tony sees him put it together and shakes his head. "I screw things up. I screw relationships up. Besides Wendy, this is the longest I've ever managed to make it with one woman."

"That's good. Ziva knows why you're afraid you'll screw this up, right?"

"Yeah, she does."

"Does she understand?" Because Tim figures there's a difference between knowing someone is an addict, and understanding what that actually means.

"As well as anyone who's not can, yes, she does."

"Okay. So… what are you afraid of?"

Tony doesn't look at him when he says, "That when push comes to shove, she'll be focused on the baby, because, you know, it's a baby, and she's supposed to be focused on it, because that's the job. But she won't be focused on me, and I'll fall off the wagon because I'm not getting my regular fix. I mean, I know I can go a while. I can do two months on my own before I start to have problems, but…"

"Is it just sex, or…" Tim feels really uncomfortable trying to clarify this, but if they're talking about it… "I mean… Is it about affection and time and attention or… or is it literally just you need to get laid?"

"Both. I can go a lot longer if I'm distracted or if someone is keeping me emotionally happy. But even with that, I…" Tony knows Tim doesn't get it. He's not an addict, and doesn't get that edgy, itchy, world's-gonna-start-falling-apart-if-I-don't-get-what-I-need sensation.

"Oh. So what you're really asking is when you do get your wife back?"

"Yeah. I guess."

Tim sighs. "I don't know. I mean, I've been going through a shit ton of crap lately, and Abby's been there for me. Sure, some of it, she's snuggling me and nursing Kelly at the same time. But she didn't stop being my wife because Kelly's here. And some of it, the less drastic bits, I'm on my own more than I was before. Especially when Kelly was brand new and she was sick and depressed, I was pulling my weight, hers, and Kelly's and thank God for Gibbs and Breena, because they were keeping both of us going. But that's this whole marriage thing, right? I carry you. You carry me. And this whole family thing? More people who will carry you if you can't walk."

Tony doesn't look like that's terribly reassuring, either. And Tim kind of wishes he can just say, 'Don't worry, it'll all be fine,' but he doesn't know if that'll be true for Tony. Kids do change things. They change things a lot. And if you're well-suited for each other and children, the tons of work necessary to raise kids draws you closer to each other, and you end up more deeply in love with each other because of it.

But if you're not, and you know you're not… There are plenty of decisions you can take back, or fix, or change, but this isn't one of them. It's an all-in or nothing sort of thing.

Tony nods at that, eats another bite of his dog, and changes the subject to the case they're on.

* * *

When it comes down to it, it's a lot like skydiving. And sure, he can talk to Tim or Jimmy, and he can think about it, ponder why he's scared, make plans with the therapist for how to deal with it, but none of that is actually jumping out of the plane.

And he's scared.

He's probably more scared than he's ever been of anything in his life. (Including, literally, jumping, well… getting pushed, out of a plane.)

But on the ground there's a woman, a woman he loves more than anything else, more than he loves himself, and she says he'll make it. She says he'll be fine.

He knows he's going to jump. Know's he'll do it. But he can't actually do it, not yet.


	44. Thinking

For the last twelve days, Ziva has been thinking. A lot.

Not so much on the let's have kids part of things. She's settled on that. And she understands that Tony is afraid, and that he's not really a kids sort of guy. He doesn't just naturally click with kiddos.

Not without some effort.

And she certainly gets that this is complicated for him on a whole bunch of levels beyond mundane fear of kids. She understands that, too.

They've talked about it together, talked about it apart, and are going to keep talking, because otherwise this is going to bite both of them in the ass.

But she's also sure that like a relationship (which he was nervous about), like a marriage (which scared him even more), that they can do this, together. She's sure that Tony will be a good dad, and that if he finds himself being a good dad, he'll get confident in his ability to be a good dad, and that a lot of the fear will vanish.

He's not scared of being married anymore, let alone of having her live with him, or dating. They did it; he found out that he could do it, that he could be good at it, and he got confident in it.

It's just that babies are the current unknown. And if there was ever a man who feared wandering into the unknown, it's Tony.

Of course, there's unknown, and _unknown_. Some unknowns, like going undercover, bursting into a house without full intel, or whether or not the guy with the gun really means it, he's got a lot of experience with. He's got scripts ready to go, processes in place, and lots of skills to depend on to deal with those unknowns.

A warehouse with six perps in it, no clear vantage points, and a ticking clock at his back is vastly less scary to him than a crying baby, because he knows what to do with the building and the perps, while the baby is something of a loud, tiny, inscrutable mystery.

But, like how to deal with the building and the perps (or having her in his space all the time), he'll learn babies, and as that happens, he'll start to get cocky and confident and… And it'll be good. Might take a while, but he'll get there. (And honestly, given how quickly he took a shine to Vance's kids, she's thinking awhile will translate into, at most, three weeks.)

However, he did have a very good point about how to get there. How to do the job and raise those kids. Namely, they both work at least sixty hours a week.

So, how are they going to do the actual parenting part of being parents?

Abby's scaled back her hours. She is delegating more and more of the work. McGee's headed to a new department where he may work the same number of hours, but he can do at least some of them from home, and they should be set regularly, same number each day. And Tony was right, if the autopsy is done by five, Jimmy heads off. You need him, he's got his cell on, and will come back in, but he doesn't stick around a minute longer than necessary.

And if they are going to be there for this child they're envisioning, something has to change. They cannot both be on call, all day, every day.

She thinks she knows what the change is. She's been feeling it for… honestly, since it was clear that this was serious, that she and Tony were building a life together, one that would last for the rest of their days, but feeling it doesn't mean it's a good idea.

But, good idea or no, when she envisions herself with this child, who as the days go by is becoming more and more concrete in her mind, she envisions herself _with_ him. (And yes, he's a boy. A sturdy little boy, with her curly hair and brown eyes, but Tony's easy grin.)

She doesn't see daycare or a nanny.

And if she were to do the whole stay-at-home-mom, take-care-of-the-kids-and-house-and-everything-else route, that would mean that when Tony's home, he'd be free to be with them. He'd still have the insane hours, because that's the job. You can't lead the team on eight hours a day. But pick up dry cleaning, get groceries, fill up the cars, make dinner, all those little, piddly errands that eat up hours of your week, she'd be doing, so that when he's home, he'd be home.

But that means change. Big, big change. Team Gibbs would be gone. Thirty-five percent of their income would be gone. They'd have to move. Their current place is big enough for a baby, but the rent is too high for them on just Tony's salary. They'd have to scale back in a lot of ways. Between lost income and added expenses it'd be a huge hit to their finances.

There is one other thing Ziva knows about this, 'this' is not the sort of decision you whip out on a man after you are pregnant. If you tell him, 'I'm going back to work after the baby,' and then change your mind about it, dropping a massive change into his lap without him having any input into the situation, he's liable to resent the hell out of it.

So, thinking, lots and lots of thinking.

* * *

"Down here," Gibbs calls out when he hears footsteps on his floor. He's completed ripping the boards and is now in the process of getting them cut for assembly.

He's surprised to see Ziva on his steps. Of all the kids, she's the one least likely to just drop by to chat.

She looks a bit surprised to be on his steps, too. She'd been a bit tentative about going to see him, whatever was causing his black mood seemed to peak on Monday and has been getting better since, but he's not exactly perky right now.

But she needs advice, advice from her dad. So, perky or not, she's on the basement steps, staring at Gibbs.

"Hey, Ziver."

She smiles at him. "Gibbs." And proceeds to say nothing else, though she does head down to him, looking over his work. "Does anything need to be sanded?"

He shakes his head. "Not today." He touches the hand saw next to him. "Cutting today."

"Okay." She looks very distracted. Her plan, work with him, and then let the words just sort of flow out while she's focused on something else, has just hit a major snag.

"You need to sand something?"

Ziva shrugs. "It might have helped."

"Ziver?"

She takes a deep breath, ready to plunge into it cold. "Do you remember the Passover story?"

Gibbs nods; he knows that story, but he's got no idea at all where she's going to take this.

"The Angel of Death passed over those who marked their homes. That's who my father trained me to be, The Angel of Death. He told me that there were people God made, special people, who would be His wrath, who would protect or avenge others by wielding righteous death. That when everything else failed, there would be people like me, Angels of Death, who would finally settle the score. I was an assassin Gibbs, not an agent, not an investigator, but an assassin."

He lays his tools down and turns to face her, focusing entirely on her words. He's still got no idea where she's going with this, but he can feel it's deeply important to her.

"I broke people. That was what I did. I know who I killed, know what they did, and I don't regret it. I met Jenny coming off a job to take out one of the men who ran Buchenwald. I broke him. Like he broke hundreds of thousands of others, and I never lost a moment's sleep over it." And that's true. The only thing she felt was the satisfaction of a job very well done, and the righteous joy of long overdue justice served. That is, until recently, until she started thinking more about the idea of a life with a child. "But I broke his family, too. And I broke his wife. And his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren, and none of them had ever done me or mine any harm.

"But I did them irreparable harm."

Gibbs is following along, but this is nothing he'd expected out of her. There's something he's… sensed… maybe. Just the ghost of a feeling, since Mike died, that there was something like this lurking in the back of Ziva's mind. A sort of regretful weariness. He's surprised it's coming out now, but everything is changing now, so maybe it's a good time for it. And he's starting to get a feel for where this is going to go.

"More than ten years ago, I came here, and I stopped breaking people, for the most part, and started to clean up the pieces that are left over after a break. Justice and closure, and maybe that helps. I like to think it does."

He nods. It helps. It helps as much as anything can help.

"But we don't create here, Gibbs." He hears that and knows that whatever is coming next, she's made her decision, and right now, she's looking for reassurance and support. "On our best days, our very best days, we pick up the pieces and keep the mess from getting any bigger than it already is. We give other people the tools to try and patch the pieces back together." She looks at the already cut pieces of wood in front of her, and picks one up, no idea what it'll be. (Once it hits the lathe, it'll be a peg.)

"What if that isn't enough? What if I want to create? What if, instead of breaking people, or cleaning up the mess left by broken people, what if I want to build people? What if I want to make a home, and a family, and devote all of myself to it? What if I want to spend my time cherishing my husband and children?" She puts the piece down and turns to look him in the eyes. "My whole life has been about death, murder, pain, vengeance, and justice. And maybe, maybe it's time to focus on life."

Gibbs pulls her into a hug so fast she gasps, and then gently kisses her forehead. He holds her close for a long time and finally says, "Maybe?"

She smiles a little at that, looking relieved. It hits him then that all the girls work. None of them are or (in Penny's case) were, stay at home moms. And for as much as Ziva has a 'couldn't care less about what other people think' armor in place, she does care, very much, about what this family she's collected over the years thinks. He wonders if she's here, with him right now, because he's the one most likely to respect this decision.

"I haven't spoken to Tony about this. We've been talking about children, you know that." And he does, so he nods. "But I have not said anything about…"

"Being a full time mom?"

"Yes. Beyond anything else, there are practical considerations. With both of us working, we can live here comfortably, with just his income, that won't be true."

Gibbs nods. The only reason he can afford to live here is the fact that he bought his house back in '86 and owns it outright now.

"You speak nine languages. You could translate part time or teach or tutor one on one. Vance might be willing to hire you on a per-piece basis for translations."

She nods at that.

"And the CIA and the FBI both have a huge intel backlog. They're always looking for people to listen to tapes and translate them, too."

"I know, Gibbs. It's not a lack of potential other jobs that's the issue. In the long run, say when this child we're thinking of is in school, that will be an attractive option. But when he's a baby, every hour I am doing that is an hour someone else is raising our child. And I know Tim and Abby have a nanny, and Kelly is thriving. Molly is in daycare, and she is fine. Anna, when she goes to daycare will be fine, too. But… when I imagine it. When I think about the kind of mother I want to be, I don't see myself handing my baby over to someone else."

"You think Tony won't like that?"

She shrugs. That's not precisely that. "I think Tony will be exceptionally uncomfortable with the changes necessary to make that possible. He's already at the edge of his comfort zone with the idea of a baby, and… And a completely new team. A new home. Fewer comforts. Less money. A less 'nice' home…" Gibbs is nodding along. Tony does like his luxuries. A kid (or two) does cut into that, major loss of income would make it even worse.

But he also thinks of the child Tony was. He thinks about the fact that Tony doesn't talk much about being a kid, but the bits he does talk about, the moments he cherishes, are time spent with his Mom. He knows he personally would have given anything for more time with his mom, healthy. And he's sure Tony would have, too. So Gibbs says, "I think a man who was raised by nannies and boarding schools might just surprise you on how far he'd be willing to go to have his child's mother home with that child every day. And I know for a fact that we're both a whole lot more comfortable with you nowhere near anything even remotely dangerous. If the biggest risk you've got facing you in the next ten years is going stir-crazy from too much Sesame Street, we'd both approve." Gibbs squeezes her a little tighter. "When are you going to talk to him about it?"

"Tonight? Tomorrow? Depends on when we've got a quiet night in without a case to focus on."

Gibbs nods at that. "Let me know when you do."

"I do not think I'll need to. He'll probably be in your basement about twenty minutes later."

Gibbs smiles and kisses her again. "Yeah, he probably will be. I'll help get him straight."

"Thank you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * * *
> 
> So, according to my Word Doc, the first version of this was written almost a year ago. (Honestly, I can't remember details that well. I do know I was in Costco, snorking down a diet Pepsi, typing away.) Yes, some of these scenes have been around for that long, some are even older, some I write the day before they go live.
> 
> I also know it was before Cote De Pablo-gate, and the firestorm of she's not coming back!
> 
> No, as I was sitting there, working through the conversation with Gibbs, I was mostly thinking of the scene in Swan Song or Pyramid, where Tony and Ziva are talking about there always being another monster. And Tony's tired, he's sad, but he's ready to go out and fight more monsters. But Ziva's not. In that moment, she's done. Now, obviously, they got her going again, but when I got thinking about which of the girls would eventually be the stay at home mom, that scene stuck with me.
> 
> Ziva was tired. She wanted a new path. She just didn't know what it might be.
> 
> Likewise, there was the bit in A Man Walks Into A Bar about wanting something permanent, something that could not be taken away from her.
> 
> And thus, the Angel of Death, and the desire to focus on life.
> 
> And, as much as I thought Past, Present, Future was... rushed? (Is that a nice way to put it? Riddled with gaping plot holes large enough to swallow Godzilla? I guess that's less nice.) I was fairly pleased to see that same, 'I've broken people, and it's time to stop mindset.'


	45. Free Fall

_Stay at home mom._ Tony's nodding. He's looking supportive. Inside he's screaming in terror.

Yeah, she wasn't kidding, that's a _scary_ fucking change.

Sure, the rational bit of his mind that is not completely flipping out at the idea, agrees that this is a fine idea. That it would solve the time issue. It would definitely allow him to run the team (but what good is the team if none of his people are on it? God, he doesn't even want to think about how much that hurts.) and still have a family life when he's not running it.

And he really appreciates her hitting him with this now, before she's pregnant, so that they're talking about it as opposed to just this is the way it's going to be. (Though the screaming part of his brain is also fairly sure that this _is_ how it's going to be, and if this were just a _discussion,_ like if she had said this to him before they got engaged, he'd be a whole hell of a lot less flipped out.)

She's looking at him expectantly, so he smiles, or at least lifts the corners of his lips and bares his teeth, (She flinches at that, so obviously it wasn't the comforting gesture he was aiming for.) and says, "I… just… um… thinking… Yeah. Thinking. Got to do some thinking," grabs his keys, and heads out.

* * *

Fourteen minutes. Gibbs didn't think even Ziva could make it from their place to his that fast. But that's how long passed between Ziva's call and Tony's footsteps on his stairs.

"There's nothing I can afford on my salary in a decent school district anywhere near here."

Gibbs looks up at him, puts his saw down, and points to the stools next to his work bench, two bourbons are already poured and waiting. He sits down, and so does Tony.

"Tony…" Yeah, you won't get rich on a Team Leader salary, but you can afford a decent place to live.

"They're going to force me to retire in eight years! Nine or ten if I can get McGee to pull his age erasing trick for me. I can stay on for desk duty, was planning to, because we're going to need the money. But with her on team leader salary and me on desk duty we'd be comfortable, still scrambling to figure out how to pay for college, and not looking to retire rich or anything, but I wouldn't be worried about how to pay the rent."

That makes a whole lot more sense. Gibbs doesn't know what kind of money, if any, Tony and Ziva have in the bank. His general sense was that Tony liked to live pretty close to the edge of his paycheck, if not a bit over. He's also sure Ziva's a saver. And he had kind of assumed that Eli David had some money, and that Ziva as his only heir probably got it, but… But he doesn't know that, and he knows assuming is a one way trip to wrong.

So if Tony's looking at a maximum of ten years to get as much as he can… Because post-retirement desk duty money is the kind of cash that's supposed to pay for that nice vacation, or the deck on the house, or round out the college funds. It's the money that lets you do fun stuff on your off time while your pension does the heavy lifting. It's not the kind of money you're supposed to live one.

Gibbs stands up, grabs a legal pad and a pencil, and starts writing things down. Right now, he figures that a good, solid, set plan is what Tony needs. "One problem at a time. Place to live in a good school district. Tim, Jimmy, and I can help with that."

"Gibbs, I can't take money from you guys."

"Not what I was thinking, Tony." And it wasn't, he knew there was no way Tony'd take that kind of help. "There has to be a house or condo in bad shape around here somewhere. Something foreclosed on and damaged. And I'm sure Tim can make his computer find it. And then we fix it up. This place was a wreck when we got it, and Shannon and I got it into shape. We can do the same thing for you."

"I know nothing about fixing a house. And it's not like I've got tons of downtime to work on one."

"Neither did Shannon. I doubt Palmer's any handier. And unless it's a wiring job, Tim probably doesn't know how to do it, either. But Tim knows electrical. I'm good with just about everything else. And what we don't know, we can learn. And it's not like I won't be swimming in free time come January. How low does your housing payment need to be to keep you putting enough away?"

Tony thinks for a moment. "God. Eight hundred."

Gibbs just stares at Tony, that seems really reasonable to him. Okay, sure, that's not a mansion, but any fairly decent house should be in that neighborhood.

And Tony stares at Gibbs, suddenly very aware of the fact that Gibbs hasn't been in the real estate market in more than thirty years.

"Gibbs, McGee's house went for over four hundred thousand and is worth more than six now. The only reason Jimmy and Breena could afford theirs was they got enough money as wedding presents to swing the down-payment. Your place is probably worth over five hundred thousand now. When the market went hot at the end of '14 prices jolted _way_ back up again. If it's beat up enough for us to afford it, it'll be in pretty rough shape."

Gibbs shrugs a little. "Labor's usually the expensive part. You and Tim find something in the right place, I'll make sure it's got a solid skeleton, and instead of fighting for bootcamp, we'll make sure you can get moved in before the baby shows up."

"God." Tony slugs back some of the bourbon. "'Before the baby shows up.' She's not pregnant, _yet_. We're not even trying, _yet_."

"I know. But she's gonna be, or you two are going to adopt. I think at this point it's pretty fair to say it's going to happen."

"I hate this."

Gibbs gives him the _keep talking_ look, and Tony is deeply relieved to see no condemnation in his eyes.

"We do this, it's all on me. I fuck it up, she's screwed. Something happens to me, she's screwed."

"She'll be dependent on you."

Tony nods, looking terrified. "Yeah. Fuck! She's got no out if we do this."

Gibbs nudges Tony's jam jar of bourbon, and Tony takes another drink, then he coolly says, "You think if you fuck up badly enough that she wants out, we aren't going to make sure she's got a soft place to land? You think if you get hurt or killed, we're not going to take care of her?"

"No… but… She'll be completely dependent on me! She's… _volunteering_ to be dependent on _me._ "

"She trusts you."

"God knows why."

"You're trustworthy. You have saved her life multiple times. You're not the guy you were five years ago, let alone ten years ago."

Tony looks about to take another drink, but he just stares at the liquor in front of him. "My mom was dependent on my dad like that."

"And he screwed it up, didn't he?"

"Yeah."

"You're not him. Look, I know you, and I know your dad, and you are a vastly better man than he ever was or will be."

"Thanks."

"And it is normal to be scared by this. It is sane to be scared of this. Kids are scary. Having your whole life change is scary. A new team is scary. Having the future you were expecting ripped away from you is scary."

"I'd just gotten to… I don't know. Still scared but, ready, I guess. You know that feeling where you're looking over the edge and about to shit yourself, but you're still going to jump anyway because you know it's the right thing to do?"

"Yeah, I know that feeling."

"Now I feel like I just looked over my shoulder and my parachute's not packed right."

Gibbs nods. "Part of being a parent. You feel that way a lot."

"I hate feeling this way."

"Yeah. I do, too. Feel it a lot. Feel it when we're in the field and suddenly everything's fubar. Felt it when I was a Marine, especially every time I got transferred to a new unit. Felt it all the time with my Kelly. Felt it when my mom was sick. It's always there, Tony. The only time it goes away is when you stay so stuck in your routine that nothing changes. That… holding pattern we were in for eight years between Ziva joining us and Jimmy getting married where we all stayed nice and snug in our little cocoons of safe, unchanging habit."

"I take it seeing Rachel's been helping," Tony says dryly, but he catches the slight tightening of Gibbs' jaw. "Is it not helping?"

"Helped just fine. Just, over now."

"Really?" And then why Gibbs has been a bear makes perfect sense. "Oh. So, no romancing Doctor Kate's Sister?"

Gibbs glares at him.

Tony holds up his hands. "I know. She's married. And your therapist. It's apparently really common, though. Called transference."

Now Gibbs is flashing his _you know this how_ look.

"Our first two sessions with our counselor were one on one. I went first. I told her that besides the occasional psych eval, I'd never done this before. So she gave me a counseling primer and that was part of it." Tony shrugs at that. "You going to find someone else?"

"Not right now. Maybe if I get stuck again. I'm good at stuck." He brings it back around to what they had been talking about. "Spent a long time stuck. So did you. It's not scary, but nothing really good happens."

"My dad said that when we got married. Something like it. That she was going to want things that would scare the shit out of me, but if I trusted her, and went with it, I'd find joy, instead of just happy."

Gibbs smiles at that. "Even your dad's learned a thing or two over the years."

Tony takes another drink, and Gibbs follows, enjoying the sweet burn of the bourbon.

"You remember that case… We worked it with Borin… Would have been just about when Tim and Abby got together. Ziva was pissed because we were playing that game without her..."

Gibbs nods, he remembers that.

"Borin asked me why I was still with your team."

"And?"

"And I said I couldn't find better people. My people are leaving. If she goes, too… it'll just be a job."

"You remember being down here, Christmas-time six-seven years ago, and me telling you to learn from my example, not follow it?"

"Yeah."

"It's okay to have a job, Tony. NCIS doesn't have to be every single moment of our lives. In fact, it shouldn't be. I don't want any of you to get to my age and be afraid of retirement. I want you to have lives and loves and hobbies and passions, and stuff beyond this. Go, build your family and life with Ziva. And you run the team, and you do the work, but when it's done, you go home. You spend time with the people who make you happy. You don't keep hanging around that office, picking at dead cases, running every detail through your head over and over, looking for the splinter of evidence you missed, like I did.

"Maybe it won't be the 'best' team anymore. Maybe you won't solve them as fast. But it doesn't have to be. You don't have to ruin your life and your family trying to quiet my ghosts. It'll be your team, Tony. You'll run it however you see fit. No one looking over your shoulder. No one comparing you to anyone else. It's an almost complete fresh start. No more rules, no more slaps, no more… anything you don't want. And just because I couldn't stand the quiet moments alone in my own head, just because I had to work until I dropped, and I dragged all of you along for the ride, doesn't mean you have to do that."

Tony sits there quietly, absorbing that. Thinking. And though he heard it when Gibbs had said to learn from his example before, it didn't much soak in. So much of his own life was upside down and unsatisfactory, and Gibbs looked like he had it together. So he heard, but, it didn't mean anything. Just like when McGee spouts computer-talk, sure he hears it, but it's gibberish.

Not being like Gibbs was gibberish.

But now, it's soaking in.

Now, it means something.

He thought the shift was going from being second-in-command to team-leader. And that was part of it, that was the start. But he's getting it now. Getting that along with McGee's ' _you're_ replacing Gibbs.'

It's his team. But it's not just his team. That's the real shift. It's not second-in-command to team-leader, it's NCIS-is-life to Tony DiNozzo-is-life. He is not the job. And if he wants any decent shot of joy, he cannot be the job.

All of this together, happening at once, it's for a reason.

This is his _life_. And it's time to start living it for him, and for Ziva, and-he feels the edge he's looking over, takes a deep breath, and jumps-for the child, children they're going to have.


	46. Twas The Night Before Christmas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: With apologies to Clement Clark Moore

_'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the den_

_Tim McGee was cursing, significantly louder than a wren._

_The stockings were hung, by the chimney with care_

_In the hopes that Dad and Pop would soon finish there._

Tim's holding the instructions, staring at the fifteen million pieces of plastic in front of him, glaring at them, saying, "I swear to God, Palmer said to Breena, 'This year, we're making Tim put them together, go find the most ridiculously complicated toys they make for toddlers and buy _all of them_!'"

Gibbs stands up, takes the instructions out of his hands, and drops them in the fireplace, where they very rapidly went up in smoke.

"Are you insane?"

"No. Just done this a few times. They don't help. They never help."

That moment, Abby got down from putting Kelly to sleep, surveyed the chaos in front of them, and says, "Have you tried the directions?"

Tim glares again, looks at Gibbs, looks at the fireplace, where the curling edges of the instructions are visible among the leaping flames, and looks back to Abby.

"You set fire to them? Gibbs!"

Gibbs looks back up at her, laying down the pieces of plastic he's attempting to put together. "They weren't helping. He was just sitting there, staring at them, muttering about how he's got a degree in engineering, and if he can't put this together, it can't be put together."

"I do have a degree in engineering! I got a magna cum laude BS in Biomedical Engineering from the best program in the US. For my senior project, I helped to design better artificial knee joints. I've done papers on how to make heart valves work better. I wired up our phones into lethal weapons. I've hacked everything that can be hacked, and when it couldn't be hacked, I stripped it down to its component parts and worked from the hardware up. I know how to build things!"

Abby puts her hands on Tim's shoulders and kisses the top of his head. She's actually never seen him this frustrated, probably because he thinks this is something he's supposed to be good at, but he's not.

"It's okay. No one expects either of you to be able to put these together by just looking at them. Here, let me get my laptop." She came back a minute later. "What's this thing called?"

Gibbs hands her the box. She calls up Youtube and puts in 'how to build a Tiny Tyke Ball Bubbler,' and in a matter of minutes they were watching a video on it.

Tim's still muttering about how it was designed by idiot sadists, but with the video playing, and a few of the nonstandard modifications suggested on said video (superglue, x-acto knife, file), they got it together quickly, and while Abby made them eggnog (Jackson's recipe) and put some Christmas carols on, they grabbed the next toy, and went looking for another video of how to put it together.

An hour later, presents were put together. (Abby's wrapping them.) Tim leans back against the sofa, relaxing, drinking more of the eggnog, then says to Abby, "So, what do you think, we get pregnant again in March and make them do this next year?"

She giggles at that. "Revenge baby? That's where you're going with this?"

"Just saying. Don't want to waste a perfectly good opportunity to do unto him as he did unto us."

Gibbs laughs. "It's eight thirty, everything is put together, and you didn't have to wait in line for six hours to get a present. Count your blessings. We had three Christmasses in a row up until two, and then Kelly bounded out of bed at five."

"Three in a row?" Tim asks.

"First one, she was five, and wanted that bear. I didn't get home until after one. Didn't take too long to get the batteries in it, but the wait in line took forever. Second year, she's six, wants a bike. Instructions are in Japanese, and yes, I can speak it now, but I couldn't then. And I still can't read more than two thousand words of it. The English translation was so bad, I was doing just as well with the Japanese. Year three, she's seven," Gibbs smiles, remembering that year, "That year the toys were simple. We were celebrating that we'd gotten everything done well before midnight."

"And ended up staying up way late?" Abby asks.

"Something like that." He sips his eggnog. "I think some of this was involved, as well."

"There! All wrapped up." Abby looks at the presents in front of her. "Um… Don't these need to get to Jimmy and Breena's?"

Gibbs grins. "Duck'll be here soon. He's on Santa duty this year."

"They're doing presents at their place in the morning and then we're all together at your place in the afternoon/evening?" Tim asks.

"Best I know."

* * *

_The baby was nestled, all snug in her bed_

_Visions of nursing dancing in her head_

_And Mama in her negligee and Tim in his skin_

_Had just settled in for some late winter sin._

Some things really shouldn't be legal. The scene that greeted him as he stepped out of the bathroom was definitely among them.

Abby grinning at him in opera-length red satin gloves, red high heels, a Santa hat, and a wide red ribbon tied around her hips, bow right over her pussy, with a little spring of mistletoe dangling off of it, and the scent of that perfume wafting off of her is one of those things.

Okay, no, it should definitely be legal.

Very, very legal. Just… Gibbs in a room twenty feet down the hall is the snag.

'Cause Tim remembers the few somewhat gently pointed comments about it occasionally being 'loud' in their house, and Abby in tiny scraps of red satin and 'quiet' do not naturally go together.

So he grins, reminds himself that no matter how loudly and sincerely he wants to shout out how much he likes this, that like the poem says, he needs to be quiet as a mouse.

He looks her up and down, very deliberately, smiling wide and happy, then takes the three steps to her, and says (quietly) "Merry Christmas to me, huh?"

"Ho ho ho." She's grinning, too, face all lit up with pleasure.

His fingers ghost over her shoulders, breasts, stomach and come to rest, lightly on the bow. "This is going to kill me."

"Which part?"

He kisses her throat, and shoulder, inhaling deeply, moans softly at it, feeling his body rise in response. "All of your luscious self, but mostly trying to appreciate you quietly."

"Hmmmm… I'll just have to find something to keep your mouth busy."

"Oh…" He's very pleased by that idea. Of course, he's very pleased by all of this.

She has her hands clasped behind her back, looking up at him, kind of innocent, kind of naughty, pushing her breasts up and out toward him while nibbling her lip. "So, you gonna unwrap your present?"

"Oh yeah." He stares at her, hot and lusty, for a second before kneeling in front of her. He's about to nip the ribbon between his teeth when she tugs his hair to stop him. "What?" he asks looking up to her eyes.

"It's poisonous."

It takes a tenth of a second before he understands she means the mistletoe. "I know. Wasn't going to eat it."

"Okay. Good."

"Got way better things to eat," he says, voice dark and low, as his hands cup her rear and he takes the ribbon between his teeth and pulls. It slithers off of her, falling (along with the mistletoe) to the floor. "Oh, Abby."

She's grinning again as he stares at her sleek, bare pussy. Soft, so, so soft, pouty little pink lips peeking between the white folds of her skin. She hasn't waxed since a few months before Kelly was born. But, apparently, that's part of his Christmas present.

"Thought you'd like that."

"You know I do." He looks up at her, adoringly. Gently kissing her belly before returning his attention to her pussy.

And he does love this, and he really, really appreciates that she'll do it. As of this point ,that's the only thing he adores but won't ask for. It has to hurt like a son of a bitch, so he just won't _ever_ ask her to do it, but yes, he loves it. He kisses her mound gently. "I love this. Love you all smooth and silky." His fingers slip over her. "Nothing else feels like this. So, so, so soft." He kisses again. "Fuzzy is good, too, but this… God, baby, love this."

Her fingers twine in his hair, feeling oddly slick wrapped in satin, but nice, especially the slight rasp across the grain against the top of his ear.

He looks back up to her face as she caresses his hair and scalp.

She's still grinning at him, just very pleased with everything in the world right now. "So, you going to give me something to keep my mouth occupied, too?"

That gets one more deep, licking, sucking kiss out of him, as his hands tightened on her hips, making sure he had a good grip. Then he stood, still holding her, so she tumbled back into their bed (squeaking, quietly, in surprise at it).

The second after that, he follows her, settling on his side next to her, kissing her lips, feeling her suck his tongue in soft, wet pulses that are going straight to his dick, because he knows that's coming, soon.

He's rubbing against her, reveling in her soft and smooth on his dick, and it's trite, and he's thought it before, and he knows he'll think it again, but nothing, _nothing_ feels as good as this. Abby's pussy, wet and slick on him. Her laugh (quiet) in his ears. Her arms and legs around him while he kisses her throat, feeling her pulse thrum under his lips.

Nothing else is like this. Nothing else makes him this kind of happy.

And all of that happy wants to spill out of him. In words, fervent, praising, dirty, sexy words. In groans, hot and low. In laughter, deep and rich. And in cum, spurts of liquid pleasure marking her as his.

But it's not time for that, not yet.

He hooks her leg over his hip and slips into her, groaning, quietly, against her collarbone. He knows he's going to just start babbling if he doesn't find something to keep his mouth busy, so he scootches down a bit, pulling her breast to his lips. She tugs his hair lightly, reminding him that that's still a mostly look-don't-touch area.

So he straightens up, rolling onto his back, pulling her to lay full out on top of him, so they can kiss deep and easy.

They aren't really moving, just holding on, kissing, enjoying their bodies together, and the play of lip on lip and tongue on tongue. Though eventually she does start to rock in rhythm with his tongue, and he starts to thrust shallowly to go along with her. Just ramping things up, going from simmer to boil, though he's sure this isn't how they're going to finish tonight.

No, this is the warm up, just about enjoying the glide and pleasure drenched friction of slick skin on skin.

She's starting to tighten on him, that almost frustrated roll of her hips, close but not enough friction, not focused enough to get her off.

"Switch around."

That gets a quick grin, and then the delightful sensation of her body moving on his, followed by one of the scents that hits him hardest, her body wet, ripe, his own musk on her skin, trace of pre-cum, bit of that perfume, light sweat. Just smelling it makes him drip, and tasting it…

He groans at that, too. The rich, salty, musky _sex_ of it. And she's tasting him, and it's that swimming-in-sex sensation, all-over, full-brain, full-body, all of him wrapped up in it, sex.

She's sucking his balls, rubbing his dick with her hands, and he's licking her clit while his fingers slip in and out of her, both of them going at it hard and fast, chasing orgasms that aren't far away.

His legs are getting tense, balls pulling tight, her body tight and almost quivering on his, pussy clenched on his fingers as he rubs with his tongue and she mouths her way down his dick, wet, loving sucks that take him that much higher, thrusting that much harder, pointing his tongue rubbing a bit faster, trying to get her g-spot with each stroke, and she's taking him all the way down as her legs clamp on his shoulders, and he's so close, and she is too and one more lick, one fast flick, a gliding suck, and then were both twitching, pulsing, buzzing with pleasure.

Quietly.

* * *

_When warm and happy he from the bed crept_

_Quietly down the stairs to where the coffee was kept_

_Down to the kitchen he went with a dash_

_To open the cupboard and raid the caffeine stash_

He's not sure if saying he was going to find some Jolly Old Elf for Jimmy made the switch, or if it's just that yes, having kids makes this more fun, or maybe, more than that, this whole family thing makes it more fun, could be the very good mood from the sex, but he's feeling almost giddy as he creeps out of bed to add the finishing touches to Christmas downstairs.

The last time he was this happy about Christmas he was ten years old, sitting beneath the tree, late on Christmas eve (possibly early in the morning) the x-acto knife he had promised to only use for building models in hand, very carefully slitting the tape on the wrapping of what he was really hoping was a Nintendo. And YES, it was! He carefully taped everything back up, tucked the knife into the pocket of his robe, and crept back up the stairs, happy as happy could be.

He's got a few things in his arms, and he does stop in the living room to put them on the sofa, and then heads to the kitchen.

Usually he makes his Christmas cookies on Christmas. But, when it became clear that Gibbs was going to stay over for Christmas and they'd be doing this whole family-Christmas-thing his plan shifted.

He's already got the cookies made. Because he knows Gibbs likes them. And he knows, that sometime between now and morning, Gibbs will be down here with his own presents.

So, Tim grabs a plate, puts a few of the cookies on it, preparing the traditional snack for Santa. Gibbs isn't really a milk guy, though. And he's fairly sure that Gibbs'll be up at the pre-crack of dawn for putting his own presents down here, so Tim sets the coffee maker to start at 04:45, loads it with Black Death, which should result in coffee brewed and ready to go for Gibbs when he gets down.

Then he takes the cookies, puts a little note on them. _Coffee_ with the arrow pointing to the kitchen, and sets them in front of the fireplace.

Next part is putting his presents down.

He's feeling pretty eager to watch Abby open her presents. He may have ordered a few more perfumes than was strictly necessary, and he also found a red-wool coat that he was pretty sure Abby'd practically swoon over.

(And yes, swoon is the right word. It's floor length, with a very Victorian cut, and beautiful, ornate black detailing. Breena whistled when he showed her the picture of it, and Ziva nodded quietly, looking impressed. He's fairly sure that if the other two girls approve, he's in the clear.)

He's looking forward to seeing Gibbs open his presents, too. Abby had the Gibbs family crest made up for everyone. Art prints, full size, and made sure they all had framing gift certificates. All of which have been rolled into tidy cylinders and ready to go.

Tim knows he'll like the crest; and he'll probably like the Black Death Coffee of the Month Club. (Twelve of the blackest, strongest, most stand up and eat the spoon coffees on earth! Or so said the PR information.) He'll probably be irked by the cologne, but Tim's okay with that. He's expecting irked. Irked is part of the fun of it. It's not exactly a joke gift, but there's some of that there.

But he's hoping the bit that'll go over the best is what he's (quietly) doing right now, and that's putting Gibbs' stocking up on their mantle and tucking the last present into it.

As Abby said to him three years ago, when they were putting up that first Christmas tree, that the tree is like a family tree. Not dates or names so much, but stories. So, the last presents he tucks into the stocking are ornaments for Gibbs. His own marks for their tree.

And, feeling very happy and satisfied, Tim heads back to bed, to enjoy his own long winter's nap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Yes, there is a shot of the coat on the blog. It's worth a look.
> 
> Secondly, got some comments on the DiNozzo family finances, so here's my head cannon for what's up with that:
> 
> Yes, Eli David did have money and he did leave it to Ziva, but given how he died and what happened right before that, when she settled his estate, she gave it away to two peace organizations. (One Israeli, one Palestinian, though that one had to be given anonymously.) She didn't want his money but did want to make sure it did some good.
> 
> In her own personal habits, I tend to see Ziva as the kind of woman who stashes away ten percent of her income. She's probably got money and emergency supplies in half a dozen places. If they ever have to run, they won't be broke. But, that's not a lot of money, and it's not for living on, it's the emergency, shit-has-hit-the-fan, get-out-of-Dodge funds.
> 
> She also has a bit of a cushion for every day issues, call it three or so months of living on money in the bank. Like all NCIS employees she's in line for a pension, so she's not saving too hard for retirement.
> 
> For Tony, I see him as the kind of guy who put six months of expenses in the bank, and as soon as that was covered, he's spent every other dime. He's got his pension in place, probably has a 401K as well, life insurance paid for, is expecting social security when he retires, and expects to work until he can collect. (Age 65 for those of you who aren't Americans.)
> 
> Okay, why is he flipping out? Because he's gone from expecting to bring in about $130K a year for the next twenty-five years to having his income drop to $85K a year and a max of ten more years of that, then maybe another ten years at $70K (pension/desk duty money) before he's in line for Social Security.
> 
> So, it's not so much that they don't have savings. They do have some. It's that Tony's looking at a massive shift in his expected income, and trying to figure out how to wrangle the rest of their lives on a much lower income stream than he was expecting.


	47. Christmas '15

05:03. Gibbs didn't need to set any sort of alarm. His body remembers how this works.

He spends a few more minutes in bed, resting, enjoying laying out with nothing hurting and not feeling particularly tired. Then he got up, decided it was cool enough that he wanted more than a t-shirt and sweat pants, so he pulls on one of his NIS sweat shirts, and grabs his goodies.

They're mostly presents for Kelly. He kind of went a bit bonkers on that. But, like Ducky with Molly's first Christmas, he's feeling entitled to engage in a bit of grandfatherly spoiling.

He creeps out of his room, trying not to make too much noise; he doesn't want Tim leaping out of bed and shooting him before his brain wakes up enough to realize that other person moving around his house belongs here.

Though, it's hitting him, that him wandering around the house happens enough these days that Tim probably already has it in his mind that those extra footsteps are his.

He gets down the steps and is greeted by something he wasn't expecting, at all. The Christmas tree lights are all on, so the room is glowing gold. Light enough he can see easy, but he doesn't have to turn the overheads on and go blind. He can smell coffee, freshly made, waiting for him. He doesn't see anyone and he'd have bet good money that Tim and Abby were still in bed, but light and coffee is very welcome.

Before doing anything else, he puts the presents on the sofa, and heads to the kitchen to grab a cup. He smiles as he gets in there, nose identifying that this is his coffee, and there's a cup waiting next to the coffee maker for him.

Back to the living room to do his Santa work. When he went up last night there were three stockings on the mantle, and now there's a fourth, and it does have some promising looking lumps. It's ice blue with silver snowflakes on it, and as his fingers trail over it, he's sure who it belongs to.

He looks down, sees the cookies, and the sign, smiles again, and begins to put presents in stockings or under the tree.

It only takes him a few minutes to get them all laid in place. Only thing missing is a roaring fire in the fireplace, so he takes a few minutes to get that set, and then looks around. Yep, tree's lit, fire's burning, presents all around, there's even boughs of holly on the mantelpiece.

It's Christmas.

All done he settles onto the sofa, munching the cookies, drinking his coffee, and coming to the conclusion that Andes mint-chunk cookies and coffee are very good together.

* * *

The addition of children, even tiny baby ones who aren't actually aware of the whole Christmas concept, makes the whole thing more fun.

Tim's got no idea why this would be true. He can get why it'd be true if Kelly had raced down the steps to tear into her presents, but… she couldn't care less about this whole Christmas thing. She's, if anything, slightly annoyed because her morning routine is off.

But, Abby's opening her presents, squeeing over the coat (trying it on over her jammies, and spinning in it), Gibbs is squinting at the bottle of Jolly Roger. (Yep, he's irked. He's got that, _what on Earth could you have possibly been thinking_ look on his face. Tim's pleased.) Kelly's sitting in his lap, chewing on one of her presents (those stackable rings) and he's just really, really enjoying this.

"You going to open yours?" Abby asks as he's sitting there, watching.

"Oh, yeah." Presents. He's got presents too, right. He takes his stocking off the mantle and finds one rectangular package in it. He holds it up to Kelly, who's still in his lap. "What do you think? Wanna help me open it?"

She whacks it a few times with her palm, so he takes her hands in his, and gets her gripping the paper and gives it a rip. She giggles at that, and tries again, this time successfully grabbing the paper and tearing.

Call of Duty 5 is staring up at him, and he grins. Oh yes, he's got plans for that. "Jimmy and Tony got copies, too," Abby adds. His grin got wider. Jimmy really can play. Tony's still learning. He does much better when Ziva spots for him. He shows it to Gibbs. "Feel like learning how to play?"

Gibbs sips his coffee and slowly shakes his head. Then he reaches behind him, to the tree, and grabs Tim's other presents, flat squares. Tim smiles at them too, thinking he knows what they are, and a bit of quick unwrapping shows he's right.

Records. Old ones. Mostly jazz, but there's some blues, and some country, which he's surprised at, because he's really not a country music guy, but these are old enough that it might be that sort of music where blues and jazz and rock and spiritual and bluegrass and country hadn't yet all morphed into distinct genres… He's looking forward to getting them onto his record player.

"They were Jackson's. LJ and Ducky helped me pick out which ones you might like."

"Thank you."

He hands Kelly over to Gibbs, puts the records (gently) on the sofa, and heads into his office. A minute later, he's back with his record player, and plugging it in.

He holds them up. "What do we start with?"

Gibbs raises his hands. "No idea. The ones I knew well enough to remember, I also knew weren't the sort of music you like."

"Okay. We'll start at the top then. Can't go wrong with Etta James."

The scratchy hiss of the needle hitting vinyl fills their living room, and a few seconds later it's replaced by a warm, smoky voice.

Tim's watching Gibbs curiously, wondering if once he hears it it'll spring memories, but Gibbs just shakes his head. Then he surveys the mounds of wrapping paper, and the toys strewn in front of Kelly, along with three tidy piles of grown-up presents, and says, "So, breakfast?"

"Sure."

* * *

After they finished breakfast, Gibbs knew he had to get moving. That turkey wasn't going to roast itself, and if he wanted food to put on the table for the horde of people who were going to be coming to his house starting around noon and lasting all day, he had to go.

So, home he went. He got the turkey into the oven and the veggies prepped. (Potatoes are peeled and in cold water, waiting for closer to time to cook. Green beans have been cut, and are also sitting in cold water waiting for closer to time. And now, with as many people coming and bringing food as he has, that's all the cooking he has to do.)

Shower time, get dressed (cargo pants, t-shirt, flannel shirt over it: It's his house, he's not feeling any need to get too fancy.) and by the time he was heading downstairs again, he hears voices.

Wendy's sitting in front of the fireplace stacking the logs.

"You're looking comfy," he says as he kisses her cheek.

Fornell's fiancée looks up at him and smiles. "Indeed. Where are the matches?"

He nods to the mantelpiece. There's a long, narrow wooden box, mahogany and maple inlay. He'd made it for Shannon a long time ago. She'd used it for holding her jewelry. Now it holds long fireplace matches.

She stands and begins to light the fire while he heads to the kitchen. Fornell is already in there, cutting up peppers and onions, sausage browning.

"Told Jeannie that I'd show her how my Nona did it."

Gibbs nods. In addition to Draga, Kevin, Sarah, and Glenn, Ed and Jeannie are the new people joining the feast this year. Gonna be a very full house.

* * *

Tim put Kelly down for her post-lunch nap, and found Abby sitting on their bed. She's playing with the new perfumes (he got her a bunch of little testers this time, instead of two huge bottles.) and smells delicious.

Like Jimmy said, it's different, but that doesn't mean it's any less good.

So, he flops down onto the bed next to her, pulls her so she's laying across his chest, and kisses her gently, inhaling deeply.

"You like this one?"

"I think it's safe to say I like all of them. Which one is this?" One thing he does know is that he's got almost no shot of figuring out which bottle it came from by smelling Abby. They smell like one thing in the bottle and something very different on her.

"Morocco."

This one is dry and spicy and not quite so sexy, but still smells very good. "Yum!"

"Yeah."

She's got on his MIT sweatshirt and from the looks of it, nothing else. His hand comes to rest on the little bit of her butt that's peeking out from under the hem.

She kisses the tip of his nose. "Two hours until we have to leave for Gibbs' place."

He nods, then flashes her a sassy grin. "Yep. Maybe I should go play some Call of Duty."

That little kiss turns into a playful nip on his lip.

"No? You've got something else you want me doing?"

She nods, kisses him again. He cups the back of her head, kissing her slower, deeper. "What if I've got something I want you doing?"

She looks thoughtful. "Does it involve getting out of bed?"

He stands up, takes her hands, and pulls her up, too. "Yep."

"Curious."

He leads her to their bathroom.

"Even more curious."

He drops her hands, opens the medicine cabinet, and pulls out the trimmers. She sees them, understands what he has in mind, and smiles. "Not so curious."

He sets them on the edge of the tub and goes to put a new blade on his razor. "I think, if you're going to go to all the trouble to do this," his fingers trace lightly over her pussy, "for me, then I can take some time to spruce up for you. Especially if you might want to help me in my sprucing up efforts."

She's giggling at that. "Sprucing up?"

"I absolutely refuse to call it 'manscaping,'" he says, shaking his head. Tony was talking about it a few years… hell, it had to be getting onto a decade ago, when Queer Eye was big, and from that point on he decided he was never, ever using that word.

She's outright laughing at that, but finally calms down enough to say, "Grooming?"

"Sure." He strips out of his t-shirt and jammie pants. (None of them bothered to put real clothing on for presents and breakfast. Casual, laying about in pjs had been the morning vibe.)

She looks him up and down while grabbing the trimmers and sitting on the edge of the tub. Everything's regrown and back to normal from when they did this in April. "Everything?"

He steps into the tub, fingers lightly brushing his thigh. And while it's true that shaved legs did feel awesome, they aren't spending the whole day in bed. "Nah. I was going to wear the kilt to the party, and I'm not feeling any need to explain to Senior or Ed why I have no leg hair. Beyond that, anything else is up to you."

She lightly kisses the tip of his penis, which has noticed that something good is about to start happening and is looking forward to getting going on that. "Think I'll just get around here then."

"Good, want to be all soft and smooth against your soft and smooth."

She smiles at that and begins to trim.

* * *

Lots of sex results in a very relaxed, very playful, and honestly, kind of goofy Tim McGee. And sure, twice in less than twenty-four hours isn't exactly a record for them, but it is a post-Kelly record, and he's enjoying it immensely.

Trimming had led to shaving, and shaving had resulted in a very turned on Tim and Abby, and that resulted in bathtub sex, and finally wrapping up with a long, slow, tender co-shower.

And with them getting out of the bathroom about nine seconds before Kelly woke up.

So, it is, with Kelly on their bed, on her back, (in yet another painfully cute little Christmas outfit: this one is brown footy PJs with little hooves on the feet, a tiny tail on the tush, and a little hood with reindeer horns and floppy ears.) grabbing her feet while balanced precariously on her back (and rolling onto her side four out of five grabs) that they were finally getting dressed for the party.

Tim's stepping into his kilt (the McGee tartan: it's more 'Christmassy' than the black one), watching Abby slip on a little black skirt to go with her white button down and red sweater with the Grim Reaper Santa on it, (He now knows that's Death in his Hogfather costume.) enjoying watching her get dressed.

She's talking practical matters. (Making sure they've got all the presents packed up. That cookies and jambalaya are ready to go. Stuff like that. He's just watching her happily.)

"Earth to Tim, you hear any of that?"

He blinks, looking a little sheepish.

"Nope."

"What's got you so distracted?"

"Just… It's been a really good day. I'm enjoying it." She's smoothing red and green plaid thigh-high socks up her leg. "Plus, the view is awesome."

She laughs, shoves him gently, kisses him, and eyes him up and down. He's got the kilt on, and his shirt, dark green button-down, is currently on but unbuttoned. "Yeah, I'm liking the view." One more kiss. "And we've got to get moving if we don't want to be the last ones there."

"Okay. Moving." He turns toward the closet, buttoning his shirt, and looking for his gray tie. That's a bit dressier than Christmas at Gibbs' place usually is, but he's feeling kind of frisky.

Abby's dressed before he is, so she grabs Kelly, heading downstairs to start packing them up to go. He laces up his boots, puts on some of the 'tux date night cologne' and grabs his black leather jacket.

Time to make merry with the extended Gibbs clan.

* * *

Jimmy, Breena and the kids get to Gibbs' place next.

As soon as Breena's in the door and out of her winter gear, Gibbs takes Anna from her, very much enjoying her tiny, warm self, and then wraps Breena in a warm (one-armed) hug. "Not that I don't want your company, but we're all on kid duty, so if you want, I've got a nice, soft bed upstairs, and you're more than welcome to sack out."

She smiles, that half-drugged tired look that goes along with an eighteen-day-old on her face, very, very happy at his suggestion. She strokes Anna's fine curly brown hair. "She's going to want some supper shortly, but I'll take you up on that after."

Jimmy's getting Molly out of her coat, so Gibbs says the next bit loud enough for him to hear, "That offer's open for you, too. The three of us are more than ready to take care of little girls for you."

Jimmy smiles, too. "Thank you. Someone's," he looks at Molly, "been _really_ excited today, so down time would be a very good thing."

"Good. Get a nap. Especially before everyone gets here. The soundproofing is good, but not great."

"Right now, the world could be ending down here, and as long as it doesn't involve a newborn crying, I'll sleep through it," Breena says.

Gibbs nods, he remembers when Shannon was there, she could have slept through a jack hammer, but the tiniest squeak out of Kelly got her up. "You want anything? Drink? Food?"

"Just want to sit down for a bit."

Gibbs ushers her to the best spot on the sofa, next to the fire, warm but not overly toasty, and makes sure she's got some water and sugar cookies (Wendy's addition to the menu) nearby, anyway. Then he shows Jimmy up to his room, and shuts the door behind him, fairly certain Jimmy's going to be asleep before he hits the sheets.

* * *

Wendy's talking with Breena, who's nursing Anna, when the DiNozzo branch of the family shows up. Tony, Ziva, Senior, Delphine.

They're also laden with food and drink. Senior's snickerdoodles. Tony's mulled cider and spiced wine. Ziva's latkes. And Delpine adds a chestnut-stuffed goose to the mix.

There are congratulations on the new baby, chatting and catching up with Wendy and Breena (at least until Anna finished up her sixth meal of the day, and Ziva took over on baby wrangling so Breena could also grab a nap).

As Breena heads up the stairs, looking wilted from tiredness, Wendy says to Ziva, who has the burp rag over her shoulder, gently patting Anna's back. "I love babies, but I don't miss those days at all."

"It is not so bad."

Wendy smiles; she knows what Ziva's not saying with that answer. That's a woman jonesing for her own little one. "No, it's not." She strokes Anna's cheek, marveling in how soft she is. "Especially when you think of what you get out of it."

Ziva nods, patting gently.

Once they had gotten the food down, and he'd said hello to the ladies, Senior's nose started quivering at the smell coming from the kitchen, and he knew he had to head in there and see what was on the stove.

Fornell browning up his own part of the feast made Senior smile, and suddenly he and Fornell were reminiscing on what New York Italian-American Catholic Christmas looked and smelled like. (Promises of Nana DiNozzo's baccala pasta were made for next year. Fornell's looking pretty eager for that.)

As that's wrapping up, Senior looks out the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room, seeing Ziva patting Anna, walking her around, chin resting on the top of Anna's head.

He grins. Fornell looks over and sees it, too.

"Grandbaby soon?"

"Can't imagine it'll be more than another year, two tops."

"Looking forward to it?" Fornell's hit the point where he enjoys his friend's grandkids, and can imagine liking being a grandfather, but in that he's got a seventeen-year-old daughter, he's also terrified of being one anytime soon.

"Yeah. I screwed up a lot at being a Dad, but I am going to be a hell of a Papa."

Fornell nods at that. Then he remembers something. "Hard to do when you're never in town."

Senior flashes his patented smile. "Got something in the works on that."

* * *

From there, the house continues to fill. McGees, Vances, Dragas, and Slaters round out the crowd. LJ wanders in with the Franks girls. Diane had Emily for Christmas Eve and the morning, and when Gibbs heard they were planning on switching her over to Fornell's that night, he invited her to join in, too. Ducky and Penny finally made it, thus finishing up the guest list.

The house is packed. People are talking and laughing. Little kids (Molly and Kevin) chasing each other around between the adults. Older kids (Emily, Amira, Jared, and Kayla) hanging out on the steps, eating, talking to each other and texting their buddies. Food covers practically every horizontal surface, and rich, holiday smells fill the air.

* * *

A bit later, Tim, feeling cocky and maybe a tad on the giddy side, gets Tony alone and quietly says, "Just, you know, for your post-baby research, Christmas _more_ than made up for a lackluster birthday." Then he flashes his widest, most shit-eating grin at Tony, who elbows him (in a friendly way) in the ribs and laughs with him.

"So, you're saying Mrs. Claus had something nice for you?"

"Oh yeah," Tim says, nodding smugly.

"All stockings were well-stuffed?"

" _Well-_ stuffed. There was a great _outpouring_ of holiday cheer."

They both snerk and giggle at that. Tony gives him a quick back-handed slap to the shoulder.

Ziva joins them a second later. "Do I want to know?"

Tim shakes his head. "You really don't. It'll drop your opinion of both of our maturity by about thirty points."

"Then I will not ask."

* * *

Gibbs is sitting on the sofa, he's got Molly on one knee, holding her hands and bouncing her up and down. Kevin's sitting next to them, patiently waiting for his turn to play horsey on Gibbs. (Gibbs has explained that in a few months, maybe when they all get together for Easter, both of them can go at the same time, but right now only one knee is in play.)

Diane sits next to him. "Looks like all three of you are having fun."

He nods. "How about you?"

She surveys the party. "Yeah. Way better than home alone." She looks Draga up and down. "What's the story on him?"

"Young enough to be your son."

She shrugs. "He's too old for my daughter, so that means he's in play."

Gibbs laughs at that, shaking his head. But, he also knows that Delphine has to be at least twenty years younger than Senior, and no one's said a word to him about it. (Granted, at least twenty years younger than Senior puts her in her mid-to-late-fifties.)

"In the middle of a nasty custody fight for this little guy," he says as Kevin hops on and Molly slips off, heading over to go see if Uncle Tim will give her any treats.

"I know a good divorce lawyer."

"Never married his mom."

"Don't think that matters if you've got someone who's good at what he does."

Gibbs remembers the barracuda Diane has on speed dial. Be nice to see that man do someone he likes a good turn. "Then give him your guy's card. He could certainly use the help."

She starts to stand up and he says to her, quietly, "Go easy on him."

"I'm just going to say 'Hi.'"

Diane nods, smiles at Gibbs, from the looks of it enjoying him in his Pop mode quite a bit, and then heads off to have a chat with Draga. Gibbs quietly hopes that he's not setting up the fourth Ex-Mr. Diane.

* * *

At slightly more than six months old, Kelly McGee has mastered grabbing things, chewing on them, and sitting up on her own.

She has perfect posture, back straight, head high, no shoulder slump in sight. (Just another example of doing her Pop proud. She'll look really awesome in her 'Future Marine' onesies that were part of her Christmas presents.)

Kelly's also sitting on the floor, between her Aunt Sarah's legs, knocking over the blocks she keeps stacking up for her, as she talks with Penny.

"Can't believe how big she is," Sarah says about her niece.

Jimmy's on the sofa with Anna, which puts Kelly's bigness into perspective. About three weeks ago, Kelly was the tiny baby, now she looks huge.

"Don't they start crawling soon?" she asks her grandmother.

Penny laughs and shakes her head. "I've heard of babies that do that, but none of you did. You, Tim, your dad and uncles all stayed firmly on your bottoms until you were about fifteen months old, and then in less than two months you all went from not moving at all to walking."

Abby kneels down and kisses Penny's cheek. "Hi. Didn't see you get in. So, you're saying I probably don't have to worry about her ripping up my house for nine or so more months?"

"If she takes after our side of the family, yes."

* * *

"You okay?" Tim asks. Gibbs has a… it's not sad precisely, but there's more melancholy than usual in his face. It's very much not a party look. It's much more 'a party is swirling around me, but I'm not really in it' look.

"Thinking about dads."

Tim nods at that. "Feels weird not to have Jack here." And, even with the house loud and bustling with people, it does feel weird not to have him here.

Gibbs looks around, as if he expects to see Jackson leaning by the fireplace, eggnog in hand, talking to Ducky and Senior. "Yeah, that, too."

"Too?"

"My dad, your dad, the dads we became. Jimmy. Tobias. The dad Tony's gonna be. Hell, even Ed over there." Inviting the Slaters had been something of a perplexing moment. Over the last year, it's been becoming more and more obvious that these people are… well… _family_. Maybe not the same close, loving, respectful ties the rest of them have, but… Okay, if Draga and Vance and Senior are all here, then the people who have gone out of their way to make his girls feel welcome in their home have to be here, too.

(Or, as Gibbs put it in his own mind, the woman who threw that christening party for his granddaughter had an open invitation to everything that happens at his home, and if she drags her husband along, then she drags him along.)

"Oh."

"Yeah. Thinking about all of it."

"Any conclusions?"

"Nah." Gibbs shakes his head. "Don't think this is the sort of thing you ever get to conclusions about…" He takes Kelly from Tim. "But I'm glad you're my granddaughter's father."

* * *

Delphine's new diamond ring isn't subtle, at all. The damn thing is about the size of the iceberg that took out the Titanic. Obviously, DiNozzo Sr. is back in flush territory.

Tony's comment to Tim about his dad having _ideas_ as to what constituted a proper engagement ring is becoming very concrete in Tim's mind. And apparently those ideas center around making sure your fiancée has a team of servants to lug her hand around because otherwise she'll develop massive shoulder and wrist strain from trying to move it.

Okay, it's not that _big_ , but he's out carat-ed Abby, Ziva, and Breena combined.

So, in that Delpine is lugging around her own brand new mini-iceberg, there is basically no surprise when Senior announces that come early summer he and Delphine will be getting married.

There is, however, surprise when he says they are going to be moving to DC, as well. Tony does a very good job of not choking on his drink at that. Though the 'Oh God,' look on his face is awfully clear. But Senior sweeps over, all smiles and hugs, and Tony's hugging back, looking over Senior's shoulder with a 'what on Earth did I do to deserve this' expression aimed at Gibbs.

Gibbs grins back at him. Then he heads over and hugs them both, which shocks the hell out of all three of them.

* * *

"October 1st." Fornell's talking with Senior and Ducky, answering the question of when he and Wendy are getting married. "How about you, Ducky? You going to make an honest woman out of Penny?" Fornell asks.

The look on Ducky's face could best be described as, _you are insanely lucky that you're in the middle of a loud and crowded party and Penny is busy talking to Tim and Sarah and did not hear you say that._ "Penny's value as a woman it utterly independent of any action of mine."

"Come on, you know what he means," DiNozzo Sr. adds.

"Yes, I do. However, I have never been fond of that phrase."

"Fine. Are you going to join us in the no-longer-bachelors club?"

"If you think I'm still a bachelor, you've sorely misjudged the situation," Ducky says dryly with a hint of smile. The other two grin at him. "I think it is safe to say that our somewhat unconventional arrangement is working just fine, and as such, we are unlikely to change it."

Senior doesn't look like he buys that. "Are you telling me _she_ doesn't want to get married or _you_ don't?"

"I don't see why it matters much one way or another. There is nothing a marriage could offer us that we do not already have, and there is much it would complicate."

Ed had drifted over a few sentences before and is listening intently, then adds, "As a wise man once said in my hearing, the purpose of a wedding is not just to promise your life to your beloved, it is to do it publically and show the rest of the world that you intend to do it for the rest of your days."

Ducky's honestly stunned to see that Ed remembers him saying that from Jimmy and Breena's wedding celebration. He didn't think Ed had been paying attention to much of anything that anyone was saying during the ceremony.

"I'll admit I don't think it matters much if you make it legal or not. I've dealt with and helped deal with more than enough estates to understand what you mean by complicated, but I've never yet met a woman, radical feminist or no, who didn't like having her man stand up and tell everyone who has ever mattered to him that he loves her and intends to spend the rest of his days with her."

And, as he thought about it, Ducky had to admit that Ed had an awfully good point.

* * *

Ducky gets a moment alone with Gibbs later that night and says, quietly, "I'm not sure, but I think Jeannie disposed of Ed and found a doppelganger to replace him."

"He has been on really good behavior tonight, hasn't he?"

Ducky nods, slowly, watching Ed chat with Senior. (It's not a surprise to see those two get along.)

* * *

"Is she down?" Abby asks Tim. He's leaning against the wall, door to Gibbs' room two feet away, doing his usual put the baby down, lurk around for five minutes, make sure she's really asleep before heading off routine. (Right now there's Breena, Anna, and Kelly all sacked out on Gibbs' bed. Though Breena had stirred a bit when he put Kelly down, so she might decide to join the party in a few minutes.)

He nods. "Think so."

She presses up tight against him. "Good." She's rubbing against him in a very deliberate way while kissing him, hand snaking up the inside of his leg, cupping his very naked balls gently. "Can't get the fact that you're completely bare under there out of my mind."

He's grinning at her, kissing back, enjoying, very much, what her hand is doing under his kilt. "Looking forward to getting home?"

"Oh yeah. You know what else I'm thinking?" Big, huge grin on her face.

"What?"

She kisses his bottom lip, sucking gently, and then gives his dick a firm squeeze before letting go of him. "There's a bathroom ten feet from here."

His eyes go wide. That's nothing they've ever done before. Yeah, sure quickies at weddings, great fun, loves them, but, God, _here_? _Gibbs' house_? Sure, he's thought about it, but… _here? Really?_

She's backing him toward the bathroom as he says, "We get caught; I'm blaming you."

"Who's going to catch us?"

"If the past is anything to go by, Jimmy or Breena."

She laughs at that, gives him a gentle shove into the bathroom, and locks the door behind her.

It's a fairly standard hall bathroom. Eight by tenish. Tub taking up most of one wall, sink and toilet on the other. There's not exactly what he'd call a great place for this. The door's got a mirror on the back of it, and the bit of wall that's open has a towel rack, so they're out for leaning against.

There is, lucky for them, one of those ventilation fans, which Abby switches on, so the noise aspect is taken care of. And she's dropping her skirt and panties on the floor, so… Yeah, quickie at Gibbs' house, _why the fuck not?_

She's leaning against the sink, one hand on each side of it, facing it, looking over her shoulder, wiggling her ass at him, and the visual of her in that red sweater, white button down, top button undone, naked butt, plaid thigh-high socks and high-heeled mary janes, works wonders for getting him in the right mindset for this.

About thirty seconds later, his kilt hit the floor, too.

And like all proper quickies, fast was the name of the game, so about four minutes later, they're panting quietly, her fingers twined between his, while he gently kisses her neck, feeling her thighs still quivering against his.

"You good?" she asks.

"Oh yeah. Anymore good and I'd be dead." He nods, dragging his teeth lightly over the nape of her neck. "You?"

"Yep." She stretches and reaches, and has just enough arm length to grab the tissues on the back of the toilet. She slips off of him and they begin to clean up. "Still looking forward to getting Kelly to sleep tonight."

He gently kisses her breast through the sweater. "Insatiable wench!" He grins. "I'm not a machine you know."

"Oh… all fucked out all ready?" She mock pouts at him while lightly stroking his softening dick. "Maybe I'll have to use one of the machines, and you can just watch."

He groans at that mental image. "You really are trying to kill me, aren't you?"

"Yeah, but it'll be a great way to go."

"Amen." He fastens the kilt and tucks his shirt back in. Then he makes sure she's watching him, and licks his left index and middle finger clean, and winks, before turning to wash his hands. Once he's got them dried off, she's almost all dressed again, so he cups her face in his hands, and gently, mouth open, lips wet, kisses her slow and deliberate. "And yes, I am looking forward to getting Kelly to bed, and showing you exactly what I'll be" he guides her hand to his now completely soft dick, and she gives him one last gentle squeeze, "up for."

She smiles very prettily at him, kissing him again. "Good. Don't know what's up, but I'm just craving you constantly today." She turns back to the mirror, makes sure that she's all put together, and then stops suddenly.

"Abby?"

A slow smile spreads across her face. "I think I know what's up."

His eyebrows rise in silent question.

She turns to face him. "I'm only nursing twice a day now. And the last time I felt like, this we made Kelly. I bet I'm ovulating again."

He pulls her flush and kisses her hard. They aren't charting and obviously don't know for sure, but just the idea of it makes him so very happy.

* * *

Senior and Ed had been talking. They'd been talking a lot. Gibbs has no idea what, beyond a general love of wealth and the appreciation of expensive things, that they might have in common, but they've been getting on like a house on fire.

So, he has to admit there was a sense of trepidation when both of them, grinning, stalk over to him.

Senior drapes an arm over his shoulders and says, "Junior tells me you've volunteered the crew for helping to get whatever house he finds fixed up."

And Gibbs nods, not sure where this is going.

"Count us in," Ed says.

Gibbs eyes go wide. First off, he had no expectation at all of Ed doing anything like that, but he's seen Breena handle tools so he knows he's handy. Second of all, what the hell would Senior even be useful for on something like this? Finding the house… Okay, he'd probably be good at that. But after that? It's one thing to teach Jimmy and Tony and Tim on this stuff, but Senior's eighty-two.

Senior sees the look in Gibbs' eyes. "He's never told you, has he?"

Gibbs shakes his head.

"By the time Tony was born, we were well off. But that wasn't true when I was born. My dad got here in 1922 with the clothes on his back, the bag under his arm, and about ten words of English. He worked construction. Started on high rises. Easy to get work if you knew how to weld in those days. The Depression hit, and he scaled down. Jack of all trades, carpentry, drywall, cement, brickwork, welding, plumbing. By the time I was big enough to be useful, he had me helping him. From six until I graduated high school I worked nights, weekends, holidays, and early mornings with him. If it broke anywhere in the south Bronx, the DiNozzos fixed it.

"By then he had some money, and I had some ideas, so we started buying the houses, fixing them up, renting some, selling others, demolishing some when the land was worth more than the thing on the land. By the time we made our first half million, we hung up the hammers and nails and had moved entirely into real estate, and from there I moved to stocks, bonds, and a bunch of other things you'd probably find boring. Point is, I still know what to do with the business end of a hammer or wrench."

Gibbs would have to admit that if you asked him who he'd want to work on a massive project like this, Ed and Senior would not be on his list of guys to go to, but… and it's a big but, if Senior actually does know his ass from his elbow when it comes to construction, this goes from a mammoth project to a plain huge one, and if he can get a few hours a week out of Ed, that'd help. At the very least, that's two more sets of eyes who know how to do this to keep watch on Tim and Jimmy and Tony, and that might be worth its weight in gold in time and money saved by not having to re-do things over and over.

Gibbs shakes his head, sips his coffee, and says, "This'll be an adventure."

Senior grins at him.

* * *

"So, it's your last week?"

Tim nods to Fornell. "Friday's the last day on the team."

Diane heads over and says, "Hey, it's about time for me to head off. I've got her stuff in your trunk and ready to go."

"Okay, thanks. I'll drop her off Friday night?"

"Yep…" Which is about when she noticed that Tim was the guy he was talking to. Her eyes travelled from his leather jacket, to the kilt, to the dragon tattoo, and back to his eyes. "Wow!" She looks him over again. "Damn. You do have a hidden side. Nice skirt, Chucky."

He winks at her. "Yours is pretty, too, Love."

"Uh. Thanks…" Between the wink and him coming up with his own nickname for her, she's almost off-footed. She wasn't expecting that, and for that matter Tim wasn't expecting to say it, either. Definitely feeling pretty cocky today. She's looking at the dragon. "I didn't know you had a tattoo.

"I have four of them."

"Huh. If I had known that, I would have tried harder."

Tim shakes his head. "Wouldn't have worked." He touches his wedding ring.

She smiles. "I know. Knew then, too. Guy in love always has a certain look to him. Still, I do love a guy with a badge and ink. Toby ever show you his?"

Tobias is glaring at her, and Tim's staring at him with interest.

"No. _Toby's_ never felt any need to share that."

She grins, kisses Fornell on the cheek, and says to Tim. "It's really cute. Merry Christmas, you two. See you Friday, Tobias."

Tim looks at Tobias, one eyebrow high. Tobias shakes his head, so Tim doesn't ask.

Five minutes later though, when he gets a minute with Gibbs, he asks, "Diane says Fornell's got a tattoo and it's cute."

Gibbs laughs.

"So you know what it is?"

Gibbs nods again.

"Gonna tell?"

Gibbs shakes his head.

"Where is it?"

Gibbs shakes his head at that, too.

Fornell's looking at him from across the room, bit worried, but Gibbs shakes his head, some secrets, like how Fornell ended up with a two inch-long bumble-bee (Wasp! It's supposed to be a wasp! Damn it, he asked for a wasp. His unit was the 99th Airborne. They were the wasps! It was not his fault that the guy who translated his English into Vietnamese didn't know a wasp from a bee, or for that matter that he was drunk enough he didn't notice it was wrong until the next morning.) on his shoulder, don't need to be shared with the kids.

* * *

Jimmy sidles over to Gibbs. "So, you thinking now's a good time for an application of the Fear Of Dad?"

Gibbs watches Kevin Draga chasing Molly Palmer around the sofa. "You can probably let it slide for now. Next year…"

"Yeah," Jimmy shakes his head, "because they all turn into little bastards as soon as they're five, right?"

Gibbs nods solemnly. "Only one thing a five-year-old wants, and it's your job to make sure he doesn't get it from your little girl."

It's probably due to the lack of sleep but Jimmy finds that utterly hysterical and just about strains his back he's laughing so hard at it. After a minute, he pulls himself together, wipes the tears of laughter from his eyes, and gives Gibbs a hug. "We've got to get going soon. Breena's pooped."

"Yep." _You are, too_ is clear on Gibbs face as he pulls back, and Jimmy nods a bit, acknowledging it. "Want me to come over tomorrow? Get you two some more down time."

"Sure. We could both use more sleep. Nap I got here was my best Christmas present, yet."

"Let's see about getting you a few more."

* * *

Jimmy kisses Abby goodbye, pulls back for a second, looks at her, thinking, then hugs her again, inhaling. Then he looks at her, eyebrow high, and she smiles widely at him, and he glances at Tim and smirks, shaking his head.

As he's hugging Tim goodbye he says, quietly, "Here?"

Tim shrugs.

Jimmy chuckles, shaking his head again. "At least this one actually smells pretty good on her."

And Tim laughs.

* * *

They didn't stay all that much later than Jimmy and Breena did. Tim feels a bit bad about that. Previous years they stayed late, helped Gibbs clean up. And sure, he's looking forward to what's waiting at home, but still, he doesn't know if anyone else will do that if they don't. No one did before, and he doesn't want Gibbs left with a mountain of dishes on his own.

But there's a fairly brief, golden travel window when Kelly's up but sleepy, where she'll do her last bottle of the night, and then fall asleep in the car and they'll be able to take her up, put her in her crib, and she'll sleep through the night.

So, it's a bit after nine, and they're getting all of their gear packed up and in the car. The idea being that as soon as she's done her bottle and burped, they'll be on the way.

And with many hugs and Merry Christmasses, they were.

* * *

There are things that Tim assumes are true for just about all guys. How sex works (in general) is one of those things. Namely, if you're having sex, you want to get off, and, honestly, all the other stuff is usually window dressing. (Nice window dressing, good window dressing, and sometimes all you get is the window dressing so you may as well appreciate it... But… look, you didn't come see the room to marvel over the curtains…)

Lingering is fun and good and often produces some splendid results, but when it all boils down there's this goal, orgasm, and getting there, sooner or later, is the point.

But, in that he's done it three times in the last twenty-four hours, and once in the last three hours, he's not exactly feeling as goal-oriented as usual. (Yes, there will be an orgasm, but he's not feeling any sense of urgency.)

It's not fucked-out, which is more of a 'I'll just lay here and sleep' sort of feeling. That, 'I don't care if the house is on fire, I'm not moving,' sensation.

Likewise there's sated. Fucked long and well enough that you just don't want to do it anymore. He's very much not sated; he definitely wants more sex.

He tends to think of this as Zen Sex. There's a sort of calm hyperawareness that goes with this sort of sex. It's like, because he's not focused on getting off (or not getting off) that everything else comes to the forefront.

So, he's much more aware of everything: the feel of Abby's fingers between his, the tension in them, and the way she grips just a hair tighter as he presses in, or the sensation of her hair brushing his cheek as he kisses her throat, or the slide of her heel on the back of his thigh. Little things that he tends to miss when his world narrows down to his dick.

He's watching more intently than normal, all of his usual favorite sights are burning into his mind, breasts, buttocks, pussy, his dick slipping into her pussy or mouth, but not just those. He's watching the way her eyelids droop as she gets close, and the line of her collar bone rising and falling with each hard breath. He's watching the shine of their saliva on her lip, and the tension in her adductor muscles as she rides him.

He's much more present in the moments of stillness. Often stillness is about backing off, postponing climax a bit longer, about not thinking about sex, about finding the space to inch back from the edge. But not tonight. There is stillness here, more so than usual, both of them enjoying pulse and breath and the exquisite fullness of flesh on flesh, quivering in anticipation of the next stroke, next move, drawing out that desire-filled waiting.

They're in a resting stroke, slow, easy, on their sides, facing each other. His one arm is under her neck, hand in her hair, other arm resting on her side, hand cupping the underside of her thigh. She's stroking his cheek and ear, leg hooked over his hip. They're kissing, slow and deep, soft breaths morphing into gentle love words.

It's unraveling sex, one long, soft stroke after another, pulling his layers apart, dragging attention away from the rest of the world, away from life outside this warm circle of touch, taste, sight, sound and scent, stripping him bare of anything that isn't his essential Tim, leaving him focused entirely in this physical, spiritual, worshipful meditation of her body on his.

And that's where Christmas ends, much like it began, in bed, wrapped in each other, enjoying the almost infinite varieties of the gift of pleasure and love.


	48. New Path

Tony almost wishes that the phone would ring. That'd get them out of here. And out of here is a very good excuse for not doing what comes next.

But it's got to get done. It's time. No more stalling.

Tony stares at the collection of resumes in front of him. He's been through them all, (and a bunch more besides) and tossed them all.

No one in that pile is worthy of replacing Gibbs. No one even came close.

Because that's what he was trying to do. Replace Gibbs. Get his team back. Get his people back. But that can't happen. His people are moving on and leaving him, and it's not healthy to try and force other people into those roles.

It's time for a new team, with a new plan, and…

He clicks on it. He doesn't know why this one stuck in his mind. Maybe because it was so unexpected. This one looks nothing, at all, like any of the others in his files. Maybe because it's… a very different path. If you have someone like this on the team, you've got to move in a new path. And a new path might be exactly what they need.

Exactly what he needs.

* * *

He's read the resume. So it's not like he's got to look over it again.

Team Gibbs was built, if built is the right word, (Ordained by God? Who knows? Feels that way sometimes.) but however it came together, it worked because it complimented Gibbs' style.

But he's not Gibbs. He's got his own style. His own strengths. And he doesn't need to be Gibbs. He _can't_ be Gibbs. And if he's going to run this team, he can't be hunting for a new Gibbs. And he can't be stocking it with the people Gibbs needs to make Gibbs' team work.

He needs to decide who he is, and where he wants to take this, and find himself people to work with _him_. Time to build the team around him. Time to get the people he needs.

"Director?"

"DiNozzo?" Vance looks at him, cool and surprised. December 28th is well in the middle of that dead time between Christmas and New Year's when everything pretty much shuts down, and technically, Vance isn't in the office today. And if you didn't know that from the email that went out last week, the fact that he's in jeans and sweatshirt would have been a tip off. So, he's very much not expecting anyone to drop in on him.

"Can I steal a few minutes?"

Vance looks back at his computer, and then turns the screen off and gestures for Tony to sit down.

"What's on your mind, DiNozzo?"

"My team."

"All right?" Vance has his _get to the point_ look on his face. He's only supposed to be in for ten minutes, tops. Just quickly checking on the status of a case for Sec Nav, and then he's out of here.

"I have one slot opening up in a matter of days, and likely another in the next year."

Vance raises an eyebrow at that. "Should I be offering you and Agent DiNozzo congratulations?"

Tony takes a breath, realizing what he just admitted to there. "Not yet. With any luck, soon, but not yet."

"Ah. So…"

"So… I'll have a lot of room to play with the nature of my team. What I wanted to know is where do you want the premier NCIS MCRT focused? Obviously, murders, big thefts, our usual daily grind… But what else? I know McGee's telling you about wanting to get his team to the point where they can be pro-active. Hunting trends, more playing offense and less defense. Doing a better job of anticipating where issues are going to arise."

Vance is intrigued. "Do you think you can do that?"

"I think we get two or three big terrorism cases a year, and I think we can do a better job of anticipating them, and following up one case to the next to the next. I don't think we can do it on murders and thefts. Question is, are those big cases going to happen often enough to make filling one of my slots with someone who specializes in that sort of thing worth it?"

Vance thinks about that for a moment. "Are you asking to be put on point for terror cases?"

Tony realizes he is. It wasn't a set idea in his mind when he came up here, but it is now. "Yes. If I build a team with that in mind, will you send enough of those cases my way to make it worthwhile?"

Leon looks thoughtful. He has five MCRTs working out of DC. It would be easier to have one of them on full-time liaison with the FBI, Homeland, DOD, Navy, Marines, CIA, and the rest of the alphabet soup for all of their terror related cases.

And if he has a Team Leader who can do that job, who can play the politics and keep everyone's feathers smoothed down, it's DiNozzo.

At the same time, he's not sure if DiNozzo's the first guy he'd pick for actually working the higher levels of terror cases. For grabbing individual guys, going after single attacks, for having a crime scene, attaching it to a set of people who did said crime, and bringing them in, he has no doubts about DiNozzo. He is an _excellent_ cop.

What he's not sure of is if DiNozzo's got the big picture skills for this kind of work. If he finds one knot, can he unravel it, follow the threads, and then take them to the next knots? That seems to be what he's talking about doing…

Of course, Gibbs, who in addition to having no political skill, seems to solve these things on sheer gut and determination, has done just fine on all of the longer-game cases that have been tossed his way. And though DiNozzo doesn't have Gibbs's gut, he does seem to have a very solid sense of where to dig further, and he's better at sharing the sandbox. Plus, if he were to hire someone who actually does know how to think ahead on things like this…

DiNozzo's right-here-right-now skills mixed with someone who knows how to see trends could be a very valuable asset.

It's an intriguing idea. "If I were to rearrange things so one MCRT, your MCRT team were to handle the terror cases, who would you add to your team?"

"I want some sort of analyst. Someone who specializes on what's going on and what's going to happen next. Even better if she's a good reader of people. Someone who can see the big picture and the individual players."

"Do you have someone in mind for that?"

"Maybe. I got an interesting resume along those lines. Would have to meet her in person… But, yeah, maybe. She's not a field agent, at all, from what I can see, but I got McGee beaten into shape, I can get her up to the job if she wants it."

"Okay, who else?"

"The fourth member would be replacing Ziva, so I need a language expert, muscle, and guns. Draga's got muscle and guns. But I need someone who can speak Arabic, Farsi, Pashtun, and probably a few others if I can swing it. He's got to handle himself well enough that I can send him undercover."

"Tall order."

"I know." And he does, he really does. Half of flipping out over Ziva leaving is personal. Half of it is that she's even harder to replace than Gibbs. "Ex-Mossad-trained officers don't exactly grow on trees."

"True, but you might not have to go quite that far afield to find someone who's got the skills you want, but isn't happy in his current location."

"Headhunt the CIA?"

Vance nods, that's one direction. He adds another for Tony to consider. "I understand we have wounded Seals who have the sort of training you're looking for. Can't be dropped out of a helicopter behind enemy lines anymore, but might be able to do what you need."

Tony nods, takes out his phone, and makes a note to go looking through the SEALs and Marine Special Forces. "Thanks, Director."

Vance nods, and Tony heads out.

* * *

He gets down from chatting with Vance and sees McGee, Ziva, and Gibbs working away. (Draga decided that the last week McGee was around would be a good time to use some vacation days. He'll be back Wednesday.) For a few seconds, it feels like normal. Ziva and McGee are talking. Gibbs keeps shooting them _more work, less chit chat_ glances. They're sort of humoring him, quieting down for a few minutes, cutting a swath through the paperwork, then talking again.

"Good chat?" McGee asks him as he sits down.

"Yeah." He looks at the resume, still up on his computer, and picks up his phone.

"Hello?" Her voice is young, very young, and awfully perky. He checks the resume again, and realizes that she got done with her doctorate in '11. He's looking at another twelve-year-old wunderkind.

"Is this Eleanor Bishop?"

"Yes, is it. Can I help you?"

"Yes. I'm Special Agent Tony DiNozzo from NCIS. You sent in a resume a few months ago. I was wondering if you'd like to come in for an interview?"

"Of course." He can hear the smile in her voice.

"Wonderful, when can you come in?"

"Pick a time, and I'll be there."

He schedules the interview for tomorrow and wraps up the conversation. The other three are looking at him, so he prints out her resume and explains what he's thinking.

They're nodding at him, looking impressed.

* * *

About a half an hour later, Gibbs goes to get his coffee and takes Tony with him.

"It's a good move."

"I hope so."

"It is. You're gonna do well with it." Gibbs doesn't say _you needed to do this, break away from me_. He doesn't say _I'm proud of you_. He does remember, a long time ago, saying to Tony, 'What do you expect? An 'Atta boy!' and Tony more or less saying yes. So he raised his hand, as if to slap the back of his head, and Tony winced, and then he rubbed his hair and said, 'Atta boy!' And Tony glowed at it.

He remembers another time, leaving Tony with the team and saying, 'You'll do.'

Tony had looked half-proud and half-hurt by that. He knew it was praise, praise he had wanted, but he had needed more than that.

This time, he puts his coffee down, and then takes Tony's coffee out of his hand, puts it down, and hugs him. Then he pulls back, pets the back of Tony's hair, and says, "Atta boy!"

Tony, who had been standing there, pretty startled by all of this, broke into a smile at that.

"It's going to be good," Gibbs says, picking up their cups.

"Let's see if I still think that when I've got the FBI on one side and the CIA on the other and NSA refuses to tell me what's going on."

Gibbs grins at that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come on, you knew I had to work her in sooner or later. :)
> 
> Hopefully, in the Shardsverse, she'll fit in a bit better.


	49. Bishop

She can't _literally_ be twenty-two. She got her Doctorate in Quantitate Predictive Statistical Analysis from the University of North Carolina (He'd asked McGee what the hell that was and he said, 'Means she's smarter than I am,' then he looked at her thesis and said, 'A lot smarter' which wasn't exactly helpful.) in '11, worked at NSA until the middle of '15, and has been on her own since then.

But, not actually twenty-two or not, he feels like he hasn't seen anyone this young or green since he first laid eyes on Probie all those years ago.

She's cute and blonde and wholesome, a little bit nervous, but he's good at soothing that, and gets her talking about herself. She's the youngest of four, three older brothers, a mom and dad all back in Oklahoma, and a husband here. (He also used to work for the NSA and is now working as an analyst for DC Metro PD).

And after a bit more about herself, he asks, "Why you leave the NSA?" He's a bit worried at the idea that they both worked for the NSA and left. He's wondering if they did something stupid and got the 'you're going to resign to save us the trouble of firing you' speech.

She sighs, looks up and behind him, seeming to be thinking about how best to answer this. Finally she says, "We had different understandings as to what the job was."

"How so?"

"I signed up to help protect the United States from terror attacks. I signed up to look at patterns, see the pieces, put them together, and catch people who wanted to do us harm. And I kept telling myself that that's what I was doing. First wave of scandals hit, and I told myself that we had to go to court and get warrants like everyone else."

Tony's got an idea of where this is going. "Then you found out that court never turned anyone down."

"Yeah. Didn't matter how shaky the evidence, and then there were the guys who weren't even bothering with that. But that didn't come out for a while. And I told myself we were focused…"

Tony definitely knows where that's going. "Then the Snowden stuff came out and you found out focused meant you were watching everyone on Earth with a computer or phone?"

"Yeah. And then it got worse when the list of who we were spying on came out. Look, I can guarantee you Angela Merkle isn't a terror threat to the US. Yes, I know we all spy on each other, but… that's the CIA's job, right? And I didn't sign up to work for them for a reason.

"Then I find out they're using some of my research to target people who are peaceful, but politically active in a direction they didn't like. And that was it. I was out. Look, all up front, I'm a moderate. I don't love the hardcore peace activists, I don't think they've got a clue as to what's out there, the far-right TEA Partiers creep me out, and the Libertarians look like anarchist pot-heads to me, but I didn't want my work used to make their lives miserable. They aren't the bad guys, and they certainly aren't the guys I signed up to track. So I left."

"What kind of work were you doing that got used that way?"

"Classified. And you don't have the clearance. Your Director doesn't have the clearance for it." She smiles sadly. "It sounds trite, I'm sure, but I believe that this country means something. Call me Captain America if you want, but freedom, privacy, a government you can trust, it matters. And I was working for the bad guys. So after some long conversations with my husband, we both left. Couldn't do it anymore, Agent DiNozzo."

Tony thinks about that for a moment and says, "Well, we go where the leads take us, and they've taken us here and they've taken us abroad, but we do wait for actual leads."

"That's all I need. I've got no problem going up against anyone who wants to hurt us. I've got a lot of problem going up against people who just disagree with me. And I've got an even bigger problem with going up against people who aren't doing anything at all."

He can see that sort of attitude blending well into any group he'd be willing to run. She might be a little sticky on some of the techniques they use, but they never go in completely blind, and they certainly aren't listening to everyone's phone conversations, reading all their emails, and adding back doors into popular software.

"So, why NCIS? Why not go and use your skills to make a killing on Wall Street?"

She smiles at that. "I still want to fight the bad guys. Terror is real. There are people out there who want us dead just because of who we are. I hunted some of them down. I've been face to face with a few of them." That interests him very much. She's not a field agent, or at least nothing in her file suggested that, but maybe that's classified, too. "I want to stop them. My dad suggested you guys. He's retired Navy. According to him, you've got a good reputation. Maybe not total straight shooters, but you still know who the bad guys are. You're small enough that I could probably do some real good here. And who knows, my skills might be useful for run of the mill cases as well. I'm good at puzzles. Murders are puzzles, right?"

"Something like that Mrs… Ms… Bishop."

"Ms. Or Ellie. I like Ellie."

"We usually go by last name here. Part of the Navy culture."

"Then I can be Bishop." She smiles at him. "That's got a sort of pleasant gravity to it, right? But not Mrs. Bishop, that's my mother-in-law."

Tony smiles and shakes his head a bit, wondering why on Earth he's actually thinking of doing this. But, good idea or not, he's starting to like it. Good idea or not, he's starting to like _her_.

"So, tell me something you did that isn't classified fifteen levels above my pay grade."

She looks curiously at him and launches into a complicated discussion of probability and the use of what seems like unrelated data points to make a pattern. About two paragraphs in he stops her.

"Okay. That's how you explain it to McGee or Abby. Explain it to someone who still needs a calculator to figure out the tip."

She's about to laugh at that, realizes that he might be serious, and then thinks about that for a moment. "You ever play minesweeper?"

He nods. He didn't play it a lot. Mostly because both Ziva and McGee would absolutely kill him at it. They'd be flashing their zippy times and perfect scores, and he'd get blown up twenty times in ten minutes. And it's not that he can't play it, because if he takes the time to really look, he can. But he was a whole lot slower at it than they were.

"Okay, so that's what I'd do. You get a few data points together, and you've got a whole lot of blanks, too. You use the data you have to make a guess about those blanks. Then you hit the blank. If your data was good, and you're a bit lucky, you get more intel, and that helps you uncover more blanks. One of the things I did was take our guesses about what might be in those blanks, and then used those guesses to figure out what might be in blanks even further down the line, and then from there go even further."

"How do you know if you were right?"

She shakes her head. "You never know if you're right. You do know if you're wrong."

"If you're wrong?"

"Boom."

"Lots of booms?"

"No. I'm good at my job. They probably wouldn't have found my stuff so useful if I'd been bad at it. So, you never know if you've got the right idea, but when nothing goes boom, that's data, too, so you add that in, and go after even more invisible blocks."

"Phew."

"And of course the other side knows you're watching, so sometimes you get something, and they fed it to you, so they don't go Boom on purpose just to feed you more false data."

"Huh."

"Yeah. Like playing chess on an infinite board with an unknown number of pieces and an unknown number of players where the players are blindfolded ninety percent of the time."

"Great." All of that sounds really… theoretical. Is she going to be able to do anything useful for a concrete situation?

He is, however, pleased to see she reads people well enough to ask, "So, I guess, my question is, what do you think I can do for you? I mean, I applied as an analyst, not… this."

"We are a MCRT, Major Case Response Team, that means we get sent out on murders, rapes, grievous bodily harm, thefts and frauds with a value of over one hundred thousand dollars," it had been fifty grand when he started, inflation hits everything apparently, "and I'm building what is going to be the main NCIS anti-terrorism task unit."

"Okay."

"We usually get two or three terror cases a year. The four other MCRTs out of the Navy Yard get a few each, too. The shift is that we'd get all of them, but even with that, we're talking something along the lines of one new case a month, so we'd still be doing murders, rapes, and thefts. So, this is an actual, in the field, deal with dead bodies and criminals sort of job. Is that a deal breaker for you?"

She thinks about it. "Nah. I'm always trying to push myself in new directions, new challenges. Since I left the NSA, I've tried everything from gourmet French cooking to marathon running to writing crossword puzzles. This would be another new challenge."

_Okay._ He hands her a folder. "This is one of our solved cases. Look through it, tell me what you see, what you're thinking…"

She opens the folder and starts reading. A few seconds in she says, "Do you mind if I eat?"

He's puzzled by that, but maybe she's diabetic or something and needs to eat regularly. "No."

"Good." She pulls three candy bars and a bag of chips out of her purse. Obviously not diabetic. She catches him staring at the food. "Food helps me file the things in my head."

"Oh." That's… weird. But, if it works… Her eyes scan over the pictures as she chews, taking in details, reading the file, and then she starts to talk…

She's fast, a little disjointed, he's not following everything she's coming up with, but she is seeing patterns they didn't find until later in the investigation, and there's a touch of Ducky's profiler in there. (Which is when it hit him that eventually Ducky will be leaving, and one thing Jimmy won't be replacing is Ducky's profiling skills, so that's something else he's going to need.) The information he's given her is just the basic facts, what they found at the crime scene, original witness statements, stuff like that. It took her less than twenty minutes to read the file, and in half an hour she'd come up with a fairly decent plan of attack for finding their killer. She'd missed a few of the clues, but she's not a field agent, so he doesn't expect her to get everything on one look.

He can work with this.

"You're up to date on your FLETC certifications?"

She nods.

"You any good with a computer?"

She just stares at him before slowly answering, "Everything I did for the NSA was on a computer."

"Good. So, you can hack into things?"

She squints at him, feeling like they just talked about this and how she's not really big on just breaking into people's stuff. "What sorts of things?"

"We get a vic's computer. It's got some locked files on it. Can you get in?"

"Maybe." He sees her relax at that. Yeah, she's probably not the person to call in on the 'can you hack this suspect's computer' without a warrant stuff, at least, not right away. "I'm more of a number cruncher when it comes to computer work. Like if you've got three victims and you want to find out what they've got in common, that's the sort of computer work I'm good with."

He nods. That's useful. McGee spends a lot of time doing stuff like that for them.

"So, like if I give you ten years of financials for three different guys…"

"No problem." She waves that off. "You can give me fifty years of financials for two million guys, and I'll find your patterns." She sounds half-proud and half-ashamed at that, and he gets that that was the problem with the NSA. He's also now wondering if they were doing that, running through everyone's bank records willy-nilly. He wonders if how to do that better and slicker is part of what she came up with that made her leave.

He's half thinking that she's overkill. Like bringing a tank to a knife fight. She may be way too damn smart and theoretical for this job. But it feels right. He's sure he can use her. He's sure she's part of getting to the next… whatever it is that comes next. So he says to her, "You doing anything January 18th?"

She checks her phone. "Nope."

"You are now. 08:00, front and center, bring lots of pens, you'll have a ton of paperwork to fill out."

She looks startled. "That's it? I've got the job?"

"You're a Probie. You've got a year to decide if you like the job for you, and to prove you deserve the job to me."

"Cool!" She smiles brightly at him.


	50. Pitfalls

Tony brings Bishop into the bullpen and introduces her, and Gibbs feels his heart freeze.

She's young. She's _really_ young. And blonde, and pretty, and innocent, and bubbly and cute and just, _shit_. Sure, she's dressed for an interview, so her hair's up and she's got a cream colored suit on, but… she just radiates cute and playful.

She's a problem waiting to happen.

She's a problem he's really hoping Tony's outgrown.

Really, _really_ hoping.

He smiles and shakes her hand and notices that Tony's introducing her as Bishop, which he thinks is good, but…

Shit. This could go so bad so fast, and bite Tony so hard in the ass he'll limp for the rest of his life.

Gibbs knew Bishop was a woman. That was clear from the resume. But his mental image of her was someone older, less attractive, less _cute_. Someone a whole lot more _Eleanor_. God, she's a puppy, so light and bubbly and eager to make everyone around her happy.

She's talking to Tim and Draga, getting acquainted, and Gibbs is just staring.

Tony catches the look, and Gibbs looks toward the elevator. Tony nods, wondering what Gibbs is seeing that he isn't. He can feel the worry coming off Gibbs but doesn't know what's setting it off.

"Bishop?"

She looks over to him, away from McGee. "Yes?"

"We're mostly coffee drinkers here. First one's on me. Next one's," he gestures to the group, indicating she's getting a whole round, "on you. What do you like?"

"Ohhh…" She thinks about it. "Half-caff macchiato with a shot of vanilla syrup and whipped cream."

Tony nods, burning that into his memory, and he and Gibbs go on the coffee run. Two seconds after the elevator doors close, he whacks the emergency stop.

"What's wrong?"

Gibbs stares at him, not sure how to even start saying this, because he knows this is going to be touchy. But… Just… _SHIT!_ "You can't be bending or breaking the sexual harassment rules if you're the Boss."

Because they do, generally, ignore them. They always treated them like a joke, did everything they could to get out of having to deal with them, and Gibbs knows he turned a blind eye to everything Tony dished out to Kate and Ziva, mostly because if they couldn't handle him, he knew they weren't tough enough for field work.

But Tony's the Boss now, and he can't pull that crap. If he does… Shit. And… in the more than ten years since they hired Ziva those rules went from something they all winked at to laws that had to be followed.

And Tony's reacting exactly the way Gibbs expects him to. He's staring at him, horrified, hurt, stammering, "I'm not…!"

Gibbs holds his hands up. "Just, listen, okay? Not your Boss, not right now. But as your friend, as a Dad, as someone who wants the best for you and wants you to succeed in everything you do, please, take this seriously. You cannot be crossing, bending, stepping on, or even getting near the line with her. And, if the stuff Penny says about her school is anything to go by, the line's about three miles closer than you or I think it should be, and none of these kids have any sense of humor."

"Gibbs…"

"Please. Get the regs, re-read them, and then go talk to Penny; she's going to have a much better idea of how someone Bishop's age understands this stuff. Because I know it's _not_ how we do."

Tony's looking stunned, hurt, and like someone's shining a light on the parts of himself that he doesn't like seeing, let alone anyone else seeing.

"I love Ziva."

Gibbs winces, that's a direction he wasn't thinking, but… Yeah, that's in play now, too. He was thinking about Tony making some sort of stupid joke or off color comment or… but not _that._ "I know you do. I know you're faithful to her, and I know you're going to stay faithful to her. I trust you on that. But… God, you make the wrong joke, or she catches you looking…" Tony appears unhappy at that, but Gibbs knows Tony's gonna look, he's married, not blind, and Bishop is well worth looking at. "You and I both got away with things with Kate because she would take it, part of proving she belonged in the boys' club. Ziva knew anything you dished out she could take and double down on. You don't know how Bishop understands this stuff, you're more than twenty years older than she is, and she's married, so anything you do may seem really creepy to her."

Tony's glaring at Gibbs. "What do you think I'm going to do?"

"I don't know, use her deodorant? Take your shirt off in the bullpen? Talk too loud with Draga about when you got laid last? I don't know! And that's why I'm worried. That stupid porn conversation you guys were having last month might be her idea of sexual harassment. Or… remember that time Borin was talking about playing softball left-handed and you made that comment about swinging both ways? First time you met Kate, she asked about sketching, and your example for scale was a model's cup size, I know you know that's out of bounds now, but…"

Tony's nodding, getting an idea of what sort of minefield this might be. "I'll re-read the regs."

"Good. Talk to Penny, too."

"Okay."

"Thank you."

Tony flicks the elevator back on, and it gets less than ten feet down before he hits the stop again.

"Did I just shoot myself in the ass?"

Now Gibbs isn't sure what the problem is, so he says, "Not if you keep your mouth in line."

"Not what I'm thinking."

"What are you thinking?"

He's thinking that, ten seconds ago, he'd been really insulted at the idea of the sexual harassment thing meaning him flirting or hitting on Bishop. That Gibbs was hitting him on something he was trying hard not to be. But he wasn't. And yeah, inappropriate jokes/comments is a possible issue.

But once Gibbs got off that idea of crossing more personal lines with Ellie, Tony got onto it. And he'd quickly shifted from feeling like he's a million years old and she's some new little puppy to noticing that Ellie Bishop is very attractive.

"I'm thinking as Ziva's Dad, you're gonna kill me for this."

"Right now, I'm your friend. And even in full on avenging Dad-mode, I'm not going to do anything to you for just thinking. And you haven't done anything yet, so talk to me, and let's not end up with Ziva's Dad putting together his sniper's rifle."

Tony flicks on the elevator. "Someone's going to want to use this eventually. Too cold for outside. Locker room's usually empty this time of day."

Gibbs nods, and off they go.

* * *

Tony does check to see that it's empty, and it is. Gibbs sits down on one of the benches and Tony paces between the lockers and the bench. He's not talking, just sort of moving back and forth, trying to get this right in his head, so he can say it to Gibbs.

He's not attracted to Ellie. She's cute, she's perky, she's pretty, but he's not feeling any spark for her. However… thinking about it... He can see a situation where he could. He can see it happening very easily, and it scares the shit out of him.

Every woman he's worked with, gotten close to, trusted his life to, he's fallen for. Adrenaline, the fight or flight chemicals pumping through your system, the chase, that soaring high of getting the bad guy, add that to a beautiful woman sharing it with you, and it's almost as good, and for him, often more intimate, than sex. Definitely more intimate than sex with anyone who wasn't Ziva or Wendy.

This might be a much bigger problem than he was anticipating. And worse, the net of help he depends on, people who keep him straight and narrow, they're all leaving.

"Tim's gone Monday. You're gone two Mondays after that. Ziva's leaving… whenever she leaves. Draga can't do it…"

Gibbs watches him walking around.

"She's leaving. She's going to go get pregnant, and have the baby, and she's going to change, and she'll be focused on it, and… I'll be here, but she won't be. Her being here keeps me in line. And I just hired my dad's hot secretary's body double."

Gibbs nods. He gets this. Just because you love your wife doesn't mean every other woman on Earth goes away. Doesn't mean you stop wanting. He knows that worries Tony, because they talked about it when they talked about him marrying Ziva.

He knows that love isn't always enough. And he knows that people are frail and do stupid things.

And he knows that Tony's actively scared of doing something stupid.

"You guys would keep me in line. _She_ keeps me in line. But you won't be here."

Gibbs nods at that, too. "Bishop going to do what you need her to?"

Tony gets that Gibbs is asking _did you just hire someone cute and decorative, or can she do the job_. "I think so. New job, new way of looking at the old job, but I think she'll do it, and be good at it. That's probably part of the problem, too. If she isn't good at it, I likely won't be interested. But she'll be good, she'll be working with me, all day, late nights, talking killers and terrorists, overnight trips to God knows where and who knows what cover IDs, and I'll go home and Ziva'll be talking diapers and teething."

"You're afraid Ziva'll be less interesting to you?"

Tony waffles on that, but he is afraid. "She's going to change."

Gibbs nods. "She is. So are you."

"My ninja's becoming a soccer mom."

Gibbs shrugs.

"I love the ninja. I fell in love with the ninja. I married the ninja. Me and her taking on the world, together, catching the bad guys."

"She's not dying, Tony."

"No… but… our life is."

Gibbs nods at that, too. Life as they knew it is coming to a close. Life as all of them know it is ending right now.

"And it's not like I'm looking at Bishop and thinking 'I want some of that.' I don't. And you suggesting it—"

"I wasn't…"

"It pissed me off anyway."

"Good."

"But she could…" That's not right. This is on him, not Bishop. "But I could find her attractive. Kate, Cassidy, Jen, Ziva, of course Ziva, always Ziva, EJ… Borin's the only woman we work with regularly that I've never been interested in."

"I know."

"The job's so intense and…"

"Tony, I _know._ Rule 12 didn't just come to me in a dream one day."

"Twelve involved your third marriage going down the crapper?"

Gibbs shakes his head. "That marriage was… It was never good, Tony. Jen didn't kill it. Desire for Jen didn't kill it. But wanting Jen, thinking that maybe, somehow I could have her. That screwed a lot of things up."

Tony nods. "For a long time, I thought twelve meant don't get caught."

Gibbs nods, he knows exactly what Tony did with twelve and how to get around it, and he knows how Tony got burned on Cassidy and EJ.

"When I was married to Shannon…" He's never come close to saying anything like this to Tony, but right now he thinks Tony needs to hear this. "I loved her more than anything in the world." Gibbs smiles sadly. "Still do. But, even with that… I'm not going to say I never looked. Not going to say I didn't think about it." And Gibbs' look gets across that some of those thoughts involved some pretty vigorous hand motions, too. "And there were nights I did extra rounds, took extra sentry duty, and made sure I had a buddy with me all night so I wasn't alone. Because the job is intense, and when they're with you, going through it, and home's far away and it's been a long time, and… And you know. You've felt it. But you do the rounds, you make sure you aren't alone, you call us for help if you need it, and we'll come. None of us are going to think less of you if you call at one in the morning because it's late and you've been on a case non-stop for two days, and she's telling you her back hurts and wouldn't a quick rub feel so good. That happens, you get the fuck away from her, you call, we'll be there. You do what you need to do to make sure you don't end up in a bad situation with her.

"That's love. That's being a man. That's knowing that what you have is worth more than what you can get." He stares at Tony, decides to go crude as hell, because right now, that's part of this. "There's pussy all over the goddamn world, and it's all yummy, and we all want it, and it's easy as hell to get. If anyone knows that, you do. But there's only one woman attached to a pussy that lights up your life and makes you glad to be alive. So you be a man, you be a husband, and you keep control of yourself, and if you get shaky you call for back-up and we get you through it."

Tony nods.

"That's being a good husband. But you've got to be a Boss, too. I don't have a great track record with this, but… You do whatever it is you have to not to see her as someone you can have. It was easy to see Abby as a daughter. We just clicked like that. After Ziva killed Ari, that slipped into place, too.

"But Kate had a dad. She didn't need me to be her father. She didn't want me to be her father. And… I wanted her so much. All the time those first few months. I had a girlfriend, but I still wanted her. She was so good at her job, and smart and strong and beautiful and…" Gibbs shakes his head at that. Three quarters of his interest in Allison Hart had been based on how much she reminded him of Kate. And right now he doesn't want to think about how much of his attraction to Rachel was Rachel or similarities to and memories of Kate. "But I was the Boss. And I'd already been down that road and it had been a disaster." Gibbs looks a bit embarrassed by this, but, it… Maybe worked is a bit of an overstatement, but it made it easier. "I finally started telling myself you two had a thing. I wasn't going to mess it up for you guys. I got it so deeply embedded in there, that…" He lets that trail off. Tony probably doesn't need to know about that… vision, fantasy, whatever that was. "It helped some. Your future girlfriend was off limits, so that was that." Gibbs can hear Penny yelling at him in his head on that, that he had an easier time dealing with Tony's claim on Kate than just shutting himself down. but he's thinking that isn't very important to this. "Bishop's married. You are. Use those rings as anchors. It might help."

Tony nods at that, and Gibbs knows this must be serious because he's not getting any ribbing on being attracted to Kate.

"You were Jen's Boss when…"

"Yeah." Gibbs rubs his eyes. "She was my first Probie, at least, first one as Team Leader. And Burley was trying to keep me in line, but it didn't work. I didn't want to be kept in line, and Jen really didn't want me in line. I married Stephanie as part of trying to keep myself in line, and you know how well that worked."

Tony sits down on the other end of the bench. "Not even sure what to think about that."

Gibbs shrugs.

"I mean, you couldn't do it. You can do anything…"

"I didn't want to do it. I put myself and Jen into a situation where it was going to get sticky. The only reason Burley didn't get sent into Paris is that I didn't want to share Jen. Say you do find yourself wanting Bishop, you gonna go on a two-month-long deep cover op, where your cover is couple-in-love with just her?"

"No."

"And that's the difference. When I wanted to do it, I did. Sure, there weren't a lot of beautiful women in Iraq, and they kept the female Marines away from us, but Colombia was a different story and so was Nicaragua. But that time, I knew I had something at home worth guarding, so I did it."

Tony sits quietly, thinking about it.

"It doesn't get easy. Your dick wants what it wants and the fact that your head and heart know it's a bad idea doesn't change things. But like I said earlier, I trust you. Ziva trusts you. I looked at Bishop and saw you saying something that horrified her, making a bad joke at the wrong time, maybe looking a bit too long or standing a bit too close, but that's it."

Tony nods. He looks at his watch. This is way too long for a "coffee run." "Let's get the drinks and get back there."

"Okay."

* * *

When they get back, Bishop grins at him, taking the pro-offered coffee. She takes a sip. "Perfect. McGee was telling us about going after Saleem and using the Caf-Pow trail to find him. That's one of the things I used to do. Just on a much, much bigger scale."

She's all smiley and perky and chatting with Ziva and Tim and Draga, and Tony watches, thinking, studying what he's feeling. He's not feeling any attraction to her. She's pretty, she's aesthetically pleasing, but... no spark, no craving. He looks a Bishop as she talks to Ziva, the way she's leaning toward Ziva, listening carefully, asking good questions, and he's pleased by that. She looks like she's going to make a good student, good addition to the team.

He looks at Ziva and sees his whole world standing there.

And right now, he's thinking, hoping, this is going to be okay.


	51. The Last Ride of the Four Musketeers

It's a series of endings.

Last day as an Agent.

Last day of the year. (That wasn't intentional, but it feels very right.)

Tim signs his name to a 445B2. His last piece of paperwork. (Well, his last piece as an Agent. There'll be tons when he gets downstairs.)

They head out to lunch; last time he straps his gun on to head out.

And while he knows this won't be his last meal with Tony, Ziva, Draga, and Gibbs, it is his last working one. Last one where they're all talking shop about the most recent case. No. That too, will happen again. Talking shop is part of down time. Last time he's part of talking shop, last time he's in charge of part of the case.

When they get back, he heads to HR. They take his current ID and shred it. (He was kind of hoping to keep it. It feels really, really odd to say goodbye to all of the marks of Special Agent Tim McGee.) He stands against the white background, smiles, and they shoot a new picture of him.

Five minutes later, he's holding a new id. Like Abby's it's designed to clip onto his clothing. (No, he doesn't have to have it on at all times, but they don't let you in the building if you don't scan in first.) He touches the picture and the words beneath it. Timothy McGee Director of Cybercrime.

He feels a thrill at that. A rush of heat and pride. But there's some sorrow there, too. Special Agent Tim McGee is gone. He's a memory now, and that's worth a bit of sad.

* * *

Back upstairs, he shows off the new ID, and they're all properly oohing and ahhing. But that's really only about three minutes of showing off followed by… packing up. He guesses that's the part that comes next.

After all, he didn't drag a stack of cardboard boxes into work today just for kicks.

So he gets to it.

He untacks the last picture and lays it on top of all the rest of his stuff. Surprising that it only took up three boxes. It feels like it should be more. Like… Like twelve years should matter more. Like they should take up more space.

But it's only three boxes.

He'll take them down on Monday. When he officially starts. (He's not going down to Cybercrime today. Today he's making sure Jenner has the time to do the same thing he's doing up here, saying goodbye.) For right now, he's got them tucked under the empty desk behind his.

He pats the desk one last time, fingers lingering over the smooth surface, and for a second he's almost wondering if they'll stick, if somehow Tony might have done one last run with the superglue. Keep him here that much longer. He almost wishes Tony had.

But they don't stick.

He didn't turn. "All yours, Draga."

"Thanks, McGee."

* * *

Then next bit is harder. He notices he's going slower and slower the closer he gets to Leon's office.

He's got the new ID, which means it's time to say goodbye to the old one.

"Mr. McGee," Vance says as he heads in.

Tim shakes his head. He knows that all the department heads are called by their title, Mr., Ms., Dr. but… nope. That's just wrong.

"That feels really odd. They're going to be calling me Boss or McGee, so, just McGee, please." That's when it hit that if Vance is calling him Mr. McGee, that means he outranks Jethro, and that's just… That's all of his heartstrings vibrating in a chorus of resounding NO!

Vance seems amused by that. Tim's not sure if he's amused by seeing the shades of Gibbs in him, or just recognizing how this kind of career jump feels. "Okay, McGee. You've got something for me?"

"Yes." He wears both his badge and his service pistol on his belt, and he took them both off. "One Sig Sauer P-228, serial number," he reads it off the gun, "and one service badge, number…" he rattles off his digits. Those he doesn't need to read, he knows them as well as his Social Security number. But they aren't his. Not anymore.

"Ready for Monday?" Vance asks with his amused smile.

"I think so, sir. Got a few plans in mind."

"Kind of plans I'm going to like hearing about?" Vance's eyebrow crooks up slightly.

"I certainly hope so. But, either way, they're going to happen."

Vance smiles at that. Tim realizes he's pleased to hear that it doesn't matter if he approves of the plans or not, they're going forward.

Vance stands and shakes his hand. "Congratulations, Mr. McGee." Tim knows that this is intentional, a mark of his new status, so he doesn't mention the Mr. again.

"Thank you, Director."

* * *

He heads down to the lab, and none of Abby's LabRats look even remotely surprised to see them head for the ballistics lab to talk privately.

"All wrapped up?" she asks.

"Yeah." He hands over his new ID.

"Ohh… Good picture." He hadn't looked at it enough to notice that, so he does.

"Yeah." It is a pretty good picture. Of course, he hadn't had his ID redone since 2012, so he looks a lot different in this shot.

"Director of Cybercrime? How fancy." She grins at him.

He nods. "Kind of silly really, I didn't bother to find out what the official title was." He sounds a bit off as he says that.

She wraps her arms around his neck, and kisses him gently. "You okay?"

He half-smiles, half-shakes his head, and flashes her a mostly confused look. "I should be, right?"

"Not if you aren't."

"It just feels… I don't know… Lost. It's not bad or anything… It's not scary."

She pets his face and kisses him again. "It's okay."

"Yeah, it is." He nods, as much convincing himself as her, and kisses her again, taking comfort, reassurance in touching her. The world spins, changes, the carpet gets yanked out under his feet, and his feet find new floors to inhabit, but this is true and real and there. Abby is here. Loving Abby is here. As he said in his vows, that's his bedrock, and the rest of the world can burn, as long as she's near, he'll be okay. "And it's going to be. And Monday is going to be awesome. But right now…"

"Yeah." She caresses his face, smiling softly at him, getting it. "Right now. You want to hide out down here with me a bit more?"

He nods, resting his head on her shoulder, enjoying having her pet his hair.

* * *

They'd had the 'real' celebration when it was official that Jenner had resigned and he was going to be the next Director (Really, how did he not manage to find out what the title of the job was?) of Cybercrime.

So, he's half-hoping, as he heads back up to the Bullpen, that today can sort of just fade away. Clock out at five like a normal paperwork day. Then home for a bit, get Kelly, and over to Ziva and Tony's for Shabbos.

But, half-hoping or not, he's pretty certain that when he heads back up there, there'll be some sort of big deal.

He doesn't feel like he can get out of the building today without Tony drawing attention to it.

He supposes that's appropriate. They've been a team for eleven years. Longest unchanged roster at NCIS. And today it ends. Two weeks from now, it really ends because Gibbs goes, too.

When he gets up there, Draga's got his stuff unpacked and set up. He's not sure if he spent longer with Abby than he intended to, or if Draga just doesn't have that much stuff. But for a second there's a visceral flash of _get the hell out of my desk_ , but it fades pretty quick. It's not his desk. Not anymore.

He sees Tony flash off a quick text, but nothing else is happening, so he heads to the empty desk and… And he doesn't know what to do now. There's half an hour until quitting time. But he's done.

No one's talking to him, and Draga won't look him in the eye, so, some sort of surprise is in the works.

And two minutes of just sitting around reveals it. The elevator bongs, and Jimmy and Ducky and Abby head in, wheeling in a pretty large computer shaped cake with Congratulations McGee! on it.

He stares at Abby and Jimmy, rather shocked they managed to keep it a secret, but they both grin at him.

He smiles back, and settles in to eat some cake, drink some champagne, and listen to some stories about his various exploits.

It's not unpleasant, just, odd. He usually does a really good job of not being the center of attention, but as the cake gets handed out, along with the booze and soda for people who are still on duty, more and more people wander over. Co-workers, colleagues, Penny and Breena and the kids all make it.

And they're all paying attention to him. Telling stories about him. Even Gibbs tells the story of the first case he was on. Tony's got at least three of them. Abby adds a few. And, he thinks he's handling it gracefully, holding Kelly, laughing at his own history, taking the compliments and praise nicely, no blush is sight, but, yeah, it's just odd. He feels almost outside of himself as it happens. Like he's watching it from afar.

Vance stops down, smiling at him, adds a few of his own stories, the redacted, don't involve any illegal activities versions of those stories. They're a bit less impressive that way, still it's probably not a good idea to admit hacking Mossad or the CIA or hunting down Bodnar when there are a ton of people around.

After two hours, it wraps up. Everyone's had some cake, said congrats, wished him well in Cybercrime, and told stories of how he'd saved the day.

Turns out there's no Shabbos celebration tonight. They're heading toward the diner for dinner, and then, because babies don't like late nights, home.

But as they're getting ready to leave, waiting for the elevator, Tony says to him, "Last time this ever happens." He's smiling, but there are tears in his eyes. "You did good, Probie."

"Thanks, Tony."

"C'mere." He hugs Tim, and after a moment he feels Ziva and Gibbs snuggle in, too. The rest of the family holds back, knowing this is for them, the core team. They break apart after a minute, all of them looking shaky, discretely dealing with teary eyes.

The elevator opens and the Four Musketeers walk through those doors for the last time.


	52. Boss

"You ready?" Abby asks as they pull into the parking lot.

He nods. "Ready."

"Kick ass and take names?"

He nods again, then wiggles his foot. "Boot shall prod buttock as often and with as much force as is needed to get these guys into shape."

Abby grins at that and kisses him. "You're gonna do great."

He sighs. He's been telling himself that all weekend long. He is going to do great. He's got big plans, little plans, and a bunch of in between ones, and it's time to go put them into place.

He kisses her, and squeezes her hand. She smiles at him. He takes a deep breath and lets it out, and then they get out of the car and head in.

* * *

For the last few months, Tim's been pondering what to do his first day as, apparently, Director of Cybercrime. He's talked to all of his Minions. He's got the beginning of a feel for them. They're starting to get a feel for him.

But he wants to make it absolutely clear that the status-quo-ante-McGee ended the minute Jenner left the building.

So they're taking a field trip.

To the range.

"Why are we doing this?" Of course the one asking is Stephen Manner.

"Teambuilding, Manner." Tim says crisply as the Minions all gather around him, ear protection around their necks, safety glasses on. "I know none of you are field agents. That's fine. But we are cops. It is our job to solve crimes and defend people. And if any of you ever need to defend yourselves or anyone else, I want you to be able to do it with something other than code."

He takes out his gun, (Personal piece, also a Sig. He carried for more than a decade, and he's not comfortable roaming about DC without a gun. He didn't realize how painfully naked he would feel on the ride home Friday night without his service piece, so that's just not happening again.) shows them how it works, explaining that yes, this is a loaded gun, when he's got a gun on him, it's loaded, and that it's in his desk when he's in the building and he carries when he's not in the building. Then he runs the target out to the full extent, and shoots a smiley face into it at 100 meters.

He brings it back in, and watches them all stare at it, wide-eyed, stunned. (Even Manner looks impressed, against his will.) The first time he was in Cybercrime they treated him like a rock star because he'd been a field agent and carried a gun. This time he's proving he can use it. "By the end of the year, you're all going to be able to do that, too. Handgun proficiency just got added to all of your to-do lists. We're geeks. That's fine. That's who we are, and we're going to be proud of it. But we're going to be the most dangerous geeks anyone has ever seen. We will code longer, harder, and better than anyone ever has or will, and if we ever need to, we'll back that up with physical force. Those of you who were here back in '12 remember what happened to James Hunt. For those of you who weren't, Hunt was one of us; he was undercover in the field. Our security was breached, his name was leaked, and he was tortured and killed, leaving a wife and six-year-old child behind. _Not_ happening on my watch. On my watch, you will _all_ be able to take care of yourselves, and you are _never_ going to be dangling in the wind out there alone."

They all look pretty impressed by that.

"So, step one, let's get you some guns."

For the most part they're pretty bad at it. Cheerful, having a good time, but by any shooting standard, they're pretty bad. A real gun is a whole lot different than a simulation of one. He got to know each of them better, and more importantly got to see how they reacted when given a task way outside of their expectations. For two thirds of his group, he's pleased with what he's seeing.

* * *

By the time they get back to the basement, his guys are loosening up a bit. They seem to be getting a little more comfortable with him, and, for the most part, appear to approve of his field trip.

Okay, they'd seen fun, approachable McGee. Over the last two months they'd seen curious McGee. With the coffee they'd seen considerate McGee.

Time to bring out the hard-ass, and as he told Abby, apply boot (Technically, today it's a loafer. Unlike Tony he almost never wears boots to work. Of course, also unlike Tony, all of his boots are on the Doc Martin side of things.) to buttock.

Right now Cybercrime is a collection of desks in nice, straight lines, divided by cubicles. It's very tidy, very organized. And Tim has nothing against organized, he prefers organized, but this flavor of organized is not good for brainstorming, it's not good for working as a team, and it's certainly not good for how he wants his team to work. His office, in specific, and the basement, in general, is also woefully lacking in space to conference with 13 people.

First thing tomorrow, they're rearranging furniture. But for now, he's got them in a semi-circle in front of the coffee maker, desk chairs all around.

He remembers Gibbs telling him that most men just need a gentle whack to the pride to get them moving in the right direction. And he's about to apply said whack.

"Everyone comfy?" They've all drug their chairs out, gotten drinks, and settled in to see what he was going to do next. No one suggests he isn't ready, so Tim twists his chair around, straddles it, folds his arms on the back rest, facing them, and continues on, "In the last six months, I've hacked all of your systems. I got your personal computers at home, I got your work systems, I got your phones, and I did it multiple times." He sees signs of anger at that, some alarm, and a few of the brighter ones are starting to look a little sick. "It was a test. I wanted to see how good your security was. I wanted to see how aware of threats you were. And I wanted to see what you'd do if your systems were compromised." As soon as the word test fell off his lips ten of them start looking very nervous. Good, they should.

"Six of you failed. Completely and utterly. You did not notice you'd been hacked. Your security was sloppy and your safeguards insufficient.

"Four of you passed, barely. You noticed you'd been hacked, tightened your security, and didn't think twice about it.

"Two of you passed the test. You tightened your security, tracked the attack, found that it came from me. One of you talked to Vance. One of you talked to me.

"None of you had a system I couldn't get into, which means none of you aced it."

He sees ten of them blanch. Six of them look sick. Ngyn and Manner, the two who passed, are looking uncomfortable, too. Ngyn's taking this a lot harder than he had hoped for, she looks ready to hang herself because he was able to get into her system, and Manner's between annoyed and outright angry.

All in all Hard Ass McGee appears to be working.

He makes sure to take a few seconds to hold eye contact with everyone who isn't Ngyn or Manner and then says, "To say I was disappointed by those results is an understatement. You are Cybercrime. One of your primary jobs is to defend against cybercriminals. If I had meant business, I could have crippled all of your personal systems. More importantly, if I had meant business, I could have crippled NCIS on your watch. From what I can tell, the only reason that hasn't happened yet is because NCIS is such a small institution that no one knows we exist." He decides mentioning that no one's been able to get through the wall he built around NCIS after Hunt died is counter-productive to the mood of abject terror he's trying to instill right now.

"After almost all of you failed my first test, I decided to go and check over all of your resumes; I rechecked your references and transcripts. I know, that once upon a time, you were all top-notch talent." Okay, that's not exactly true. But they were all in the top quarter of talent, and he's trying to add a little pep talk to his slap to the pride here. "What I do not know is why all of you stopped being top-notch talent, and why only two of you even remember what top-notch talent even looks like.

"I know one other thing, the only people who are staying on this team are the top-notch talent.

"As of today, you just became Probies again. We'll talk one on one today and tomorrow about what I'll expect from each of you. But one thing is true, only two of you were even in the neighborhood of what I'm going to expect from you going forward.

"I wasn't kidding at the range. We're geeks. And we are going to be the _best_ team of geeks anyone has ever seen. We are going to redefine what it means to be a Cybercrime operation. Right now we sit here, wait to find out that someone has broken the law, and then go after them. Not anymore. We are going to be hunters, searching for the problems before they become apparent. We're not just going to clean up messes, we're going to prevent them. Now, all of you back to your desks. Start packing your stuff up." Some of them look terrified at that, and it hits him that they may think he's doing a mass firing. "Tomorrow we're rearranging everything so we can work as a team." And he sees some relief cross six faces. "You've been off doing your own things for too long. We're rebuilding so we can work with each other. Meanwhile, I'll be dropping by to talk to you one on one about what I expect out of you for the next year."

Twelve sets of eyes just stared at him, but no one moved.

"Okay, speaking of what I expect, the correct answer right now is 'On it, Boss' or 'Yes, Boss' then you all get up and do what I've told you to."

Ten forced-sounding versions of "On it, Boss" echoed through the basement as the Minions began to move. Tim made note of the two who didn't say it. Ngyn, terminally shy, and Manner, who was probably horrendously annoyed at this whole thing.

* * *

Talking to everyone went, for the most part, smoother than he was expecting. Apparently a judicious application of hard-ass did indeed soften people up nicely.

Unfortunately a judicious application of hard-ass did not speed up physical plant. So, after being told that there was no possible way that they could get new light bulbs any time before February, Tim heads to the supplies cabinet, finds the damn light bulbs and a ladder, and shocks the hell out of his team by replacing them himself.

"What are you doing?" Hepple asks. (Though he can feel eleven other sets of eyes watching as he sets up the ladder below one of the dark lights.)

"Leading by example. This," he points to the lack of lights, "is a problem. Physical Plant says they can't get here until February, so I am fixing the problem myself instead of just ignoring it until someone else can deal with it."

Hepple nods at that, looking like he approves, and goes back to his cubicle.

By the time Tim's done, they can all see easily and the basement is suddenly looking significantly less dungeonish. (And with more light it is clear that it's also in need of a new coat of paint and the janitorial staff has been slacking off. There really shouldn't be cobwebs in the corners.)

And of course, it's after he's done that Manner drifts by and says, "We had so few of them to cut down on the heat and glare. They get really hot and make it hard to see the screens."

"We're moving around tomorrow, so we'll find spots that don't cause too much glare. As for heat… Physical plant says they can get here in February, so when they do, we'll upgrade to LEDs. There's no reason for us to be stumbling around in the dark down here."

Manner doesn't seem impressed, but he drifts back toward his cubical, which he may or may not have been packing up.

* * *

That ate up pretty much the whole first day. He was putting the ladder back when the clock hit five. He knows they usually leave at five, so he's curious as to whether or not anyone will be there when he gets back.

They are.

"Okay," He gestures and they all drift forward again. He takes the white board he had written _What kind of coffee do you like?_ on and tacks it to the wall outside of his office.

"Last of today's changes. Come Monday we're on twenty-four seven. Crime doesn't just happen on a nice, tidy nine to five schedule. So, names on the board, write down whatever hours you'd like to work best. I don't care when they are, as long as there are fifty of them a week." He sees Manner about to chime in, "And yes, that fifty hours includes your lunches and breaks. Actual working time will still be forty hours, though we're going to be having a chat about overtime and comp time in the not wildly distant future.

"You don't have to decide what hours you want tonight. Go home, talk with your families, figure out what times will work best, stick some hours up there by Friday end of work. For times I don't have a lot of coverage, we'll use the same sort of on call system we have upstairs, skeleton crew rotating through and one or two of you on call if there's a rush/someone calls in sick.

"All right. That's today. Tomorrow we're rebuilding the office and going over the new vision for Cybercrime.

"Wednesday, we get back to work."

This time he hears a collection of variations on the theme of 'On it, Boss,' as they all wander off, some to fill in hours on the whiteboard, (He makes a mental note to get a big one to stick in the center of his soon to be conferencing area. Yes, there will be upgrading as soon as he gets his hands on his budget and requisition forms, but for right now, he feels like he can spare the pocket money for a big whiteboard. Plus, they're just always good to have around.) most to grab their gear and head home for the night.

* * *

With everyone gone, Tim heads into his office for the second time ever. He got in in the morning, put his boxes on the desk, and then turned right around, headed out, waited by the coffee maker, and got everyone together to explain their field trip.

He stands in the door, looking around. He's got an office. Of his own. All his own.

And while he's sure that Manner had already been in to measure for curtains (The front and left walls are both glass with vertical shades.) he hadn't paid much attention to the idea of an office.

Right now, it's a moderately sized room (twelve by ten) with a desk (Big desk, more than enough room for two monitors, keyboard, writing space, pictures… It's at least half again the size of his desk upstairs.) desk chair, two book shelves on the back wall, with two file cabinets between them, a blank wall to his right, and two more guest chairs along the left wall.

So, right now it's really empty.

Kind of odd that there's no computer in there, what with the whole it's the office of the Director of Cybercrime, but there's also a packet of paperwork for him to fill out on the desk, so he's hoping that there's something in there about how he gets a computer for himself.

He'll get to them soon enough.

He's just standing in there, looking around. He figures tomorrow, when everyone else is setting up their new work stations, he'll set up his as well.

But he does put his pictures up. That helps it feel a bit more like his.

"Hi."

He looks over his shoulder from putting the skull picture on the corkboard between his book shelves and above the filing cabinets to see Abby standing in his doorway.

"Nice," she says, grinning at his space.

She touches his door, fingers tracing over the small black and gray plastic name tag that reads, Timothy McGee Director of Cybercrime. "A real door?"

He shrugs. "Looks like you get all the fancy toys." With the exception of the main lab door, all of hers are sliding glass.

"Probably not much chance of any sort of chemical gas leak down here."

"I'd imagine it's pretty small."

She's looking at the blinds, fiddling with the plastic wand that opens and closes them, smiling, and then turns to him. "You know, your desk will never, ever again be that empty or clear."

Right now, the only thing he's got on it is a box of his stuff and the stack of paperwork. So he nods. He can't imagine it will ever be this empty in here again.

"And… as of… tomorrow, the next day… you'll have them working twenty-four, seven right?" By 17:10 or so the Minions were out of the office. So, he is, currently, in possession of a mostly empty office in a deserted Cybercrime basement.

"Monday. We shift to full time on Monday." He's starting to guess where this is going, and a grin is spreading across his face, as well. They've certainly christened her office, might as well do his…

"So… this is a rare opportunity, then." She's facing him, wicked smile on her face, but her back is to the door to his office, she hooks her foot onto the door and kicks it closed. With a snick, it does. One more click and it's locked. Takes a few twists, but the vertical blinds all shut.

He sets the box on the floor, paperwork on top of it, and closes on her, pulling her against him. "Very rare."

"Excellent." Her arms wrap around his neck, and she feels him lift her, and then set her on his desk.

He kisses her, wet and soft, lots of explicit promise from his tongue.

She's moaning quietly, a soft breathy sound that he knows well and loves, as her hands find his belt.

"Quick?" he asks.

"Heather expects us back usual time," she says between kisses.

He nods, thinking that means they've got fifteen minutes, nibbling her collar bone, hands trailing up her legs, noticing that she's got a skirt on today. His fingers brush her pussy, skirt and a thong. He smiles at her, seeing the glee in her eyes. She definitely planned this for today.

Her legs cross around his hips, keeping him close and snug, while her hands unfasten his belt and jeans. "Been thinking about this all day," she says nibbling his bottom lip, unbuttoning his shirt, rubbing her hands and lips over his chest.

He pulls her head up, kisses her, shoving her skirt out of the way, making sure her lab coat is pushed back enough. "God, I love you so much!"

"You mean you haven't been thinking about this?"

He shakes his head, and then groans as she pushes him back a step, pulls his dick out of his boxers, and bends forward to kiss it, lips wet and soft, tongue playing on the tip.

She jacks him slow and steady with a wet hand. "You mean, all day today, you've been thinking about work…"

"I'm not anymore," he says through gritted teeth, watching her hand slip over his dick.

"Good."

He pushes her back a bit on the desk, so she's lying down, hips on the edge, and drags the thong to the side, giving her pussy a good long, wet, sucking, licking kiss. Then reaching back, he grabs his desk chair, pulling it to sit on, and placing each of her feet on one of the arms.

"Good?"

She moans as his mouth dips to her pussy again, body rocking up to meet him, and that's all the confirmation he needs.

He's licking hard, fast, fingers thrusting. There's nothing teasing about this. Sure, he'd like to lay her out and feast on her here, spread out on his desk like his own private, kinky Boss and Secretary porno, but… But it's not happening, not tonight.

Though he thinks she's on the same page, because he's hearing her say, "Oh, God, Yes, oh sir! Yes! Please, sir, get me off, sir!"

She's wet and eager, probably really has been thinking about this all day, and it's only a matter of minutes before words slip into deep breaths and high pitched moans, and just as she's cresting, as her body's pulling tight and her fingers are clenched on the far edge of his desk, he stands up and slips into her, setting her off, reveling in the wet, tight, pulsing grasp of her body on his. Doesn't take him long to follow her, few fast, hard, deep thrusts, hoisting her legs up, around his waist, arching into her at full out speed, and then he's shuddering and twitching, glowing with this.

For a moment, he rests there, head on her chest, bent over his desk, the heels of her boot scratchy on the small of his back. When his heart stops pounding, and her breathing calms down, he kisses her gently on the throat, feeling her lightly stroking his shoulders.

He stands up, about to step back when he notices a snag in their plan. He's in a very empty office. Very empty. And the nearest bathroom is fifty feet away.

"No tissues."

She ducks her hand into her lab coat pocket and pulls a few out. "Don't let it be said that I'm ever unprepared."

He kisses her, grinning, and in a minute, they're wiped up, and his shirt's buttoned and tucked in again.

"You ready to head home?" she asks, and he takes the paperwork and nods.

They're in the elevator before he asks, "You ever going to do that again?"

"You want me to? I don't think you'll ever have an empty office again."

"True…" He's on the fence, because his door does lock, and he does have the blinds, so… as long as they were quiet, they probably could get away with it.

She sees him thinking about it and says, "One day, when you're not expecting it, I'm going to head in for an 'important conversation,' and then I'm going to gag you, and ride you in your office chair."

His eyes close at that, and he bites his lips. Then he kisses her, hard, once more.

The door to the elevator is just about to open. She gently pats his dick, and then, just as they slide apart says, "So, how did your first day go?"

And, as they walk toward her car, he tries to answer.


	53. The Rules

Tuesday morning, he's the first one in. It's intentional. First and foremost, he drops off the paperwork he filled out last night, detailing what he wants in his computer set up. Supposedly IT will deliver it sometime today. He figures the earlier they get it, the sooner he'll be up and running, too.

Next up, back to Cybercrime. He steals two cubical dividers, hooks them to each other, and sets them up with his newest additions to Cybercrime, two of the biggest whiteboards Target sells.

Then he starts to sketch.

He's breaking Cybercrime into seven sections, four of which will be huddled around a central conference area. He's hoping to get a good long table, a bunch of whiteboards, and several plasmas for the conference area. He wants them able to talk big jobs there, about what everyone is working on, and that area should also be where jobs get picked up and assigned.

Each of those four areas will be three desks set facing each other, the dividers used to provide some level of walls, but not shut everyone off. Like how the dividers were used in the bullpen. He's setting them up into hackers, programmers, database, and code wizards. He wants them working in teams based on skill set. Sure, big problems are going to require multiple people from different specialties, but at least to start, this'll get his people into teams.

He doesn't see anything, anywhere, set for dealing with hardware. So that's the sixth section. In the far back, near the filing cabinets (He's not sure where they're going, but not down here, not anymore.) he's going to be putting workbenches and tools. Cybercrime should be able to deal with actual, physical computers if need be.

Last section is going up by the coffeemaker. All he's got for it now is an empty space. Once it's full, there'll be at least a few sofas, a big screen TV, a few game systems, some games, and a decent array of drinks and snacks. He's going to expect them to work hard, so he needs a place for cooling down and playing, too.

* * *

The Minions all make it in by 08:00. Whatever else is true about them, they're punctual.

He shows them his floor plan, and what he's hoping to do, and then, and they were surprised by this, he says, "Okay, before we start moving things around, double check the plan, talk to each other, and me, and if you've got better/different ideas, let's hear them."

They do. Looking it over. Chattering among themselves.

Ngyn says, very quietly, not looking at him or anyone else, "What if we like a quiet place to work?"

He looks at his plan. That's a good point. If you need solitude… "How about a line of three traditional cubicles on the east wall? I'll see if I can get the extra gear. You'll all have your main stations, but those'll be for when you want to work on one computer as a team, or when you want to be on your own?"

They seem okay with that, but Ngyn isn't looking happy. Tim makes a mental note to go chat with her about this whole _teamwork_ concept, and how the rest of Cybercrime has to know what she's up to.

"Anything else?"

More chattering, but no one came up with anything.

"Okay. Today, we're moving stuff and getting settled into our new places. I'll be getting my stuff set up, too." Then he headed into his office to set up his own stuff and watch how his twelve Minions would do when given a specific end goal, but no guidance on how to get to said end goal.

* * *

He had taken the stack of paperwork home, and gone through it. That was a good thing, because how he got his own computer set up was in there.

Fortunately IT works a lot faster than Physical Plant.

He'd filled out the forms for what he needed, handed them in, and in only four hours, he was looking at the system of… okay, not his dreams. His dream system is a lot snazzier, but he's also staring at what is likely the best set up in the building. He doesn't think the Director of IT has this much computing power on his desk. (Of course, the Director of IT also doesn't _need_ this much power.)

It's not the bleeding edge of tech, but it's the best stuff IT had to offer him, and it's a few light years past what he had on his desk upstairs. It's on par with what's on his desk at home.

* * *

Between setting up his own stuff and filling out requisition forms for what he hopes to add ( _Thank you Jenner for the sixty thousand extra in budgetary operating capital._ Tim's not going to use it all. He wants to make sure he's got a 30k overtime cushion, but that other 30k will get him a lot closer to his goal of what Cybercrime should look like and have than he is now.) he keeps looking out to see how the move is going.

By three hours in, when they were all still kind of milling around, having successfully taken the dividers down (because they can all easily lift and move the dividers, and the chairs were pushed out of the way, but all of the heavy lifting was still sitting around, he heads out again.

"All of you, over here."

And they come to him. He sits on the nearest desk and pats it. "These weigh, what? Ninety pounds, hundred and fifty? They're heavy, right?"

They all nod.

"So, is that why you're all just sort of standing around? Because you can't move your own desks?"

More nodding.

"What I'm considering the biggest problem with Cybercrime is that none of you are working together. That stops now. There are twelve of you. This desk is no big deal at all, if you move it together. It's a massive pain in the ass on your own. So, you all know the plan. Traditional lunch time is in an hour. I want all the desks in place by then. When you get back from lunch, the rest of the afternoon is about getting everything set up again. We hit the ground running tomorrow."

He hops off the desk, hoping they can team on their own if pointed in that direction, dreading they'll need more help that what he's already provided.

* * *

When he heads out for lunch, he does see that all the desk have been rearranged and three of the dividers are up in their new places.

_Good._

* * *

By the end of Tuesday, Tim had twelve Minions, a completely rearranged floor plan, and though it wasn't yet filled with furniture, a conference space.

He gathers them together and starts with the speechifying, hoping this is the last time he's got to do this.

"Okay, I've talked to each of you, and you know things are going to be very different around here soon. Some of you are going to decide to stay, some of you won't, and here's the last bit of information you need for figuring it out:

"My team, my rules. There's seven of them and they're easy:

"One: Never be unreachable. At least one member of the team will _always_ know a way to get ahold of you. I don't care who it is, and I don't care what you are doing, someone will always be able to reach you. This is a two way street, someone will always be able to reach me, too. You will all have my home address and number, as well. If you need me, my door is always open.

"Two: Never screw your team. If you cannot have every other member of the team's back 100%, I will accept your resignation right now. If you are worried about someone else, come talk to me. We'll get it worked out, but if it can't be, then walk away. If you can't work with someone on the team, I will not hold it against you if you want to leave. I will hold it against you if you stick around and screw one of your teammates.

"Three: Verify. We're gonna wade through a lot of crap here. We are going to go to the front lines of the cyber battlefield and we'll never be entirely sure what is going on, so we verify. Check it once, check it twice, make sure what you think is happening is happening.

"That leads into Four: Trust your instincts. If it feels hinky, it probably is. See number three. Let me know what you think is going on, let your teammates know. If you're too close to it, we'll be your second and third eyes. But if it feels wrong, let us all know so we can swing into action and beat whatever it is into submission. Even if you think it's stupid, even if you can't back it up, tell us. No one ever gets laughed at for telling the rest of us what sort of feel they're getting on a project. Your subconscious notices things you conscious doesn't, and it tries to let you know what you're missing with that little voice in the back of your mind. Listening to that voice saves lives in the field, so we're not gonna ignore it down here.

"Five: When you're on the case, be on the case. When you're off, be off. You need downtime. Make sure you get it. We cannot be the best if we're burnt. Yes, someone needs to be able to get ahold of you at all times, but you're not getting called in on your off time unless the world is ending. Your downtime will be held sacred, but I'm also going to expect you to work the case until its done. You won't have to be physically here to do it. I've got a wife and a six-month-old daughter, both of whom I intend to see every day, so if I need to, I'll work from home, and so will you.

"Six: If you screw it up, fix it first, apologize second.

"Seven: You will screw up. I will, too. If you can't fix it on your own, own up to it and get help. Screwing up is never unforgiveable sin, trying to hide it and not getting the help you need to fix it, is. Most of the time, you screw up, it'll be a small problem, and it'll be an even smaller one with all of us on it. Screw up, hide it, wait until you're in so deep over your head you can't possibly get out on your own, and that small problem becomes a massive one that burns all of us. Bad plan, don't do it.

"That's it. McGee's rules. If you can work by them, if you want to be part of what will be the finest Cybercrime division in the US, then stick around. If you want to keep coasting around with a cushy federal job with nifty benefits and easy hours," he points toward the elevator, "don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out."


	54. Boss of McGee

Wednesday morning. First day of the new layout.

08:00 everyone is there, front and center, at the new conference table (Showed up last night. Light bulbs they won't give him until February, but a decent sized table and fourteen chairs, that took two hours. He's got no idea what sort of priority list Physical Plant has.) waiting.

He's still making due with the whiteboards. Big screen plasmas are still a ways out and the digital touch screens he's hoping for are waiting for a quarter where he's got more free money in his budget.

"Until now, you've had a system where jobs come in, and each of you took whatever came next, worked it until it was done, then grabbed the next one. We're not doing that anymore. Ten of you are on current jobs, right?"

Twelve heads nod.

"Okay. I want each of you explaining what you are doing. Put it up on the whiteboard. Then we're going to play job swap and team building. I'm sure some of these actually are single person jobs. But a lot of them aren't. By the time we're done with this, all twelve of you will be on active cases, and we'll have a working template in place for how jobs get divided."

He looks to Connon, the tech closest to him and hands him a dry erase marker. "You're up. What are you on?"

"Case for the New Orleans branch…" Tim's listening him explain the case, thinking along, seeing this is a database case. They need to build one, putting facts in, and then use it to find the patterns. Pretty straight forward, not difficult, just time consuming. He's thinking about that when it hits him, _New Orleans branch?_

His guys are doing cases for the New Orleans' branch? He's temped to ask about that, but they're actually working with each other pretty well, two of the Minions offering good suggestions for how to deal with the data, because Connon isn't a database guy, so he doesn't want to break that up. He'll ask later.

Connon gets done, and Tim says, "Trevet, Manner, good ideas for dealing with this. Congrats, Connon's case is yours now." Connon writes their names next to the case and then hands the dry erase marker to Trevet, who had been sitting next to him.

Trevet isn't looking thrilled about that, and as he explains what he's on, Tim can see why. Connon's job is big and slow. Trevet's current one is a monster. And doing both at once would be a pain in the ass. It's twenty million, at least, lines of code that have to be slipped through to find the way to sneak into a program, but the more he explains what he's on, the happier Ngyn and Dume look. His Code Wizards are ready to hop on this.

So, Trevet hands off his project, and hands the dry erase marker to Patil, who explains what he's on.

And on and on it goes. They get the jobs rearranged and, listening to what everyone is doing, for whom, and why, and Tim's come to a conclusion: Cybercrime has changed since he was down here last. At least, from the sound of it, they're now handling all the cases for anyone who doesn't have a tech on hand, which appears to be every one of the smaller outposts in the western hemisphere and all of the Agents Afloat in the Atlantic.

Once they're all assigned, and they're getting ready to start to work again, he stops them for a last second. "Okay, last thing. My job. Today, I'm reworking the job system. Let me make sure this is right. Anyone who wants our attention logs onto our intranet, write up a job ticket, and then you guys grab it?"

They all nod.

"Okay. That's what I'm on. We're redoing the interface. By the time I'm done with this, the system will triage as well as send us cases. They'll not only tell us what work they need done, but it'll be ranked by how urgent it is. You guys won't be slogging away on thefts while a kidnapping lingers in the background anymore."

They seem to like that.

"Once I'm done with it, cases will come up in order of importance. Whoever's on deck takes the next case and diagnoses it. Figures out what it is, what specialties are needed for it, and then flag it to whomever it's a best fit for. So, say, like what we've got Trevet and Manner on, it's a database case. Trevet, Manner, and Patil will all get flagged on the case, then the three of them will talk about it, come up with a plan of attack, split it up, and get it done. Once it's done, they'll each go back and grab another case. Sound like a plan?"

Nodding and 'Yes, Boss' hits his ears.

"Great. I'll have it done by this afternoon, and then you guys are going to test it. If it's good, I'll send the beta live tomorrow."

They look surprised at the speed he wants to move at, but they don't argue with him. Everyone breaks up and off they go.

* * *

He notices, as he's coding away, reworking the Cybercrime interface, that he's getting some emails he wasn't expecting.

As of this point, he's had three different Cybercrime Team Leaders, (Okinawa, Pearl Harbor, and Rota) all send him pleasant emails introducing themselves, explaining what they're working on, how their teams work, and how they used to work with Jenner.

He sends them polite emails back, happy to get to know them, explaining that he's looking forward to working with them, too.

Then he does more coding and doesn't much think about it.

* * *

He got the first letter of resignation that afternoon.

He wasn't dismayed to see it, either. Bergener wasn't happy about the range, really wasn't happy about getting hacked, was fuming at being told that she needed to shape up quite a bit to get to the level he wants his guys at, and didn't seem to like this new system, either.

She's exactly the kind of person he wants to see the back of, and in two weeks, he will.

That's one open desk, and he knows who he wants to fill it. He just hopes she's still available.

He kept her contact information, and pulls it up.

"Hello?" Same voice, she still sounds shockingly young.

"Catherine Howard?"

"Yes."

"Hi. This is Tim McGee, you may not remember me, I interviewed you for a position at NCIS."

He felt the pause, then she placed him. "I remember you. What can I do for you Agent McGee?"

"Are you still looking for a job, or feel like getting a better one?"

"A better one?" she sounds intrigued.

"Probably. Where are you now?"

"Homeland Security."

He nods, she would have been a good fit there.

"I'm running the NCIS DC Cybercrime Division now, and I'm rebuilding it from the ground up. At Homeland you're one of what, three hundred techs?"

"Something like that."

"Give notice. Come with me. There'll be thirteen of us, and by the time next year is done Homeland will be asking us for help when they get stuck."

"You sound pretty sure of yourself."

"I am. What could you do with a smallish team of very talented people and an awfully open-ended mission statement, let alone with a Boss who wants you spending no more than thirty percent of your time on the paperwork?"

She sounds very eager as she says, "A whole lot."

He's quiet.

"I've got to give two weeks' notice."

Tim smiles. "Then I'll see you in fifteen days."

* * *

It was one thing to say he wanted his guys spending no more than thirty percent of their time on paperwork, it was a whole other thing to deliver on that.

Upstairs, the break down is somewhere along the lines of forty percent of their time in the field dealing with criminals, ten percent on court related work, and the rest is paperwork.

Down here…

Okay, not much in the way of court time. From the looks of it, his guys rarely see the inside of a courtroom, probably because no lawyer in his right mind wants to spend hours digging through tech specs the average juror couldn't make heads or tails of if his life depended on it.

No… as he's looking through what they do, (He sees confirmation that they are indeed handling the casework for every Field Office with fewer than four people, which works out to about thirty offices, and for twenty more Agents Afloat.) close to ninety percent of their guys plea bargain out or plead guilty, and the ones that don't end up in cases where the lawyers try not to do much with the tech work.

Still, looking at the paperwork… God, they've got to be running close to sixty percent of their time filling out forms.

There's got to be a way to streamline this.

He steps out of his office and heads over to Ngyn's desk.

She's got her headphones in, bopping away to something as her fingers fly over the keyboard. He reads over her shoulder, making sure she's not actively coding, (nope, more paperwork) before interrupting.

"Hey."

She jerked at the sound of his voice and stammered through, "Boss?"

"May I?" he snags one of the chairs from the conferance table, pulls it over, indicating he'd like to sit down.

"Uh… sure." She's blushing and not looking directly at him.

He settles in. "I'm looking for ways to battle the paperwork dragon. I was wondering if you could take me through it."

"Boss?"

"We don't have 5440s or D-13-67s, or Internal Tracking 44-Cs, upstairs. What is all of this? Why are we doing it?"

"They want to know everything we do, how we do it, and why."

"Everything?"

"Just about."

"Why?"

She thinks about that for a long minute, looks at him, like she's testing him, and then looks away. "They just do."

"Who's they?"

She shrugs.

"Okay. So, you fill these out, hit print…" That part's killing him, they're still using actual paper down here, though, in that they're filling out the forms on the computer, they're three steps ahead of the Field Teams. "…give them to me, and then what?"

The look on her face seemed to be saying, _Isn't it your job to know that?_

"Like I said, we don't have these upstairs."

"I think you file them?"

He looks in the direction of the filing cabinets. He can't see them, but he knows they're there. "Great. So, basically you spend more time reporting what you're doing than doing what you're doing?"

She nods. He makes a mental note to ask legal if they actually need to have physical copies of all of this crap sitting in a file somewhere, or if he can just warehouse electronic copies.

He looks back at the form she's got up on her screen. "You keep putting the same information into the same blanks over and over?"

"Pretty much."

"This the kind of thing where if there was some sort of master database for each case that could then fill the forms out for you, it'd save a lot of time?"

She thought about that for a minute, too. "Probably."

"Okay." He was standing up, getting ready to add building a database for this to his to do list when something hits him, he's the _Boss_. He doesn't have to build this. He's got people he can delegate this task to. It's a rather novel sensation to realize that the tech problem he's encountering is not one he has to personally solve himself. In fact, given the talent pool in front of him, it's better off that he doesn't actually solve this one, because while he can handle a database, it's not his specialty. "Come join me in the center." He raises his voice, "Hey, conference time. Everyone in the center!" He really needs a call to arms, some sort of _Gear Up_ for the Minions.

He snags a few markers for the whiteboard and begins writing:

_Master Case Database:_

_Takes info as you work_

_Fills out forms for you_

_Accessible by all of us_

_Tracks casework_

_Shows who did what_

_Electronic signature_

_Stores basic forms, print them out only if you need them._

By the time he's finished that everyone else is around them.

"From what I can see, we're wasting way too much time on paperwork down here. So, that's gonna stop. We're going to build a database that'll take information from our computers as we work, store it, and then fill in the forms for us, so all we've got to do is fill in whatever specialized blanks there are, print it out, sign it, and then go send it off to collect dust.

"Manner, Trivet, and Patil… You're the database specialists, right?"

Three heads bob up and down.

"Hepple, Jonas, Chang, you're my programmers, right?"

More nodding.

"Good. You're gonna build it. Roger, Ngyn, Connon, you three are going to test it when the alpha version is done. Allen, Soth, and Sturm, you're going to test the patched up version.

"All twelve of you are going to add ideas to this whiteboard. What does this thing need to do so that when you get to the end of a case all you do is hit print, and then all your paperwork comes out nice and tidy, waiting for your signature?

"The six of you who aren't building, you're taking up the slack while the two development teams work.

"Two weeks I want us on a beta version, which we're all going to work with, probably for a month, and then move onto a production model."

"You want a beta version in two weeks?" Manner asks, an expression between stupefaction and rage on his face.

"Yes. Was I unclear?"

Manner is still glaring at him, beyond angry at what he considers a ridiculously inappropriate request. " _Two weeks?_ You're talking about a system that would take any other team a year to get into place. A year if all they did was work on it."

"Door's over there" Tim points to the elevator. "If you can't or won't do it, Manner."

"No one can do this," Manner spits out.

"Are you resigning?"

"No! I am telling you that you are asking us to do something impossible. We're playing catch up from two days of furniture moving, you've got us all on new cases, you want us testing a new job system, we're already past swamped and now you want us to build an entirely new system in two weeks. It's impossible."

Tim smiles at him, eyes sharp. Manner might be the only one feeling secure enough to say it, but he's fairly sure that at least a few others have to be thinking it, too. So, time for more Hard-Ass, and also an example of what he's going to expect them to be doing down here.

"Get used to it, Scotty. We've been limping around on a rusty warp core for way too damn long. Jenner might have been fine with just getting the job done, but he's gone, and I'm here. And just getting the job done doesn't cut it anymore. Now, you gonna do it, or sit there and complain about it?"

"Just the requisitions alone-"

Tim cuts him off. "Code it yourself or use open source software. You're right, this is impossible if we try to get NCIS to _buy_ us a database to work with. That's why I didn't tell you to go _shopping_ for one. I told you to _build_ one. Mongo is good. Data X is better. And I'm sure that if you spent this much time actually doing some research you could find something even better."

"But-"

"My office, Manner. Sturm, congratulations, you just joined the Alpha team. Go, build us a database that'll do our paperwork for us and save us thousands of hours of boring, useless, soul-sucking work each month."

Eleven versions of, 'On it, Boss,' echoed through the basement as Tim points to the office door. Manner storms in, and Tim kicks the door shut behind him.

"But, _what_ , Manner?"

"But we are _legally_ not allowed to just grab up software off the internet! Which you would know if you had actually _worked_ down here before. We are required by law to make sure that it's clean, that there are no backdoors, that it's designed in such a way as to not be vulnerable to attacks from the outside. Because of that, we are required to go through certain distributors for our software. We are required by law to-"

Tim stops him dead with a dry, "Bullshit."

"What?" Manner stares at Tim like he had just peeled off his face and is actually a gray alien.

"Bull shit." Tim enunciates both words very clearly. "That is an excuse. You don't want to do the work, fine, but don't give me bullshit about it. First off, if it's open source, we'll have millions of other people also pouring through the code, looking for bugs and backdoors. It'll be way safer than using the same stuff every single other federal office uses. Anyone who's serious about getting into one of our systems knows who we get our software from and is targeting them.

"Secondly, we aren't the NSA, and as long as we stay on the side of the angels and keep our noses clean when it comes to not spying on everyone on earth, no one is going to care if we used an open source database to fill out our paperwork."

Manner's looking furious, trying to get Tim to listen. "But we are-"

"No! We do the job! And, though it seems that you've forgotten this, the job is stopping the bad guys. We do what we need to to do that. And right now we're filling out forms and not catching bad guys, so that stops."

"It's not legal!" Manner says desperately. He's acting like his magic words, that always worked before, suddenly stopped working, but he's got no idea of what else to try, so he keep spouting them again and again.

"That's my job. You think I'm going to leave you out there without cover? You guys build it, and I'll get it squared away. There's only one person who's successfully broken the protections I've got on the NCIS computers, the _entirely legal_ protections that I built myself instead of buying from an approved vendor, and that's _me_. We've had people break into the building to use our computers because that's easier than hacking them. You think I can't get an open source database fortified to the degree it needs to be to get up to specs?"

Manners had the grace to start looking embarrassed.

"Now. In two months, when we have a fully functional system set and ready to go, Vance is going to be awfully pleased. In four months, when it's so streamlined and functional that we can roll it out to the other departments, he's going to be very pleased. And in six months when the whole of NCIS is saving hundreds of thousands of hours a month on paperwork, he is going to be ecstatic, and in that happy mood, he's going to be making note of the people who made that happen, and do you know who's name isn't going to be on the developer list?"

"Mine." And with that word he sees Manner get it, he's not the Boss, he's not going to be the Boss, and he is not going to be able to get rid of Tim. This is the new reality of the situation because now Vance is going to be expecting things like this out of Cybercrime, and he's not the guy who can come up with them.

"Exactly." He takes a long minute to stare Manner down. "Next time I give you a job, you do the job or you hand me your resignation."

Manner blinks, slowly, and says, "Yes, sir."

"Boss or McGee, Manner. Not sir. I work for a living."


	55. Director?

Thursday morning, he got in, and noticed ten more introductory emails.

He's noticing something else, his nametag says Director of Cybercrime. The emails he's getting are from people with the title of Team Leader.

It is occurring to Tim, that possibly, actually finding out what this job was, instead of going off his memory of what Jenner was doing when he worked down here the first time, before waltzing into Leon's office and saying he could do it, was probably a good idea. Because, as he gets more of these 'Hi, I'm (insert name here) out of (insert NCIS station). My team's on blah. We often do blah, blah, and blah. Looking forward to working with you,' emails he's coming to the conclusion that he may actually be the _Director of Cybercrime_ and not, as he thought, the DC Office Team Leader.

For most of NCIS the hierarchy goes something like this: Agent, Team Leader, Department Head, Office Director. People like Abby and Ducky are Department Heads (because of their more specialized work, and they do work for all the teams in the office) and report directly to the Office Director. Team Leaders report to the Office Director, too. Office Director report to... He doesn't remember, but there's a Director of Operations who's in charge of the ins and outs of what all the Field Offices are up to.

Leon is, in addition of Director of NCIS, the Office Director for the Navy Yard.

So, Tim was thinking that, like Abby and Ducky, he was moving into Department Head.

But, looking at his inbox, where yet another Hi, I'm Blah (This one is from the Reykjavik Office. Why they have a Reykjavik Office, he has no idea.) it's occurring to him, that possibly Cybercrime doesn't follow that pattern.

This puts him in something of an odd position, because he can't exactly head on up and ask Leon what the fuck his job actually is, because he got the job by saying he could do the job better than the guy who, at that point, had the job, and way better than the other guy who wanted the job. (Manner's comments about Tim moving to this job being some sort of pay off from Leon are making a _hell_ of a lot more sense now.)

So, on Thursday, he did some rather discrete research on what Jenner had left for him, and rapidly came to the conclusion that he may, in fact, be the _Director of Cybercrime_ for the whole of NCIS, and that running his twelve Minions was only one of his jobs.

Figuring this out left him simultaneously feeling exceptionally proud and wanting to hyperventilate.

* * *

He fires off a text to Abby and Jimmy: _Lunch?_

 _Sure!_ Comes back from Abby.

 _Autopsy. Tomorrow?_ Comes from Jimmy.

So he heads out of his office and down… nope… up to Abby's office, collects her, and she can tell something is up, she keeps looking at him sideways as he fidgets in the elevator on the way out.

Once they're at Carlo's, food in front of them, she says, "What? I haven't seen you this antsy in a long time."

"I think I'm Director of Cybercrime."

She's staring at him, not getting it. "Well, they did write that on your door."

"No. I mean _Director of Cybercrime._ All of it. _Every_ branch. All the teams, all hundred and fifty people, are reporting in to _me_ , and… I was going through Jenner's files, and they've been reporting to him for years now. It looks like Cybercrime consolidated under him in '11. Every month they all check in, let him know what's up, get his approval for hires and fires and send him budget updates and… I think the _whole_ department is mine."

Her eyes go very wide, and then she starts to giggle.

"It's not funny!"

"Oh, no, _this_ is funny. This is the definition of funny. You're telling me you got a senior level position by _accident_? You swaggered on in to Leon, told him you could do the job, and didn't bother to find out what the job was?" She laughs some more.

"I thought I knew what it was!"

"Apparently not." She giggles again. "So… You outrank me, then, right?"

"Um… Yeah, I think so."

The more research he did, the more it seems that Cybercrime is spread out all over the place because it's convenient for one part of its job, namely offering computer support to the Field Teams. However, for bigger jobs, terror threats, major cyber-attacks, they all work together as one team, reporting to, apparently, him.

"I think I might be the fourth or fifth highest ranked guy at NCIS. You answer to Leon because you're in DC. I could be based out of Los Angeles, and I'd still answer directly to Leon."

She smiles widely at that. "So, what does think mean?"

"I'm not entirely sure if I am or not. I mean, when I told Vance I could do the job, I meant I could run the DC branch."

"Do you want to run Cybercrime?"

"If I'm right, I'm going to have to. Not like I can head up and say, 'Oops.'"

She giggles at that, too. "Obviously… I mean, assuming you're right, Vance thinks you're up for it. So, how do you intend to find out for sure?"

"Money hits the bank in a week. If it's a lot more than you make, that'll be a hint."

She laughs again. "Yeah, that would."

"And, at least now, I'm sending emails to the other Team Leaders… Speaking of hints, there's one, they all have Team Leader as a title… Anyway, the letters are kind of vague, but basically… I'm assuming…" He cringes at that. Assuming got him here, and he's hoping it doesn't bite him too hard. "That I'm the guy in charge."

"Well, if you aren't, who is?"

"I thought it was like Tony. You know, report to your Office Director. But, the more I read up, the more it looks like that's not how it works."

She sips her drink, smiling at him. "So… what are you going to do with all your new power, Director McGee? I mean, there's, what, Leon, Craig, Operations Director, who handles all of the field teams, and then, what, you?"

"I think so," he says with a slow nod. "Operations… What's his name?"

"Severin."

"And, God, he's not at the Navy Yard, right? He's based out of where…?"

"Okinawa last I heard. Craig handles all the politicking and Severin handles the Office Directors."

"And I've got the Cybercrime teams reporting to me. So… yeah… I think it's Leon, Craig, Severin, and then… me."

She laughs again. "Youngest department head in NCIS history, by accident. Do you think Leon has any clue that you didn't know what you were asking for?"

Tim shrugs. "He looked really amused when I handed in my Special Agent stuff, but I haven't talked to him since."

"Bet he's going to want to check in soon."

"Probably."

She squeezes his hand. "You can do it, you know that, right? And you're going to be brilliant at it."

He gives her a lopsided, self-depreciating smile. "Yeah."

* * *

Thursday afternoon he sees Manner get up, paper in hand, walk a few steps, and then turn around and sit back down three times.

Each time he sits back down, he works on his computer a few more minutes, stares off into space, taps his fingers a bit, picks the paper back up, and then repeats the standing up, taking a few steps, and then sitting back down again.

The fifth time he does it, he's half-way across the basement before he starts to turn around, which was when he notices Tim is watching, so he squares his shoulders and heads to his office door.

It's open. (Tim's figuring that's going to be true a lot.) But Manner stops at the door, waiting to be waved in.

"You resigning?" Tim asks, waving him in, nodding at the door so Manner knows to shut it.

Manner bristles. If he asked right, (and he's not sure if he did) there was just enough challenge in his voice to make Manner want to stay and prove that he can do this job. If he did it right, (and once again, Tim's not sure he did. Gibbs would have gotten it right. Tony definitely would have gotten it right, but he's not Tony or Gibbs.) that voice would have indicated that he thinks Manner is up for playing the role of Scotty, and it's just a matter of if he's got the balls to step up and do it.

Manner sits down, holding his letter, not answering. Finally he says, "I can do the job."

Tim nods. "I never said you couldn't. I've never _thought_ you couldn't. I know you can do it. You graduated fourth in your class at CMU. You've got over-the-moon recommendations from your professors. You passed my tests and tracked me down. Once upon a time, you were a creative worker, able to dissect problems at a glance and come at them in directions no one expected. Somehow, in the ten years between then and now, you got in a rut. So, it's not about can; I know you _can._ It's about will.

"Will you do the job? Will you put the hours in? Will you get out of this bureaucrat mindset and become a computer guy again? Will you be a cop? If you want to do that, I've got a job for you. If not, then it's best we part ways now, before I'm no longer willing to give you a glowing review."

Manner thinks about that for a moment, then stands up, doesn't hand over the piece of paper in his hand, and heads back to his desk.

Tim's feeling like that's a victory. Then, seeing them all working away, he goes back to tweaking his case triage system. They noticed some bugs in it yesterday, and he wants it fixed fast.

After all, if he really is Director of Cybercrime, that means he can roll this out to the whole of NCIS. Assuming it works, (They'll test it in just the DC branch for a month or so, give DC's best and brightest a good chunk of time to break it in ways they'd never imagine on their own.) and assuming its better than the systems his other teams currently have (He jots a quick note to let them know what he's doing and see how they handle it, and what they want in a system for this sort of thing.) he'll have made a positive change for the whole system.

Might as well earn his pay. (Whatever it might be.)

One more thought hits as he's coding away. If he really is Director of Cybercrime, then there's no reason why he can't be sending his casework to whoever's best at it. If John in Reykjavik is the best guy for the job (even if the job is in Bogota) there's no reason, short of the need to get hold of the physical computer, for John not to do the job.

Tim gets back to programing, but he makes a note for himself, he's sending out an email to each of the Team Leaders, finding out exactly who works on each team, what they're best at, and building a database of who does what.

Once this system goes live, any casework that comes up will get triaged, diagnosed, and then whoever's best at this is going to get flagged. It's 2016, long distance communication is easy, so there's no reason to run Cyber cases like it's 1999.

* * *

Quitting time Thursday he's got his alpha version in play.

Team goes onto the intranet. They fill out a Cybercrime request form. Originally the form just included name, location, and a brief description area for what the problem was.

Now it still has all three of those things but includes bits like what sort of case this problem belongs to. Do they have a physical computer in custody. There are detailed directions for how to get said computer/phone/whatever it might be also onto their intranet (Yes, he knows he's got to build a safe haven for that so that you can't infect the whole damn system that way.) so that the tech in question can crack into it right away instead of having to wait for the field team to get moving on it. What sort of information is the field team trying to get. All of that's on the intake form now.

He's got the basic triage up and ready: Terror, Kidnapping, Murder threat, Rape, Assault, Murder, Theft, Drugs, Misc. (There are many things that are technically illegal in the Navy and Marines that Tim has no interest at all in having his guys slogging through computer logs working on. For example, inappropriate fraternization cases will be dealt with shortly after Hell freezes over, or every single other case on the docket is clear.) So that the jobs should show up in the queue based on what sort of case they're for.

He's got a keyword database up and running for the tech who will do the diagnostic. S/he'll read through, maybe get onto the computer, mess around a bit, and then keyword it. He's also got his twelve techs sorted by keyword as well.

So, if this works the way he hopes it will, jobs will come in, they'll get sorted, the next available tech will diagnose, and once she's done, the program will send an email to the three techs that matched the most keywords.

He sets it live, and sends out a last email of the day letting them know it was up and to each spend an hour messing with it tomorrow.

And then he heads to Abby.

* * *

They're halfway home when she asks, "Did you get to talk to Jimmy or Breena today?"

"No. Just a few second to ask if Jimmy wanted to do lunch with us. Why?"

She shakes her head a bit. "Tried to call Breena today, but she let it go to voicemail."

"Okay…" He's still not getting it.

"It's the seventh, Tim."

And then he did get it. "Oh." He winces, feeling the dull ache of it. Better off not having remembered.

"Yeah. Ducky dropped off samples for us today, so I'm guessing Jimmy's feeling pretty low today, probably pretty anti-social, too."

"I'll stop in early tomorrow, make sure to get to Autopsy. Just, give him a hug or something."

She nods at that. "If the case is wrapped in time, I know Ziva's got something planned for tomorrow's Shabbos, in remembrance."

"Okay." For the first time all day, Tim realizes that it's January 7th, which means this time a year ago Jimmy and Breena were going through the torture of delivering a stillborn baby.


	56. And That Was The First Week

Tim got in early on Friday, but not, today, for the job. He wants to head to Autopsy before going to his own office.

And once he gets there, he sees what he's expecting, Jimmy and Ducky, working away. Apparently they aren't done with yesterday's hot case, because they're working on an actual body.

It's probably a horrible thing, but he's glad there's a case. Glad that there's something besides paperwork for Jimmy today.

He doesn't want to interrupt them, and assuming all goes well, Shabbos is on for tonight, with a special yarhtzeit celebration… remembrance… He's not sure what all that entails, but… It's been a year since Jon died, and they need to do something for it.

He heads in for a moment, squeezes Jimmy's shoulder, he looks over to Tim and nods, knowing why he's here. They don't need to say anything. Ducky nods at him too, looking pleased that he came in.

"Lunch?" Tim asks.

"If we've got time," Jimmy answers. "I'll text."

"Okay."

* * *

They'd wrapped up the autopsy, consulted with Tony, and were working on the paperwork. Jimmy's filling forms out with a vengeance.

Ducky's been keeping track of the time. It's getting onto lunch. He puts his own pen down, and gently touches Jimmy's forearm. "Do you want to get lunch out? Text Timothy, take a quiet afternoon, go home early? There's nothing here that I can't handle on my own."

"I don't know."

"It's fine if you want to work through. It's fine if you want to go home. Commander Breen," their current guest, "does not need both of us here."

Jimmy nods, he knows that. He knows that right now, whatever he and Breena need, they'll support. He takes his glasses off and squeezes the bridge of his nose, then rubs his eyes.

"I had the four AM feed this morning." Ducky squeezes his hand, knowing that'd be the acid hour. "I fed Anna her bottle, told her about her older brother. Managed to not turn into a complete bawling mess. But I couldn't put her back in her crib when she was done. Held onto her until it was time to give her to Breena for her next feed."

Ducky nods along with that.

"Not sure I want to do Shabbos tonight. I know Ziva's got… something, planned, but…"

"Ziva will understand if you'd rather be alone."

"Yeah…" Jimmy sighs. "I know. I know they all will. I think Breena wants to get out of the house."

"What do you want?"

Jimmy shakes his head, not saying the jumbled thoughts of how much he had wanted Jon, wanted him strong and healthy, wanted to never have even imagined all of this pain, but if that had happened, they wouldn't have Anna, and his beautiful girl wouldn't be here and... And Jon would have been about eight months old now, he'd be round and plump and grabbing for things with a big, drool-y two tooth smile, and maybe thinking about starting to crawl soon, or not, Molly didn't crawl until she was a year old. And Anna's a month old, and she's tiny and sweet and perfect and… He doesn't know how to sort out the grief for the life that didn't happen, or deal with the tinge of guilt for feeling that while looking at the life that did. "Tomorrow…" He takes a breath, and says, with a sad smile, "I want tomorrow."

Ducky smiles kindly at him. "Tomorrow is the one thing I can assure you will happen."

"Yeah." He pulls out his cell. "You really good with the paperwork?"

"I am fine, Jimmy. I'm here to answer whatever questions Anthony or Jethro may come up with, and any forms I do not get filled out will still be here on Monday, waiting for us. Go. Have a good lunch. Spend some time with your girls."

Jimmy nods, flashing a text to Tim, and heading down to Cybercrime.

* * *

Tim's phone buzzes and he sees, _Lunch?_

_Yes!_

_Good, I'm in halfway down to you. Abby?_

_Already checked, got trace coming out of her ears. We're bringing her something to munch while she works._

"Okay."

Tim looks up and sees Jimmy standing at his door. "You weren't kidding about halfway down."

Jimmy shakes his head. "Nope." He steps in and looks around. "Nice."

It's still pretty empty. There's nothing but a few pictures on the book shelves for example, and his desk has three monitors, a keyboard, and a few more pictures, but otherwise it's clean. He notices that, a perfectly clean expanse of matte black, where something else is supposed to be. No phone. "One sec." Tim types a quick note to himself to get a phone down here, then realizes he doesn't have any office supplies either, and needs to get them, too. "Okay. Just noticed I don't have a phone."

Jimmy nods dryly at that. "It's a really nice office. You know, Vance is the only person I know here who has his own office. Abby's got her desk, but that's also work space and the other LabRats use it, and Ducky and I share a desk, too, but no one's got an actual office."

Tim gets up. "You know, I've got a kind of funny story about that."

Jimmy looks relieved and then curious. "Good, I could use some funny stories."

Tim smiles at him, and squeezes his shoulder. "You'll like this one." They head out, and Tim closes the door to his office, and calls out to the nearest Minion. "Dume, I'm out for lunch. I've got my phone on. Anyone needs me, give a call."

"Back soon?"

Tim looks at Jimmy, can see the sadness behind his eyes. "Not more than two hours. I've almost got the scheduling program done again, Monday, everyone takes a crack at it, then I'll run through it again and we'll begin live testing."

"Got it, Boss."

"Good."

They're in the elevator when Jimmy asks, "Does it feel weird?"

"Hm?"

"Them calling you 'Boss.' I mean, that's Gibbs, right?"

"Actually, it's a lot less weird than I was expecting it to be. I thought it would feel kind of fake, but…" Tim shakes his head. "Nope."

Jimmy smiles at that, for a second, and then it falls from his face.

"How are you doing?"

Jimmy shrugs. "I've had better days. Yesterday was hard. Today's not any easier. Hopefully tomorrow…"

Tim nods. "Early bootcamp this week?"

"No." Jimmy shakes his head. "I don't want to fight. I'm not angry. Just sad."

"Okay."

"So, tell me your funny story about having an office."

Tim smiles, and then says, "So… Um… Yeah… I might be the fourth highest ranked guy at NCIS."

Jimmy snorts a laugh at that, sees Tim's serious, and then raises his eyebrows. "Is this where I say, 'I'm out of it for a little while and everyone's getting delusions of grandeur?'"

Tim sighs and laughs quietly. "You might. Vance has asked me to come up and chat with him this afternoon, so I'll find out for sure then, but… So, yeah, I'm the Director of Cybercrime."

"Well, yeah, that's on your nametag."

"Uh huh. And the _door_. You know, the door, of my _office_ , the kind of office no one else has…"

Jimmy nods, and Tim sees it hit him that he might actually be right about this as a slow smile spreads across his face.

"Okay, so, I've been doing some checking and…" Tim tells Jimmy about what he's noticed, and by the time the elevator doors were opening, Jimmy was laughing.

* * *

Tim gets back from lunch, drops food off for Abby, and then heads back to spend another hour beating the new scheduling system into submission before having his chat with Vance.

He's almost nervous about talking to Vance. Almost. Like, there's the idea that he should be nervous, especially because he's not entirely sure what the hell his job is, but… He's not actually feeling nervous.

It's sort of like how, when he got to a break point in the code, he just fired off an email to all of his (and he's thinking of them as his) Team Leaders, describing what the new system should do, and how he wants to know who each team member is, what they specialize in, and build a database so that the best person (people) for the job gets the job, no matter where the job is. He didn't think about it. He didn't worry about it. He just fired it off, and within an hour started getting emails back with ideas for how to make the system better and all the information he asked for.

If there's one thing true about Tim McGee, it's that he's never had any problem seeing what an issue is and taking care of it. Sure, in the past, he's felt nervous about doing things he hadn't been specifically told to do, but that's never stopped him from doing it. And now… he's just not feeling that anymore.

It's almost like the last year burned the nervous out of him. He almost feels like he's gotten to the point where he no longer has the capacity for nervous (at least, about the job.)

As soon as he gets to Vance's office, Vance asks, "How's it going?"

"It's going," he says, sitting in the chair Vance nods at.

Vance's eyes narrow very slightly, and Tim adds, "I think it's going well. They don't all love me; one of them has resigned already, but I've got her replacement starting week after next. We're moving toward being an actual team and getting some real work done." He fills Vance in on his job software, and how he's hoping to have a testing version ready by start of work on Tuesday. Vance looks pleased by this. He looks very pleased when Tim starts telling him about how once he's gotten it working properly, he'll roll it out across NCIS and start assigning jobs by specialty instead of geography. Vance is even more pleased as he explains how much he think that'll speed up computer work for the Field Teams.

Vance's satisfied smile as he tells him about the job software plans could be a hint that, yes, he's Director of Cybercrime and that this is indeed under his job description. Or it could just be the fact that Vance will take any good idea that makes his operation work better, no matter where it comes from.

Vance jots a quick note on the new job system and then says, "You rearranged the basement."

Tim nods, wondering if Vance headed down there to take a look at what he had done. "Better workflow. They can talk to each other without having to deal with walls. They weren't working as a team before because they were walled off in their own little cubbies. Now we've got a space in the middle for breaking down what we're doing, who's doing what, why, and how. Once I get the stuff delivered, we'll have a conference area in the middle, space to plan our jobs out, who's doing what, and with any luck, some room for down time, too."

Leon nods. He was looking enthusiastic until Tim got to down time. He's not sure about that, but he's also not arguing about it. "Physical plant is fussing because you changed the light bulbs on your own."

Tim shrugs. The guy he spoke to did seem kind of pissy about the idea that Tim might actually attempt to change his own light bulbs, but, degree in biomedical engineering, he's feeling competent to handle light bulbs. (Turns out Manner was full of shit about the heat thing. It might be a degree or two warmer down there, but it's not sweltering. Still, the LEDs are cooler and only need to be replaced every twenty-five years or so, that sounds pretty appealing to him.) "Physical plant told me they couldn't get new bulbs in for three weeks. So while the Minions were rearranging, I put in new bulbs."

Leon raises his eyebrow at 'Minions' and then shakes his head, and gets to why he brought it up, "Any non-union labor on that sort of thing invalidates our liability insurance."

Tim's staring at him, stupefied. He literally cannot imagine how that rule could have possibly been set. Finally he asks, "Do you want me to take them out?"

"No. You putting them in caused the problem, taking them out doesn't fix it. But in three weeks Physical Plant will show up with the union electrician and he'll 'inspect' the job you did, and that will make it all better."

Tim, by sheer force of will alone, does not roll his eyes. However, there's a lot of skepticism and annoyance as he says, "We need an electrician for light bulbs?"

"Welcome to management," Leon says dryly.

"But I can rearrange my floor plan?"

"Technically, you should have waited for the electrician to do all the plugging and unplugging, as well, but if you do that, it'll be July before they get a full free day to do it all. He'll be back in June to 'inspect' your job of plugging and unplugging, as well."

That did get an eye roll. "So you're saying I better like the new layout."

Vance smiles. "It's not just a matter of my personal idiosyncrasies that nothing around here ever moves. Just hope no one trips on a cord and sues."

Tim makes a mental note to get some electrical tape and make sure that all of the cords are taped flush to the floor. "All right. Anything else?"

"I understand you took them out of the basement for target practice."

"Yes."

"Why?" Leon looks curious about that. Like it's nothing he ever expected Tim to even think of, let alone do.

"I wanted to see what they'd do if I gave them something they'd never done before. If you dropped me in charge of a new field team, I probably would have made them knit or something."

Leon smiles dryly at that image. "And was it informative?"

"Yes. Most of them were able to roll with it. Might have thought it was silly, but they loaded up, listened to instructions, worked on it, and had a good time. Four of them dug in and balked. As I said, I've already gotten one of them to resign. At least three more of them aren't staying. There's a fourth I'm not sure about. She's great with a computer, and I think just too shy to really function with all of those people staring at her. I want to see what Ngyn will do if I toss her a loop when she's not on display. I can work with shy. Stubborn and unwilling to bend is a different story all together."

"And who are you thinking needs to go?"

Tim grabs his phone and sends Vance their CVs.

"What would you suggest happen to them?"

"Forensic accounting?" Tim shrugs. They have lots of jobs that need computer skills. Part of the issue is he can't really fire them. It's almost impossible to get rid of a Federal Employee, so he can use all of the tools at his disposal to make them want to resign, but he can't out and out boot them. He can, possibly, reassign them, though. "Tech support? HR? Web development? See if the IRS can use them? Somewhere decent computer skills are necessary, but the ability to adapt on the fly isn't. If we're going to track down the bad guys we need to be faster and better than they are. Just sheer computer skill isn't enough, we need imagination, too. We're not just going to think outside the box. We're going to be the guys who build the box so other guys can think in it."

"Okay." Leon seems to like that idea. He's flipping through the CVs Tim's given him.

"I need to know how young I can hire," Tim asks. This is something he's been thinking about for a while. Currently all Federal jobs on their level require a college degree. But… for the kind of talent he wants a college degree means those guys are going to be VERY expensive.

"Excuse me?"

"I'm hoping to have four open desks soon. I've got one new tech on the way, and I've got ideas for the kind of people I want on the other three. I currently can't hire without a college degree, but I figure if you wave that, I can. So, if I can grab a seventeen-year-old on his way to MIT, can I have him?"

Leon just stares at him for a moment. "You're going to headhunt _babies_?"

"If I can. The seventeen-year-old I want will be going for millions by the time he's twenty-one. Even if I could pay based on merit, I can't win in a bidding war against Stanford, let alone Facebook or Google. I don't have the budget for that, but if I can get him early, I can train him to cover what he might miss by skipping the traditional four-year-school, and hopefully get him for a fraction of the cost."

Leon's still staring at him.

Tim lets him in on his logic for this. "They can enlist at seventeen. We'll let them work on a nuclear submarine at seventeen. I don't think I've got anything hotter than that under my umbrella."

"Seventeen, with parental permission," Vance says slowly, realizing that Tim's not just serious, but has given this some real thought.

"If I can get this hypothetical teenage hacker's parents to go for it, can I hire him?"

"Check with legal, if they say you can, sure."

"Good."

Vance looks at his phone, seeming to re-read the guys Tim wants out. "Why Hepple? According to your reports he was always in the middle on all of his scores."

Tim shrugs. "He is. He's not bad at all, but… he's a mainframe specialist. Apparently we hired him right out of Cal-Tech in '88."

"And…"

"And we don't have a mainframe. We didn't have a mainframe the first time I was in Cybercrime. No one has a mainframe anymore. He's not a field agent, so I can't age him out. Back in '13, when he hit twenty-five years in, Jenner was suggesting that maybe retirement would look good, but no dice. He's not bad at any of the stuff we do, but he's not good either. And this isn't the team for mediocre. I can't fire him, no cause. He's on time, muddles through his work, and if, for some reason, we ever end up having to deal with a mainframe again, he'll be worth his weight in gold, but… It's like having a mimeograph tech on staff. Best I can hope for now is that he doesn't like the hours I give him, and he decides retirement is looking good."

"Okay. Anything else?"

Tim's been thinking about this for a bit, but had been planning on waiting more than a week into it, but Vance is asking… Tim thinks for a second more, this is a good test. The Director of Cybercrime can make this decision for himself. Navy Yard Team Leader needs to ask permission. So… "I'm dropping the dress code."

Leon lifts his eyebrows, but doesn't challenge his right to do so.

Tim explains his thinking. "I can't offer them better pay. I can't give them better benefits. My hands are tied on both of those. I will move heaven and earth to get them the best team, and we will find the most interesting cases, and I'm going to do everything I can to make it the best work environment. I've got plans for the environment, budget permitting, but step one is making this look like a place where real computer guys work."

"Uh huh." Vance keep staring at him. "We got _you_ on that salary and benefits."

"As a field agent. You couldn't have afforded me as a computer specialist. If Armstrong hadn't promised me that I wouldn't be chained to a computer here, I would have gone with the CIA; they offered more money, a car, and would have paid for my doctorate as long as I had been willing to get that doctorate overseas and report back about what I noticed while I did it."

That was something Vance hadn't known. He looks at Tim for a long minute, working on actually, really seeing _him_ , and then says, "You took a pay cut so people could shoot at you?"

"Yes."

Vance shakes his head, looking surprised and amused. "You have to write the code up, and it's got to be in line with the sexual harassment regs."

"Thanks."

Vance spends another minute staring at him, and then a smile spreads across his face, "So, now that you've been on it for a week, is the job about what you expected?"

Tim sees the smile; it's an awfully smug sort of look. Now's the real acid test, if he actually is as highly ranked as he thinks he is, he can say this to Vance. "You've got a really sick sense of humor, _Leon_."

Leon laughs at that. "My kids say that about me all the time. Congratulations again, _Director_ McGee."

* * *

Three hours later Vance was CCed on an email that went out to all of the Minions: (A similar one went to all of his Team Leaders, updating them on the Navy Yard change, and letting them know that whatever level of dress code they deemed appropriate for their own teams was fine with him. Tim's not going to mess with his Team Leaders until he's got a much better idea of what's actually going on out there.)

_As of 1/11/16 the dress code for Navy Yard Cybercrime will relax._

_Feel free to wear whatever you are comfortable in, keeping a few things in mind:_

_1\. Are all of the bits of you you really wouldn't want a bad sunburn on covered? No? Go put more clothing on._

_2\. If the idea of getting a tattoo/piercing there hurts so bad you wince, it better be covered with clothing._

_3\. If the idea of getting a tattoo/piercing there hurts so bad_ I _wince, it better be covered with clothing._

_4\. Is the clothing you're covering those parts with so sheer/transparent I can see them through it? Put more layers on until they're invisible._

_5\. If there is anything written on said item of clothing that you don't want your hyper-vigilant, ultra-feminist grandma to see, don't wear it to work._

_6\. If you do not have a hyper-vigilant, ultra-feminist grandma to school you on what's appropriate, I will lend you mine._

_7\. If it is violent or gory or would give a small child nightmares, do not wear it to work. Come on guys, you know this._

_8\. I do not want to see your underwear. Doesn't matter how snazzy it is, it stays under your clothing._

_9\. If there is a chance I may mistake your outerwear for underwear, it better be hidden under more outerwear._

_10\. If words printed on it would show up in George Carlin's Seven Words You Can't Say on TV (Google it) act, don't wear it to work._

_11\. If you consider it appropriate for a hot date out at a club, don't wear it to work._

_12\. If you are unsure as to whether or not it's appropriate for work, it's not._

_13\. That said, non-office-casual makeup, piercings, tattoos, facial hair, hats, shoes, boots, jewelry, and items of clothing are fine_ in the dungeon _. Just don't be a twit about it, and try not to make your co-workers uncomfortable._

_14\. For court appearances, you will be dressed_ exactly _how the legal beagles tell you to dress. Which will likely be conservative, upright, and professional. This means you will own at least one outfit of clothing that makes you look conservative, upright, and professional. (If this is a concept you are unsure about, the legal beagles will be happy to help. But, quick rule of thumb: Navy suit, white button down, black shoes. If you're a guy: maroon tie, good watch. If you're a woman: nude pantyhose and pumps. Boring makeup. No jewelry beyond watch and or wedding/engagement ring.) You will wear this outfit often enough so that you can fake looking comfortable in it if you are not genuinely comfortable. You will also own and know how to use whatever camouflage makeup is necessary to cover whatever needs to be covered so that you look like you just stepped out of a Brooks Brother's catalogue._

_15\. Speaking of uncomfortable, that is what anyone who screws this up so badly I end up having Vance decide he needs to chat with me about this is going to be._

_Forward this back to me to show you've received it and understand the terms._

_See you Monday,_

_McGee_

Vance sighs, closes his email, closes his eyes and rubs his forehead. He knew Cybercrime was stagnating. He knew it was falling further and further behind where he needed it to be. He knows he put McGee in charge because he'd shake it up.

Somehow though, he hadn't expected this much shaking up. Not this soon. He figured it'd be at least a month before Tim got comfortable enough to start really swapping things up.

And right now, he's really hoping that McGee's right, and this is what needs to happen to get it to where he wants it. He's certainly intrigued with the hiring younger workers. He's seen the stats, knows that less than 10% of the Federal workforce is under 30 and that more than 25% is about to retire. He knows for NCIS those numbers are even worse, fewer than 5% under 30, more than 35% retiring in the next five years.

If this scheduling thing he's talking about works, that would be fantastic. He has gotten irate calls when someone's been sitting on a hot case waiting around for Cybercrime to do its job.

He thinks about this, and finally comes up with why this feels so off. This is Gibbs... Junior... his upfront, no bullshit, no excuses style, but with actual power. Gibbs as a Team Leader is a great thing, Gibbs as a Department Head is terrifying.

Vance blows out a breath, hoping he made the right call, and then he forwards the email to Gibbs with: _Your boy in action_ in the subject line.

* * *

Two minutes later, Gibbs is staring at his computer screen, smiling, chuckling quietly, very glad to see Tim putting his mark on Cybercrime.

He'd been hoping to get a chance to talk with Tim, see how he was liking running a team, but between Tim on full work mode with his new team, and them on a hot case, it hasn't happened.

With any luck he'll get to see him tomorrow or the next day. Gibbs can already feel that tonight is off the menu. They aren't breaking this before tomorrow morning at the earliest.

* * *

Tim's wrapping up for the day. He's got a beta(ish) version of the job allocating software in the can, and on Monday, the Minions'll start playing with it again.

He heads up to Abby, and as he heads in, he notices that all four of them are in there, and they're all still working.

No music, they've all got earbuds in, listening to their own stuff. But he knows the feel of this, the sort of energy that goes with the Lab humming away.

Abby looks up from her pipettes, and smiles at him. She's in full on lab protection gear, so is the other three, so he hangs back and waits for her to take her earbuds out.

"Not quitting time for you, is it?"

She shakes her head.

"They're all working away upstairs, aren't they?"

She nods at that, too. "Gibbs was in three minutes ago for an update. I think Tony and Ziva are heading to Baltimore. Draga's still digging through financials, and Gibbs has a suspect he's about to break with what we just gave him."

Tim nods. "Okay." He knows Jimmy went home after lunch. "I guess I'll pick up some food and Kelly and head over to Jimmy's."

"Probably a good plan. Make sure to give both of them kisses from me."

"How about hugs?"

She quickly switches to signing, which he appreciates once he got the message. _Jimmy kissed you when you needed it._

_Jimmy's not on the verge of a panic attack, does not need to be shocked out of anything, and getting kissed by me, even if it is "from you" isn't going to do much to cheer him up._

_It'll perk up Breena._

Tim shakes his head, no.

The looks she's giving him indicates that she thinks that's BS, but isn't going to argue it. "Fine, hugs. I'll get home when I can."

He kisses the nape of her neck. He'd like to do more than that, but she is covered in protective gear, so he doesn't want to risk getting whatever it is she's messing with on his skin by going in for a hug or a real kiss.

* * *

He's in the parking lot, texting Jimmy and Breena, seeing what they want to do for dinner, when it hits him that a whole week went by, with a hot case, and beyond chatting with Abby and Jimmy about what they were up to, he was just out of it.

He didn't feel any need to go up. There wasn't any sort of itchiness or wondering. He wasn't craving the mystery and didn't feel any need to head upstairs and make sure Draga was doing his job right.

In fact, other than a sort of missing his family, because besides Jimmy and Abby (and Ducky for a second), he hasn't seen any of them since Sunday, he's not feeling any craving for his old life, at all.

And he's honestly not sure if he's okay with that.

Not sure if switching over that fast, that completely means this is good, that he was ready, more than ready for a new job, or if this is his usual routine and he's just got his feelings so deeply buried under making sure he's doing the job right that he can't feel them.

He gets a text back from Breena, saying they're in the mood for Japanese, and right now, he can contemplate his emotional interior, or grab his baby girl, a bunch of sushi, and spend a few hours trying to cheer up his hurting friends.

Doesn't even take a tenth of a second for him to know what he's going to do.

_Place the order, go crazy and splurge, it's on me. (Has Jimmy told you the story that goes with that?) I'll pick it up. See you soon._


	57. Monday Morning

On Monday, first day of the twenty-four hour shifts, Tim knows he's heading in early and leaving late.

He got in at 04:00, three quarters asleep, but determined to fake awake. He's the Boss, so sure, he doesn't have to work every shift, but he's at least got to be willing to show up for them on occasion.

He's not surprised to see that Ngyn chose a 22:00 to 06:00 shift. When he gets in at four, it's just her and Connon, and everything is awfully quiet.

He heads to the coffee machine, grabs a cup, pops in a Black Death Kcup. (Of course they make Kcups, and as Boss he's thinking that he might begin to appreciate the wonder that is super dark, ultra-caffeinated coffee. It wanders through his sleepy mind that Abby may be pregnant again, and if she is, this week's coffee might be his last caffeine for quite a while… Oh well, he'll buy some toothpicks to prop his eyelids open if necessary.) He winces as he drinks, the stuff tastes awful, but it's got a kick, so his heart speeds up and the sleepiness vanishes.

"Report?" he says, cup in hand, looking at his two overnight techs.

"All quiet, Boss," Connon replies. "My notes on the new job system are in your inbox."

Tim nods. "Ngyn?"

She nods back at him. "Wrapping up Trevet's case so he's free for paperwork database construction."

"Good."

"You need me; I'm in my office."

They both nod, and get back to what they were doing.

* * *

For the first hour, he's working on waking up, and reading through Jenner's files on… pretty much everything. He's got a good idea of how to be a Team Leader, and obviously, he's got some ideas on tap for how to change NCIS Cybercrime operations to streamline things, but there's got to be more to the job of Director of Cybercrime than that.

And there is.

His field teams work pretty much on their own most of the time. As adjuncts to the in-the-Field-Teams, (he really needs some new terms for this) they usually work in house on local issues. And for that, they've got almost complete autonomy. Each Team Leader is in charge of that.

It's bigger issues where they all work with him. Terrorism is one of NCIS's big concerns, and when they are working on Cybercrime Terror issues, the whole department works together, under him. Apparently, for those sorts of cases, Jenner did use a system similar to what he's setting up for the run of the mill cases. Whoever was best at it, no matter where they were, got set on the job.

(Though the travel vouchers seem to show that he was actually sending techs to… here apparently… to do the work. Tim's not loving that. Traveling is a waste of time and money unless there's an actual, physical computer in play, and if there is, the techs should go to it.)

* * *

In the second hour, when he's feeling a bit more alert, he heads over to Ngyn's cubicle. Like last time, she's bopping away, fingers moving fast, and once again, she's on paperwork, wrap up for Trevet's case from the looks of it.

"Hi."

She jerks a little at that, and looks back at him, "Hi." She's got that nervous, _am I in trouble?_ look on her face.

"So…" He's not entirely sure how to get into this. "I'm wondering… Is it that you prefer to work alone because you're shy, or because you're quite a bit better than the other techs down here and don't like explaining what you're doing and why?" He's fairly sure both of those things are true about her, but he's also sure that this group needs to be able to work as a team, which means she can't be constantly hiding out.

Ngyn blushes scarlet from her forehead to her throat, but doesn't say anything.

"Whichever, or both, it's okay." He's talking quietly. Connon's also got earbuds in, and is on the other side of the conference area, but he doesn't want a shot of him listening in. "I've got first-hand experience in both."

"You're shy?" she doesn't look like she believes that.

"My wife's referred to me as the nervous, little introvert on occasion."

Her eyebrows shoot up at that and she looks like she might want to laugh. He nods and smiles.

"So, I really do get it. But I also get that no matter how good you are, and you are good, this isn't going to be a place for Lone Ranger work styles. We're going to be working with each other here."

She's looks pleased at the praise and nervous about the Lone Ranger bit.

"So, what can we do to make this work for you? I want you to stay. I don't want you having a nervous breakdown because working here is so uncomfortable for you. How can we get you teamed up but still alone enough that you don't feel overwhelmed?"

She thinks about it. "This…" she looks around indicating that she's here pretty much on her own, "helps. And, it's easier to do it online. Just words on a screen."

Tim nods at that, agreeing. "Yeah, it is. Love chat boxes."

She nods, looking eager.

"As long as you've got this shift, it probably will be a lot of email and chat box work."

She looks reassured by that.

"But there will still be times when the other best person for the job is in this room with you and you will need to physically talk to them, or times when you and whoever will need to schedule things so you're in the same place at the same time so you can brainstorm together. So, can you go over and actually talk to someone about a job? You've got great skills; you've got lots of ideas; I'm sure that if you lead a team on a job, that job will be well done. But you've got to step up and talk."

She closes her eyes and bites her lip. It feels a little bizarre to see it from the other side, because obviously, Tim knows what it's like to be on the closed-eyes-and-biting-lip side of the equation. Then she nods.

He smiles. "Good. Okay, I'll let you get back to it."

She nods again.

* * *

At 07:00, when Connon leaves, and his next shift starts heading in, he starts to see his change in dress code coming into play. (Tim's planning on shifting his own wardrobe, some, lead by example and all. He's still debating exactly what that'll mean; he wants to make sure the rest of them know it's okay to be whatever form of possible counter culture they may, or may not, be, but at the same time he's the _Director of Cybercrime_ … Either way, today it's a moot point, he's going to wait for a morning where he's awake enough to actually know what he's putting on.) Manner and Hepple are still in office casual. That's probably what they're genuinely comfortable in. But, he's also seeing more jeans, more t-shirts, some flannel button downs, a knit cap and Dr. Who scarf, and several members of both sexes with non-standard nail polish. Two of the male Minions apparently decided shaving was overrated.

From the looks of it, this is the group that most closely matches him. Middle aged, kids at home, spouses they want to see regularly, so they're trying to pretty much match in school hours, 08:00 to 17:00, 09:00 to 18:00, something like that.

He heads out, chats with everyone for a minute or two, checking in on how the new jobs are going, and notices that this is starting to look more and more like a place where actual computer people work.

He smiles at that.

* * *

12:00. _You up for some lunch?_ When he gets yesses back from the team upstairs, he heads up to see what they've been doing for the last week.

* * *

16:00, the next wave of Minions begins heading in. He's guessing the ones who opt to start around now are his children of the night. He sees one outfit Abby would envy, a nose ring, more jeans and t-shirts, but not a single twinset or polo shirt in sight.

He's also noticing this is the shift his younger workers are on. That makes some sense to him. The part of the crew with no kids is showing up now.

He's got a feeling these are the guys who aren't really even moving before 17:00 if they get to set their own schedules. Patil, for example, certainly looks perkier rolling in at 18:00, ripped jeans, combat boots, a black t-shirt and black leather jacket, than he's ever seen him before.

And as they all head in, one more thing hits him, if he can get this job scheduling thing actually working for all of Cybercrime, it won't matter anymore when anyone is in the office, because he'll have the whole crew, worldwide, working, which means someone will always be available.

That feels pretty good.

So, one more cup of Black Death in his system, he heads back to his computer to read over the notes he's gotten from the Minions who've already taken a stab at his new system, and begins to make changes.

* * *

On Monday morning, Gibbs whacks his alarm clock three minutes before it went off. He's done this every morning for the last three years. (Since he started sleeping in his bed again.) He's not even sure, why, beyond habit, that he still sets the damn thing every night, but he does.

Hit the head, brush teeth, put on jammies, set alarm, and go to sleep. That's how every day ends for him.

And, like usual, in full-on habit mode, he's starting off his morning.

Whack alarm, lay in bed for two minutes, get up, hit the head, wander downstairs, heat water, put coffee in the French press, make coffee, stand around kitchen staring into space. (He's not good for much beyond cursing pre-coffee.) drink some coffee, start to feel vaguely human, debate making breakfast for himself, (he used to go visit Elaine three out of four days, but back when he decided he was going to get into better shape, he cut that down to two out of five, and these days at least one of those mornings will be Sunday) apply frying pan to heat, and eggs to frying pan, oatmeal into the microwave, eat breakfast, drink more coffee.

Then exercise.

When he decided that he was going to get into better shape, the plan was start hitting the gym until he could find his abs again. He rapidly came to the conclusion that that was a huge waste of time. (Not the exercising, the getting there and back bit.) So, he'd eat breakfast, and then do his workout at home. (He even installed a chin-up bar in the doorway of the spare bedroom.) He does hit the gym some evenings, and with the kids at Bootcamp, but until he ripped his knee out, he was doing his Marine calisthenics routine every morning at home, followed by a three mile jog.

And then he ripped his knee up.

And then came physical therapy, which he's been doing every morning instead. Then Jimmy and Ziva added the stretching stuff, which, okay, it's hard. It's really hard. It's way harder than anything that doesn't involve moving fast or heavy weights has any business being. But he's doing it. Even though it's hard (and he thinks the positions look dumb as hell, if not a bit beyond that) because his knee does seem to be doing better for it, and his range of motion is getting better, and Jimmy's 'once you get running again' you'll injure yourself less often and you'll go faster, and there's absolutely nothing in your life that benefits from tight hips, back, glutes, or thighs, all makes a distressing amount of sense.

On top of it, the stretching stuff did seem to be good for keeping his weight down, too. Not as good as the running he'd been doing, but better than the nothing he was doing right after he hurt himself.

And somewhere along the line Jimmy got him to explain what he'd been doing (Marine calisthenics circa 1976) and once he stopped shuddering, he re-wrote his whole exercise routine, modified to work with his steadily (but slowly) healing knee. And it's… effective.

He doesn't know why he feels like that should be a surprise. He's seen Jimmy naked. If there's a guy who actually knows how to do this stuff, it's Jimmy. But for whatever reason, the idea that Jimmy knows how to do stuff like this refuses to settle in his mind.

So, upon finishing up breakfast, he's starting with the stretches, twisting himself into every sort of pretzel he can think of, (and a few that, without help, he couldn't have) then comes the sit ups, and the push-ups (all of his weight on his good leg, ankle of the bum one resting on the ankle of the good one.) Something called planking (once again, one legged, though this time he holds the position and switches between the legs. When his left leg gets the all-clear he's supposed to start doing that with the push-ups too.) There's some sort of tricep thing. Pull ups. More stretches. Some sort of vastly oversized rubber band is involved.

And he would tell you it's all pretty damn silly, except for the whole he's lost another three pounds this month and no longer needs to use his nipples to locate his pecs.

It's even possible that he may, at some point, in the next six months or so, if he keeps this up and doesn't eat like a maniac, locate his abs again.

* * *

Compared to what he does with himself at home, the exercises Dr. Klenn has him doing are a piece of cake.

And with any luck it's also the last time he's got to eat this particular cake.

He finishes his last squat, shows off, yet again, that he's got full range of weight bearing motion with his knee, and Klenn nods approvingly.

He puts up the MRI results on his computer and looks them over again.

"I think you're healed."

"Good."

"Doesn't mean I want you running marathons any time soon. That knee is always going to be a bit weaker than the right one. So, build it up gentle and easy before jumping into anything strenuous, but you're good for back in the field."

He thought he'd feel… happier… to hear that, but it's kind of flat.

Klenn also looks surprised to hear that. Gibbs has been breathing down his neck for how to get healed up as fast as possible, and this is two weeks earlier than he thought he'd be able to do it.

"This is good news."

"Yeah. I know it is. Just… Friday's my last day. And the likelihood they'll even let me out of the building between now and then is just about non-existent."

Klenn nods, nothing he can do about that. "Then at least you're starting retirement with all of you at full strength. Maybe it is time to start training for a marathon?"

"I don't like running." And he doesn't. He likes what running can get him, speed, endurance, the ability to eat whatever he likes.

"Then try ballroom dance. Whatever you like. Your knee's ready to ease into it."

Gibbs buckles his belt and nods. The problem is, while he's got some possible big plans, he's awfully short of day to day small stuff that he wants to do.

* * *

On Monday morning, Tony was feeling a bit apprehensive.

He could say to McGee that Abby had told him she was going to do unspeakable things to him if he got out of the building and got hurt, and that would be that.

But Gibbs isn't McGee, and the threat of bodily harm from the girls if he gets hurt is unlikely to keep Gibbs in line.

So, right now, the only thing he's hoping is that Gibbs won't get cleared for duty.

It's not that he thinks Gibbs isn't ready for duty, (even at a casual glance, it's clear that he's moving the way he's supposed to be moving again) or that he really believes the superstition, but… Okay, honestly… He's talked to Ziva a little about this, and he's a bit worried that Gibbs… doesn't have death wish per se, but that he might be less careful than he should.

That's probably it. Not that he'd be chasing any sort of end, but that fear of what's coming up, not wanting to have to deal with post-retirement life might make him just a hair more reckless, or a few seconds slower, or… just that he'd do something… not stupid, not the way he was back when Tony started working with him and he really didn't care if he woke up the next day or not, but just not as careful as he should be.

He gets in and finds Gibbs already at his desk, working his way through the never-ending slog of paperwork.

"Morning."

Gibbs nods to him and Ziva.

"How'd the doc's appointment go?"

Gibbs looks at Tony's desk, and Tony sees the filled out Fitness Eval. "You passed! Great!" Tony thinks he even managed to sound almost convincing on that.

"For all the good it'll do me." Gibbs not only didn't buy it, but the more he's been thinking about the whole last week thing, the more grumpy he's getting. "You going to let me out of the building this week?"

Tony sighs. Bear Gibbs has come to NCIS today. "Depends, are you going to do the job like Friday's your last day, or are you going to do the job like you know there's a kidnapping coming on Monday and you've got to be here to solve it?"

Gibbs doesn't glare at him, but he doesn't answer either. Tony gets the sense that he's not sure what the answer is.

Tony scoops up the eval, signs it, and puts it in the to-be-filed pile.

Draga came in five minutes later, coffees and treats in hand. "So, are we having a good morning?"

"Enough." Gibbs says as he takes the coffee from Draga, sounding a bit less Grizzly. "Thanks."

"No problem."

* * *

McGee heads up at lunchtime.

"Missing us already, Probie?" Tony asks.

"That's _Director Probie_ , to you, Tony," Tim says with a sassy smile. The case that started on Thursday ran long, into early Sunday, so none of them have heard his news.

"Look at you, getting all high and mighty with your new position. Next thing we know, you're gonna want us to call you, sir."

Tim grins in response, looking forward to telling Tony what's really up. "Only you, Tony. Everyone else calls me Boss or McGee. You're in luck though, I'm feeling generous in addition to high and mighty. So, food? I'm buying."

"Sure," Tony says. Gibbs nods. "Certainly, McGee," Ziva replies. "Sounds great," comes from Draga.

* * *

So, over lunch he gets caught up on their case, and then tells them about his first week down in the basement. At first he was just talking about what he was doing, moving things around, getting Manner beaten into submission.

"I think I've got him in the right place. Probably more friction in the future, I'm yanking him way out of his comfort zone, so I can't imagine it'll all be smooth sailing from here on out, but at least right now, he's working on proving he can do the job."

"Good for you, Tim," Tony says.

"I would have paid good money to have seen his face after you told him not to call you, Sir," Ziva adds.

Tim's smiling. "It was pretty funny. What I didn't know when I said that is that…" He wants to tell them, but there is a sort of embarrassed silliness that goes with this, so he fumbles a bit getting it out. "Yeah… Um… That actually is my title. That's probably what most of them were calling Jenner. Vance, Craig, Severin, McGee. I'm the _Director_ of Cybercrime. All of Cybercrime. I've got… um… about one hundred and fifty people under me."

They stare at him, stunned. They'd been hearing about his plans, and what he was hoping to do, and how he understood the job: ie NCIS Navy Yard Cybercrime Team Leader for months. The idea that he'd have all of Cybercrime under him had never entered into those plans.

" _What?_ " Tony asks, first one to get his words back. "Back up. Last Monday you were heading down to whip the DC Cybercrime Team into shape, and now you run the whole department?"

Tim nods. "Vance has a sick sense of humor. He knew what I was asking for, knew what I thought the job was, and decided that it'd be fun to sit back and see how long it would take me to figure out I had an entire division under my command."

Tony's got his mouth open, and is blinking at him, but finally says, "So, you weren't kidding? You honestly are Sir to us now?"

"Yeah. I mean, _no_ , don't you dare go calling me Sir, but… yeah." Tim nods, grinning, feeling really cocky and happy.

Draga, who's sitting next to him, breaks into a big smile, shoves him gently with his shoulder, and says, "You are so paying for lunch from now on."

Tim laughs. "I can handle that."

"Director McGee," Ziva says, also smiling warmly. "Congratulations. Are you… okay with this?"

"Yeah. I am. Been there less than a week and I've got two projects cooking to roll out to the whole agency. I mean, it's a little overwhelming, but it feels right, too. I've got… so many more options than I thought I did. Like, you know you want to draw something, and you planned on having the eight crayon pack, and then you see you've got the 124 crayon pack. That's pretty awesome."

"Feels good?" Tony asks.

"Yeah, it really does. So many options, so many ideas, and I've got the power to do most of them. Can't change my own light bulbs, but…" he's shaking his head in wonder… "It's just really cool. Feels like every day I've got more ideas of what we're doing next, and I can do them. Like, okay… This hasn't left Cybercrime yet, haven't even mentioned it to Vance, so, you're not mentioning it, either, okay?" They all nod. "Good…" and he gets talking about the paperwork program he's got them working on.

As he's wrapping that up, Tim notices that Gibbs hasn't said anything, and Tim's wondering about that, but he sees the look, gentle, proud, satisfied, and knows that Gibbs is holding whatever it is he's got for when they're alone.

* * *

When they get up to head back to work, Tony hugs him, "My Probie's all grown up. Running his own department." He pets the back of Tim's head. His voice is teasing, but there's real pleasure and pride, as well. "So, you think I need to go check and make sure Vance isn't sitting around, waiting for me to figure out that I'm taking over for him?" Tony asks with a laugh.

"Depends, Tony, when you got your new ID, did it say Team Leader or Director of NCIS?"

Tony pulls it out, looks at it, and shakes his head. "God, damnit! I really need to read more carefully. This says, President of the United States on it!"

Everyone laughs at that.


	58. Three Days Left

On Wednesday, Gibbs is bored.

He hasn't felt this edgy without a case in years and he knows why. Three days left.

On Friday, they'll put him out to pasture, and…

And filling out paperwork isn't doing the job. It's not keeping his attention.

He finally gets the all clear for full duty from his doctor and suddenly everything goes silent. No cases. Nothing, at all. Not even a decent theft. Tony's phone might as well be disconnected for all the ringing it's done.

He'd be suspicious that Tony had worked some sort of deal with dispatch, but three of the other four teams out of the Navy Yard are also sitting at their desks filling out paperwork. It's like every sailor and Marine from Baltimore to Norfolk, DC to Charleston, WV, all decided, simultaneously, to go on the straight and narrow.

He glares at his paperwork, grabs his coffee cup, tosses it into the trash, and heads off to get a new one.

* * *

It doesn't help. Coffee, which usually quiets his mind and makes him more alert, more able to focus, more able to do pretty much whatever he wants, isn't doing the job today. Probably can't do the job today. Only so much you can ask ground, roasted beans to do.

He's about to head back to the bullpen when he decides there's no rush. It's not like he's got to race to get that paperwork done. What's Tony going to do if he doesn't get it done soon, fire him? He finds that mildly amusing for about ten seconds and then jittery comes back.

Going to his own desk isn't going to help.

So, instead of hitting the up button on the elevator, he hits the B for basement.

He hasn't been down here since the last time Tim worked Cybercrime. He did intend to go down at some point, but he was figuring he'd give Tim some time to get settled in (he knows Tony's doing the same thing, making sure Tim's secure in his own Boss role before anyone else who has that claim on him heads down), but he's not feeling very Bossish, past or present, right now.

And… if he's being honest, he's missing Tim.

The elevator doors slide open, and the first thing Gibbs notices is that it's not dark down there anymore. It was dark the last time he was down here. Just the glow of the computers keeping people from crashing into things.

It's not dark now. The walls and floor are still gray, the cubicle walls are black and lighter gray, which leads to a feeling of dark, but it's not actually dark. It's the idea of dark.

He heads in, noticing the coffee station Tim had been talking about. Looks like more of his goodies showed up yesterday. There's a coffee maker, a bunch of cups, microwave, fridge, two vending machines, a soda machine, and… The Caf-Pow dispenser he was talking about... It's not there yet, but the space is there for it, and Gibbs knows it'll be there soon, all clustered against one wall.

He's walking past a big screen plasma, which he thought was Tim's conferencing area, until he noticed two sofas (black) and three bean bags chairs (dark blue) in front of it, along with a coffee table, and several remotes that look really familiar.

He's not sure, because he's not seeing anyone using it, but he's thinking Tim's got a game station set up there.

He shakes his head at that. But, apparently, if you get to the level of Director, you can mess around with your set up however you like. (It occurs to Gibbs that if he was in charge of the field agents, he probably would have wanted to make sure there was a spot for them to crash, too. Sleeping at your desk or in the morgue isn't a good plan. Of course, Leon appears to be under the impression that you're supposed to take breaks and go home, even when working a hot case, which is probably why there aren't any nap stations…)

There's a divider wall between the tv area and the next section, four collections of desks in little triangles, also walled off into their own sections, two really casual looking techs working away in one of them. In between the desk units is the conferencing area, long table, lots of chairs, whiteboards at the ready.

He sees two of the techs standing next to the whiteboard, writing something, while a third one sits in front of them on the table, talking and pointing things out.

To the left he sees what had been a cinderblock wall switch to glass, and then an open door.

The "office" Jimmy had mentioned.

And Jimmy wasn't kidding. It's a real office. With bookshelves, and a door, and chairs, and blinds that close so you can have a private conversation.

Right next to the door, on the cinderblock wall, is a whiteboard that says:

Rules:

1\. Never be unreachable.

2\. Never screw your team.

3\. Verify.

4\. Trust your instincts.

5\. Work hard, play hard.

6\. Fix it first, apologize later.

7\. Own it when you screw up.

Gibbs smiles at that. It's very much Tim's little kingdom in the basement. It _feels_ like him. He's been here a week and a half and he's already got his fingerprints on everything.

As Gibbs looks around at everything, he isn't sure what the emotions going through him are. Part of it is the awareness that Tim was beyond ready to go. That they held onto him for too long. He should have been running his own team for years by now.

Part of it is pride. No help. No direction. No double thinking or nervousness. Hell, he didn't even know what the damn job was, but he's got it. And it's absolutely clear that he owns this. It'll take time to get it all ironed out, but this is Tim's team, hell, his _department_ and he's going to be amazing at running it.

Part of it is regret. Day after tomorrow he's gone. He won't be here to see Tim do it. He won't be able to just drop on down and catch up. He assumes this is like when your kid goes off to college, you're happy for them, proud of them, you know it's good for them, you know they need it to be happy, to be the people they want to be, are meant to be, but you know you're going to miss having them in your life every single day.

He watches Tim at his desk. He's focused, typing away at something, fast, eyes scanning over the screen. Whatever he's doing, it has his full attention. Gibbs sighs. No matter how this works, that's gone. Tim won't be part of his daily life, not anymore. None of them will be. Gibbs takes a deep breath at that.

"Hey!" Tim's looking up from his computer, waving him in, smiling at him, cutting his musings short. "What bring you down here? Draga in the weeds?"

"Nah. He's filling out forms like a champ. Just wanted to see you, see your stuff."

"Come on in." Tim stands up and closes the door behind him, offering him one of the chairs, sitting on the corner of his desk. "What do you think?" Once that question would have been begging for approval, the combination of knowing it's a good job, but desperately needing confirmation of that. Now it's just the excitement of sharing something good with someone you love.

Gibbs nods, smiles a bit, turning to see the department behind him. "Lot better than the last time I was down here."

Tim nods with that. "Yeah. It really it. Be better yet, soon. IT's balking a little bit, but they tell me I'll get my new stations for group work or solo work in the next two weeks, and Physical Plant's trying to get out of doing it, but rumor has it they'll be moving the filing cabinets out of here and replacing them with work benches and some actual tools eventually."

"Faster than light bulbs?" Gibbs had been appalled to hear about not being able to change your own bulbs.

"Probably not. They won't give me a firm date. Just, 'I'm on the list,' whatever that means."

"Where are the filing cabinets going?"

Tim shrugs. "Don't know, don't care. Evidence lock up, maybe? Deep storage? I went through the regs, and found out that there's nothing that says I have to have copies of the paperwork on literal paper." Tim points to the glass bowl on his bookshelf that he's got filled with thumb drives. "Until we get the paperwork database up and running, I've got them saving the forms on their computer and to these. They're all coded for each sort of form. I'll get second and third copies, make sure we've got them in storage, and if we ever need any of this crap again, I'll print it out."

"You can do that?"

Tim shrugs. "Legal may have a different interpretation of how paperwork works, but as I said, I checked the rules, and they do not specifically say that I have to have _paper_ copies, just that I have to have copies, that those copies must be secure on and off site, and that I cannot destroy those copies. Same as the regs for emails."

Gibbs smiles. "Eighteen?"

Tim grins back at him. "Exactly."

"Legal's gonna love you."

"If I do my job right, they're never going to notice me, at least, not for this. I've got a conversation coming up with one of them about hiring. But, for this, it's not exactly like I'm going to run up there and say, 'No more paper copies for me!'"

Gibbs nods, looks around, hearing the hum of the computer, a few voices, and what he guesses is probably the ever-present tapping of fingers on keys.

He looks at Tim, half-sitting, half-leaning against his desk, posture relaxed, black leather jacket, red button down, and, Gibbs doesn't shake his head, but having seen the dress code Tim wrote up, he's not surprised, black nail polish. Right now, everything about him is radiating comfortable.

He smiles at Tim. "You're finally home, aren't you?"

Tim nods a bit. "Upstairs was home, too."

Gibbs shakes his head. No, it wasn't. Not like this. He's happier, more satisfied looking than Gibbs has ever seen him at work. "Upstairs was what you needed to do, to be, to get to be the man who could find this home."

Tim inclines his head. Gibbs knows that means _probably._

Gibbs stands up, looking around at the office, at the rest of the basement, at the techs working away. There's this huge bubble of feelings, there's pride, and joy, and the sense of loss from not being here, and love and more happy to go with joy, and… and when it comes down to it, he couldn't find the words for it if his life depended on it.

But it must be coming across in his face, because Tim nods at him, smiles, acknowledging it.

"It's good, Tim. _You've_ done good."

"Yeah, it is."

He's half tempted to hug Tim, but they're at work, and he can feel some of the techs are watching… And sure, that likely wouldn't bother Tim, but it feels weird to him, so he pats his back and says, "Okay. I'll let you get back to it. I know you're busy."

Tim nods at that, too. "Job scheduling system went live upstairs yesterday, and Hemmer's team has already found a way to break it." He sounds significantly more excited by that prospect than Gibbs would have expected, but he's guessing that figuring out how to fix it is Tim's current mystery.

Gibbs shakes his head, walking out, hearing Tim's fingers clicking away behind him.

* * *

The elevator doors open just as Tony's putting the phone down. Gibbs knows that look, knows the gestures, and heads straight to his desk to grab his bag.

"Murdered sailor in Arlington," Tony says.

And with that, jittery flees and Gibbs settles back into case mode.

* * *

Processing away (he's on photos) Gibbs thinks that his first case was like this. A murdered sailor in… It wasn't a suburban home, but it was a home, an apartment, but someone called it home. And it wasn't daytime, it was night. And… actually it wasn't much like this at all.

He was taking pictures. That he remembers. Franks was moderately sure he could handle photographing the scene without messing anything up, so that was his first job.

Franks had been sure that he was good, and that he'd eventually be useful, but Gibbs knows, back in the beginning, that Mike wasn't sure he could put enough of himself aside to do the job. He knows, those first few cases especially, that Mike worried he'd get too caught in what they were doing, get lost in his own experience from the other side. He knows Mike was nervous that Gibbs would blow up and kill someone, but he also didn't mind, too much, as long as that someone was one of the 'bad guys.'

He had been nervous that first day. Didn't know what the hell he was doing. Hadn't felt that way about anything in decades, since being a recruit stepping off the bus. Hadn't felt much of anything about anything for months by that point, so at least nervous was a step in the right direction.

He catches Tony watching out of the corner of his eye, realizes he's just standing there, not taking any shots, and gets to it. Crime scene isn't going to document itself.

* * *

"What do you got for me, Abbs?"

The LabRat (He hasn't bothered to learn their names. He should. They work here. They're good at their jobs. But they aren't Abby. It's the male one in his late forties. He ran the lab in Norfolk.) looks up at him and Gibbs mentally kicks himself. They processed the scene, got on their secondary work, (he was on witness statements) reconnoitered back at the Navy Yard, got Ducky's preliminary autopsy report (yes, the knife sticking out of the vic's chest was indeed what killed him), and now he was in the Lab, with the Caf-Pow, wanting to know what was up with the trace.

But it's 23:42. Abby's probably been home for hours now. She only sticks around after 18:00 for floods of trace, and this isn't that sort of case.

"Abby's not here right now."

Gibbs nods, feeling a little embarrassed. "What do you have, then?" He hands over the Caf-Pow and the tech (Corwin? Something like that…) looks at it curiously and puts it on the desk.

"Finger prints. Wife's prints were all over the knife."

"Kitchen knife from her home. It'd be weird if she didn't have prints on it."

"Prints in Duncan's blood." That's not the sort of thing that's common on kitchen gear. "We've also got a second blood sample on the knife. If we can get a sample…" Gibbs knows how that works. A breastbone is hard, stab a knife through it, and if you don't have a good grip, you'll cut yourself, too. Happens all the time.

"We'll hunt her down, see if she's got cuts on her hands. Anything else interesting?"

"No. Looks awfully straight forward. He was in a fight with whomever stabbed him. Ducky sent hair, blood, and skin samples from under the vic's fingernails, and they're all the same DNA. So, you don't have the wife in custody?"

"Missing since this morning. Neighbors heard a fight, called the cops, by the time they got there she was gone, and he was dead. Draga's hunting her by phone and financials."

The tech nods.

* * *

It was Thursday morning when Draga got the alert. Credit card activity.

Took them less than an hour to find her. Shelby Duncan wasn't exactly running. She was having coffee at a Starbucks. Was still there, sitting in a comfy chair, reading something on her phone, sipping a latte.

They watched the scene for a minute.

Ziva looks at them, nods to Shelby, takes her NCIS jacket off, she doesn't want to spook her, and heads in. Gibbs and Tony keep an eye on the front. Draga's in the back. When she sees Tony nod at her, she approaches Shelby and quietly says, "Shelby Duncan?"

Shelby looks up, split lip and black eye very visible under some haphazard makeup.

"I'm Ziva David, NCIS," she shows her badge, "I'd like you to come with me."

"Okay." Shelby goes to tuck her phone into her purse, and Ziva tenses, hand hovering over her gun, but all she does is put her phone in her bag and stand up, slowly. As she gets to the van, it's easy to see the bandages on her hands.

"This is about Paul, isn't it?"

Ziva nods, ushering her into their van.

"He's not gonna be okay, is he?"

"No ma'am, he's not," Tony says.

There had been a fragile, holding together by cobwebs sort of feel to Shelby. That's why Ziva had gone in soft and gentle. But that air of helpless damage fled before a brilliant burst of savage joy when Shelby said, "Good. Son of a bitch deserved everything he ever got."

* * *

Ziva's on point. She's in the interrogation room, gently pulling the story out of Shelby. Gibbs and Tony stand behind the two way mirror, listening.

It's a bad story, one he's heard too many times.

Awful marriage. The wife who took all she could take, and finally quit, got out, got help, got the restraining order, but just like too many other women learned the hard way, a restraining order is just a piece of paper. And a piece of paper has never, ever, in the history of paper, stopped a man who wanted to make trouble.

But a ten-inch chef's knife can and will and did.

* * *

They've got the case wrapped by lunch.

Gibbs wishes he could feel some sort of triumph, go out on a high note. (He supposes there's always tomorrow, or even this afternoon for that, but he's not feeling it.)

But maybe going out on a case like this is fitting.

Maybe keeping in mind that they aren't all wins, that sometimes justice isn't in the cards, sometimes all you could do is hope, and maybe pray some, that the perp gets the best damn lawyer on the East Coast and squirms out of it.

Maybe that'll help ease him out.

Keep him focused on how he'll never have to put another battered woman behind bars.

And it does help, for maybe five minutes, long enough to fill out the first form and stick his name on the bottom, but as his pen scratches the last s on his signature, it fades.

Unless his gut is wrong, and it may be, he certainly hopes it is, this is it. He's never going to bust anyone again. He's never going to put away another murderer, pull lies out of a thief, he'll never find another missing kid, he'll never say to another victim's family, 'We've got him.'

That hits hard enough he has to get up and head to the restroom to get control of himself again.

* * *

Ziva's kept one eye on her paperwork, and the other eye on Gibbs since she got out of interrogation.

It's clear he's not in a good place right now, at all.

And when he slams down his pen, and storms off in the direction of the men's room, she glances up at Tony, he nods at her, and she follows Gibbs.

She's probably about fifty seconds behind him, and isn't sure what she'll see when she gets in there. Nothing good. She stops at the door, listening, but doesn't hear anything, and then heads in.

He's leaning against the back wall, jacket folded over the wall of the nearest stall, ripping his undershirt to shreds.

He's got the polo shirt on, but his usual white undershirt is already in about four pieces. He's working on five as she watches.

Ziva gets this. Understands it on a visceral level. Anger is always easier than sorrow. And if you can't kill the sorrow, you might as well revel in anger.

He doesn't look up when she comes in. Or when she gently lays a hand on his shoulder. His shirt makes a very satisfying ripping sound.

She doesn't try to stop him, but just stands there, quiet, present, and about half an hour later, when he's got a huge, fluffy mass of shirt shreds she finally says to him, "Better?"

"A little."

"We can hit the gym next time. You are cleared to fight now."

He nods. That would have helped, too.

"I don't want to go." His voice broke on go.

She wraps him in a hug, stroking the back of his neck. "I know."


	59. Retired

On Friday Gibbs was…

He doesn't know.

Resigned is probably the best word for it.

All day people have been stopping by his desk to pat him on the back, wish him fair wind and following seas and tell him how much they're going to miss him, and... It's not really touching him, beyond feeling fairly proud of himself for not snapping at them or rolling his eyes, or storming off and hiding in the elevator all day.

He's got his stuff boxed up and is trying to not think too hard about NSA girl sitting at his desk, using his stuff, working on his team, doing his _fucking_ _JOB_.

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, lets it out, and goes to get another cup of coffee (number six of the day, and it's only 10:37.)

* * *

After lunch, he heads down to HR. The slow route, which means taking the stairs and visiting the whole damn building.

So much history here. So much of his life is bound to this building, woven through the bricks, flowing through the air.

The HR lady is nattering away about how wonderful retirement must be, and how many plans she's got for when she goes, but he's not listening as he gives her his ID and begins to fill out the mound of release forms.

He's seeing Tony stepping out of interrogation, joking with Ziva, Tim sitting at his desk working on something, Abby dancing in the lab, Duck and Jimmy leaning over one of the tables talking in the morgue. He's in Vance's, Jen's, Morrow's office, talking with them about… whatever.

He's smelling the coffee that goes with those moments, feeling the purpose of knowing what he was doing and why he was doing it.

 _Nothing lasts forever, Probie._ Mike's leaning against the desk he's sitting at, watching him fill out the forms. _You had a good long run, and now it's time for something new._

_I know, Mike._

_Do ya?_

_Knowing doesn't mean liking._

Mike laughs. _Don't I know that!_

* * *

"Sturm."

"Boss?"

"Hold down the fort. If the batphone rings," Tim jerks his finger toward his phone on his desk, "give me a call, okay?"

She nods. "If someone needs you?"

"You've all got my cell number. I'll be taking texts."

"Where are you going?"

"Upstairs, probably be an hour or so."

"Case?"

"Nah. Just offering some moral support."

She looks at him curiously, and he smiles. "Text if you need me."

* * *

Tim timed it right. He gets out of the elevator just as Gibbs is getting ready to step in.

"Here for Leon?"

"No." He steps back into the elevator with Gibbs. "Here for you. How'd it go?" Gibbs shakes his head. Tim pulls him into a hug. "Yeah, I know."

Several moments later, he pulls back. "Now what?"

Gibbs rolls his eyes, wipes them off, and looks at the ceiling. "Grab my boxes and go."

"Want a hand?"

"Nah. Tony and Ziva'll have that. They're waiting for me to get down and 'help me to my car.'" Gibbs knows that's code for get out of the building so they can cry a bit with him, too.

"Then I'll see you at the diner, later." Tim says, nodding, blinking, hard.

"Yeah." Gibbs takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. As of 16:30, Leroy Jethro Gibbs is no longer a NCIS Agent.

* * *

It's a bizarre party. Usually parties are to celebrate something, and this… There are people celebrating. And it is fun to get everyone together. But the guest of honor is basically going through the motions.

New plan or not, he's not relishing giving up being a cop, and plastering a smile on his face about it is proving even harder than giving up his badge and gun two hours ago.

But, you retire, after twenty plus years, and everyone you've ever worked for or with wants a chance to suck down some free drinks, say a few vaguely true but complimentary words, and pat you on the back before putting you out to pasture.

So, he's there, at the diner, half-sitting on one of the stools, greeting people as they come in and out.

Apparently, Tony and Ziva did a great job of making sure everyone in the entire universe knew he was going. Even Tom Morrow's dropped by to pat him on the back, commiserate on the whole retirement thing (he gave it up last year), and wish him luck. Jarvis has been by, joking about how he's going to have to actually start showing up for those distinguished service medal ceremonies, because the guy who wins them now'll also probably show up to collect them.

Borin's been in. Only for a minute, she got a call before she even got the drink to her lips, but she promised to make sure they got together, soon. He's actually pretty interested in seeing her for more than a minute. Still no ring on her finger. And she did kiss his cheek on the way out.

Burley flew in from Pearl. Cassius Pride, who he hasn't seen in at least a decade, is here from New Orleans. Callen's here, telling stories of Russia. Those three are getting along great, and he's made sure that he'll get a shot to spend some more time with them later. (The idea of the post-party party is actually cheering him up a bit.)

Fornell and Diane have both dropped in. (Not at the same time.) Leyla and Amira. Slater cousins, whose names he doesn't remember, are here to wish him well. (Along with Ed and Jeanie.) The whole extended family is here.

Leon, Lara, and the kids are here. And at some point, Vance'll make some sort of dryly amusing speech about how Jethro's been a pain in his ass for a decade now.

Rachel stops by for half an hour or so. He's not sure if she's watching to see how he handles it, or is offering support to get through it. Either way, and even with not seeing her anymore, he finds it comforting. She smiles and nods at him as she leaves, and he can feel the, _'You're going to be fine'_ she's thinking at him. He smiles back; he will. Just, not today, and probably not tomorrow or the next day.

Emily, Kyla, and Amira are in the booth in the corner, giggling with each other, eyeballing James, Elaine's youngest son, who's tending bar for this. Amira's really too young for that, but she idolizes Emily, has for years, so she glommed onto her as soon as she got in. Vance's son is glued to his phone, texting rapidly, visible 'why did you drag me to this' rays vibrating off of him.

The food and booze are good. Vance's speech is mercifully short (and genuinely funny).

In only four excruciatingly long hour, the send-off is done.

And Leroy Jethro Gibbs is officially, retired.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I've gotten a few notes on the Minions. First off, I'm immensely flattered that you're all reading so closely as to notice this. Secondly, so... yeah, Minions. You might be noticing that I kind of only have two 'real' Minions and ten fill-in-the-blank Minions. I'm working on that. And as I write more of this, I'm getting a firmer idea of who the Minions are.
> 
> So, yes, they do, on occasion, change names. (If the Copious Spare Time Fairy shows up to gift me with her bounty before I finish Shards, I'll see about fixing that. Otherwise it'll get taken care of in the post-finishing edit. Yes, I am going to go through once I finish this and edit it.) And if you guys notice that, or say, one of them suddenly changes gender or something, feel free to drop me a line about it. (Actually, for any of that sort of thing, feel free to drop me a line, I'm cool with grammar/continuity help, especially given how long this story is.) It'll make it that much easier for me to notice and fix errors whenever I get to rewrite territory.
> 
> Thanks!


	60. Team DiNozzo

Tony stands in front of his mirror, straightening his tie. He hasn't dressed this carefully for work in… Forever.

But today is the first day, the first real day, of Team DiNozzo.

Ziva kisses his cheek, and straightens his already impeccably straight tie. "Ready?"

He kisses her. "I was born ready for this."

She smiles at that, wry look in her eye, knowing exactly how nervous and eager he is for this, and then nods. "Then let's go."

* * *

It's been ten years since it was really, truly his team.

That's a lot of time to get a plan together. Lot of time to think about what worked the first time, and what didn't.

The first time, he was trying to out-Gibbs Gibbs. Not necessarily the same style, but solve the crimes, save the day, push harder, faster, longer than anyone else. That, he was trying to do.

He was trying to prove he was worthy of Gibbs' job. Because, when it comes down to it, 'You'll do,' and ending up with "temporary" Team Leader status because there was no one else around to take it wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement of his leadership skills.

But this time he's not feeling any need to kick into overdrive. He doesn't have to prove he's the man for the job, because he knows he is.

* * *

It feels really bizarre to be the old man on the team. He's fourteen years older than Ziva, eighteen years older than Draga, and he did peek into the HR forms and found that he's twenty years older than Bishop.

Who is, speak of the devil, walking into the office, little spring in her step, hair long and loose, looking perky and happy and just… so not a cop. He shakes his head (mentally, he doesn't want to do it for real and show what he's thinking) and says, "Hi."

She smiles up brightly at him. "So, where do we start?"

He points to Gibbs'… hers… it's hers now… desk and the pile of forms on it. "Fill 'em out. Don't get carpal tunnel. Doris, the evil troll from HR, wants me to remind you that they're supposed to be in black ink, perfect, no cross-outs. Cross something out, and you've got to fill it out again from scratch."

"He's not kidding about that," Draga adds. "First day in, I'm filling out the forms, we get called out, Gibbs had me doing it in the van on the way to the crime scene. I got it done on the way because you can't go into the field if they aren't done, and then, a few days later, in the middle of a massive terror case, Doris shows up, with half of my forms, bitching at me about how they have cross outs on them and how I have to re-do them because they have to be perfect and original."

Bishop's staring at him with wide eyes. "What did you do?"

"Nothing. McGee stood up and bit her head off. We were the only two on that day, because the rest of the team was injured, and he said… uh… It wasn't polite… but it boiled down to she could have my time for filling out the forms shortly after hell froze over because saving human lives and catching terrorists was more important than crossed out black ink, and that if she ever showed up here again and wasted his time during an active investigation she'd regret it."

Tony hadn't known that. "Probie slew the Troll?"

"Didn't hurt that Vance was up on the top level, watching, and just slowly nodded at her after McGee got done chewing her out while we were trying to stop someone who almost killed an entire aircraft carrier full of people."

"Wow."

"A week later, when we were on paperwork duty, he sent me down to fill them out again, perfect, the second time. Still had to do it."

Tony nods, the t-s have to be crossed and the i-s dotted. "Anyway, fill out those forms, Bishop."

"Filling out forms!" She nods along, looking at the forms, and puts her bag on the floor next to her chair, finds where Gibbs kept the clip boards, sticks the forms on it, and then hops onto the desk, cross-legged, pops her earbuds in, opens up a bag of caramel corn, hunches forward, and starts filling them out.

Tony stares at her, perplexed, but she's completely unaware of that, filling in blanks with all her focus. "Bishop?"

"Yes?"

He was about to say something like, _this isn't college, you sit on the chair, not the desk_ , but, as he thinks about it, it doesn't matter. If she's comfy up there, and gets the paperwork done correctly. Who cares?

"Nothing."

She looks at herself on the desk. "Is this a problem?"

"Not for me." Feels a little odd to say that, because her on the desk does irk him, but it shouldn't, so he's going to let it go.

"Okay, good. I like to spread everything out for big picture work, and pull in tight for little details. This looks like a lot of little details."

"Yes it is." She keeps looking at him for a moment, and he nods, "Carry on."

So she does.

* * *

It hits him, as he's doing his own paperwork, that he put the badge on for the first time in fall of '91. Which means, when Gibbs grabbed him back in '00, he had two more years of experience on the job than Gibbs did.

Means he's _always_ had two years as a cop on him.

And it's only now, sixteen years after they met the first time, that it's hitting him that that's true.

He knows he's older now than Gibbs was when they started working together. (A rather terrifying thought in and of itself.) But it's also hitting him that right now, he's the same age Mike Franks was when he gave it up.

He's the grown up. Husband, probably father soon, and now, without any question, the Boss.

* * *

Last week, when he had a fully functional team of people who… okay, Draga's still new and all, but for the most part he's out of the puppy phase and can be relied on not to pee on the rug… knew what they were doing (mostly), he got one case.

One case that took less than twenty-four hours to solve.

So, on day one of Team DiNozzo, dispatch calls up, and he's hoping for a basic homicide, something to gently get Bishop's feet wet. (Unlike the massive terror free-for all of doom that was Draga's first case.) But does he get that basic homicide? Noooooo…

No, they're calling him in on a triple murder and missing child/maybe kidnapping.

It's a family. Mom, Dad, and older brother are all dead. Little sister is missing. This is literally the case he had in mind when he asked Gibbs if he was going to work like he had a kidnapping on Monday.

He almost told Dispatch to send this down the road. But as he glances around the office, he can see the other teams are working, too.

"Give me the details."

Dispatch does, and right now, he'd give his left arm to have Gibbs back. This is the kind of case you want all hands on deck, and you want those to be good, unflappable, experienced hands. Not one barely-trained Probie and a complete wild card. But calling Gibbs for help… No, not today. Today is the worst possible day to call Gibbs for something like this. For both of them. He's got to fly on his own, and calling Gibbs in today would be like dangling a raw steak in front of a starving lion and then telling the lion he can't actually eat the steak, but some advice on how best to cook it would be nice.

So. No calling Gibbs. Team DiNozzo is on the job. Even if this is a triple homicide kidnapping and he's got two probies on the team.

Though he notices his phone is in his hand and he's got McGee's number up before he turns the damn thing off and sticks it back in his pocket.

* * *

If there is any saving grace for what's coming up, it's that they get the call from Dispatch while they're en-route, and learn the missing child has been located and is currently with Grandma.

Two-year-old Emma Tennu managed to get herself hidden in the laundry chute, and is currently the only living member of the immediate Tennu family.

They're way the hell out in the sticks. West Virginia's less than an hour away, and even with the GPS, they're on their third non-descript, sign-free, dirt road meandering through a million miles of forest, hoping that unlike the first two, this is the right one.

"There!" Ziva says, catching sight of an even smaller dirt driveway with four mailboxes at the end. Tony slams on the breaks, backs up, and turns in. Four log cabins. Each one on its own driveway branching off the main driveway. Fortunately the one he wants is easy to find, cop car with lights flashing, tape over the door, a very distressed looking LEO standing guard at the front porch.

This is the place.

Draga catches sight of the LEO, and his face hardens. He knows by the body language this is going to be all sorts of bad. Bishop's too green for that, so as soon as they stop she says, "Okay, what first?" in an eager voice.

"Just like a puzzle, we work from the outside in. So, first up, coveralls. Next up, perimeter. Bishop, I want you photographing everything. Draga, show her how to secure the perimeter."

"How far out do you want?"

Tony looks around. They're on a wooded lot in the middle of nowhere. If their perp… perps? He's thinking this far out in the middle of nowhere, three dead people means more than one perp, but that's based just on a feeling, no facts, yet. If their perps, came in by car, the driveway's basically the only way to do it without leaving a huge mess. "All the way to the mailboxes for the driveway. Hundred meters out from the house. Do either of you know anything about wilderness tracking?"

They both shake their heads. He sighs. Gibbs was great at spotting the trail someone leaves when they go through woods, practical use of that skill in the field. McGee was okay at it, he probably had like six merit badges in it. Of all the days not to have snow on the ground…

"Okay. See any suspicious looking broken bushes or branches, get Ziva."

"What would a suspicious looking broken bush be?" Bishop asks.

He's sure it's a good question, but since he's not the one who ever noticed the damn things in the first place, he's a bit stumped by that. Fortunately, Ziva answers, "Imagine someone was running through the forest quickly. If you see damage to the trees that matches that, yell for me."

They both nod.

"Get to it." Tony says.

"What do you do?" Bishop asks.

Ziva catches his, _it's not okay to dole out headslaps for questions is it?_

She shakes her head minutely. And he very much understands her answering look _you're the one who hired the girl with literally no practical experience in this subject._

"I talk to the LEOs… Law Enforcement Officers…" he says before she can ask, "Ziva's going to handle the outside of the house. And when I get done with them, I'll help her with that. Once you and Draga are done with the perimeter, we'll head inside to process the scene."

"Okay," she chirps, bright, happy, camera in hand. "Lead the way, Draga!"

And off they go.

* * *

On the outside, the house looks fine. The only clue, which Draga points out to Bishop, is the knob on the front door is broken.

Inside everything is not fine, at all. It looks like a horror movie was shot in here, but with real people.

Tony puts Bishop in charge of photographing everything, because even the greenest Probie can handle 'Photograph every square inch of this house, at close range, twice! And don't step on anything!'

Dad (aka Lt. James Tennu) is in the living room. From the looks of it, he put up a hell of a fight. Ducky points out the bruises on his knuckles and the fact that he's got four bullet wounds in his chest. Bishop does okay with that. So she takes pictures, looking nervous, scared, excited, and unhappy.

She's green by the second body. Mom, (Ensign Harper Tennu) is on the stairway leading up to the second floor, gun near her hand, and from the looks of it, she got at least four shots off before she was shot, too. He sees Bishop, swallow, hard, but she keeps photographing and does a good job of staying out of the way. She doesn't mess up the blood spatter or touch anything she shouldn't, and she waits patiently for Ducky and Jimmy to collect Harper, get her properly taken care of, before trying to get up the stairs.

Upstairs is the problem. Big Brother, aka Brian Tennu, eight-years-old, still holding the baseball bat he was trying to defend his sister with, is in the hallway. Tony knows how bad this hurts to him, how much he hates seeing this; how much moments like this make him feel the world is just a festering ball of evil, and that they'll never win, never even fight it to a draw, that the best they can do it just clean up the mess. He honestly can't imagine how this feels to Bishop.

And then he doesn't have to, he hears the first retch. She iron-jaws her way through it, doesn't puke on the rug, and walks, carefully, but quickly, to a bathroom. (Which hopefully doesn't have the key to this whole thing in the toilet.)

He wants to tease her, make a few bad jokes, try to lighten the whole thing up. He's about to do it, words on his tongue, but he can't. He's the Boss. Really, truly, the Boss, and he can't make himself feel better about this absolute shithole of misery and despair by mocking her response to it.

He hands her a Dixie cup of water. She swishes and rinses out her mouth, skin gray and clammy. "This is as bad as it gets, Bishop. We never run into anything worse than this. Take a minute, get your legs under you, and then take more photos. Get all of it on film, because somewhere in one of these shots is likely the answer to what happened and why."

She nods, takes a few deep breaths.

"Next time, get clear of the crime scene."

She nods at that, too. "I was afraid, that if I ran, I'd mess something up."

"Okay." That's way better than the she-panicked-and-headed-for-the-nearest-available-toilet that he was thinking she had done. "Make sure you've got puke bags in your pockets from now until you get used to this. You're right, it would have been bad to run through something and destroy some evidence. But, we haven't processed this bathroom…" He doesn't need to finish the sentence, her face goes even paler as she gets it.

"Oh God… Did I just…"

"Probably not. There's no blood trail into or out of here, and our perps (this much carnage means more than one person) would have been covered in it. But… there's no way to be certain."

She's looking crushed, listless, leaning hard against the bathroom sink, looking at herself in the mirror. "I'm not sure this is me. I'm more of a numbers sort of girl."

"That's why we've got a Probie year. You get to find out if this is you."

She exhales long and deep, closes her eyes, and he can see her steeling herself for what's outside the door. Then she stands up, picks up her camera, and says, "Okay. Let's get this asshole."

"That's the attitude!" He pats her gently on the shoulder and wonders if he was ever really this young or green.

* * *

Hours later, when they're still, _still_ processing the scene, he can't take it anymore. He looks around, makes sure Bishop and Draga are nowhere nearby. (He's got them getting blood spatter samples. He's figuring they'll be done roughly ten minutes after Hell freezes.) Then he pulls his phone out and hit's Gibbs contact number.

Before he gets the chance to even say hello, Tony says, "I want you back."

"Tony?" Gibbs sounds curious.

"She's _so_ green. Remember McGee's 124 Crayon box? She's every shade of green in the box."

"No one's born a cop, Tony."

"I know, but… God, Gibbs, she's making Probie look smooth and polished."

Gibbs laughs at that. Tony thinks he hears some woofing in the background.

"Where are you?"

"Doesn't matter. You gonna be okay?"

"Yeah. I will. And she probably will, too. But… God, I'm being encouraging and sincere. Ziva's starting to wonder who the hell I am and what I did with Tony."

"Part of the job. You don't want to be cutting her knees out from under her on the first day."

"No. I don't. So I'm encouraging her and keeping the snide comments in my head. It's," he checks his watch, "16:08, and I've said nothing, _nothing at all_ even remotely off color." He can feel Gibbs smirk at that.

"What's the case?"

Tony crumples. He can hear the longing in Gibbs' voice. He shouldn't have called. Not today. But he answers anyway, because right now lying would be worse. "Triple homicide. We thought it was a kidnapping, but we've found the girl."

Gibbs goes quiet on the other line, and Tony can feel him actively forcing himself not to offer to come back and lend a hand.

"We've got it, Gibbs."

"I'm sure you do," he says, slowly.

"We do."

Gibbs sighs. "I know you do. Doesn't mean I don't want to help."

"Yeah, sorry. Just needed to bitch about Tinkerbelle. To someone who'd _get_ it."

"Tinkerbelle?"

"She's really, really cute in addition to being every green you ever imagined. She spent the morning sitting cross-legged on your desk, ear buds in, humming gently to country pop music, while munching caramel popcorn and filling out the forms."

Gibbs chuckles at that mental image. "How are Ziva and Draga doing?"

"I'll let Ziva tell you herself. Draga's kicked into Older-Know-It-All-Big-Brother routine. Oh, you'll like this, Vance headed down for something, walked by the bullpen, saw her on your desk, stopped, stared at her, then stared at me, stared at her some more, she completely missed it, didn't see it at all, then he looked down, slowly exhaled, shook his head and continued on. Ziva saw it, too, and laughed out loud as soon as Vance was out of range."

Gibbs sniggers at that, and Tony's sure he hears another woof in the background.

"Are you getting a dog?"

Gibbs snorts a quick laugh at that, too. "Back to work, DiNozzo. Someone's gotta keep Tinkerbelle and Flyboy in line."

"On it."

"Tony?"

"Yeah?"

"They bickering at each other, yet?"

Tony sighs and rolls his eyes. He knows exactly what Gibbs is thinking with this. "They're a lot younger than we were."

"Thirty-five and thirty versus, twenty-nine and… how old is she?"

"Twenty-eight."

He can feel Gibbs shake his head, and remembers the question he hasn't yet answered. "No bickering yet, but yeah, it's coming."

He can feel Gibbs smile before the line goes dead.

* * *

17:00 rolls by. So does 18:00. "Draga, you don't have Kevin right now, right?" Tony asks.

Draga's still working his way through the fingerprints. "Not until President's Day Weekend."

"Okay." Tony looks around at the house. The bodies are out. All of the blood spatters have been sampled. They've still got… Lord, fingerprinting everything. "Bishop, you're on finding us food. Then we're working until 22:00. We'll find a hotel, sack out there, and get back at it first thing tomorrow."

Draga and Ziva nod.

"I don't have a change of clothing."

"No one's gonna mind if you wear the same thing two days in a row. Draga'll brief you on what sort of gear you need when we break to eat," Tony says. "But every day you come to work, you never know where work is going to take you, so you need a bag with everything you'll want for an overnight, maybe two."

"Okay. Then… I'll… just find us some food."

"Good."

* * *

"I don't get it," Bishop says.

"No one gets things like this, Bishop. If you 'get' something like this, you've gone over to the dark side," Draga replies, without looking away from his computer screen.

"No. I mean… I was talking to Ducky yesterday…" Monday they processed the scene. That took the entire day. Tuesday they finished processing the scene and then worked on witness statements, rebuilding the crime, trying to figure out what the hell happened. Wednesday they dug into the vic's lives. Today, they feel like they've got a handle on what happened: at least four people broke in and killed the Tennus, but why is still anyone's guess. "We were working on the profile of who does stuff like this. One guy could be some sort of insane loon out for whatever messed-up crazy's in his head, but this was at least four guys, so insane loner is out. The way it was done, bloody, everyone in the family, that's a message, but to whom? We've found nothing…"

Draga's scowling at the computer screen. He can feel DiNozzo watching him. (Even though he's technically not in the room right now.) DiNozzo hasn't said it yet, but he knows he's thinking 'McGee would have found the thing that breaks the crime open by now. Do your computer magic and find me the answer!' But the answer isn't there, and every night Draga heads home, seeing Brian Tennu, dead on the floor, holding his baseball bat, and he just wants to throw up or hit someone.

"You aren't listening to me."

"No, I'm not. I'm doing my job."

"I'm trying to help you do your job! We're looking in the wrong place."

Draga looks up from his screen at her. She's sitting cross-legged on her desk, sipping a coffee, looking very determinedly at the crime scene shots up on the plasma and the what looks like hundreds of other pictures she's got scattered around the desk, on the chair, on the floor, and taped onto the book shelf.

"It's not right! Groups of guys do not go on murder sprees just for kicks."

"The Mansons," Draga says, dryly.

She glares at him. The Mansons is not helpful. Random, crazy, evil will not get this case solved. "Not like this. Too tidy for Manson wannabes." She doesn't actually know if that's true, but she's hoping it is. Because if this is some sort of Manson crap… then there's no pattern, and she's useless for solving this. "If it was terror. If they were targeted because they were military, someone would have claimed this by now, and they probably would have been beheaded. If they were targeted for something they had done, you would have found it. There's no trace at all that the Tennus were into anything that could get them killed. Not like this. Not the kid, too."

"Sounds like crazy people."

"It's not! Just…. It's not!"

"Okay, fine! They would have killed the boy to keep him from identifying them."

"Sure, that's logical, but why show up when the kids are home in the first place? You're going to show up at someone's home to kill them, you pick a time when just the people you want are home, right?"

Draga doesn't roll his eyes. He knows Bishop's married, knows she has family, but somehow this hasn't filtered through. "It's a _family_ , Bishop. If Mom and Dad are home, the kids probably are, too."

"Maybe…" She's not really paying attention to him. She's staring at the shots, looking at them, feeling a deep level of just all-out _wrong_. "Still doesn't _feel_ right. This pattern's off." Assuming there is a pattern to this and it's not just crazy, evil. Can't be just crazy, evil. _Can't be!_ "I'm heading down to the Lab. They've got to have the DNA results back."

Draga snorts at that. "Maybe. We sent them over 500 samples of just blood spatter alone. Who knows if they've gotten to hair, yet. And we dusted the whole damn house for prints. Just scanning them all in probably took six hours."

"I'll go check." She hops off the desk and heads down to the lab.

* * *

Tony and Ziva were already in there, listening to Abby expound on blood spatter.

Bishop tries to keep calm as she hovers in the back, watching Abby go through a computer simulation showing how each member of the family died, but it's difficult. She's feeling scared and sad and excited and angry all at once.

"That it, Abby?" Tony asks.

"Of course not, Tony! We've been on this all night. I've got more than blood spatter analysis for you." She flicks the clicker in her hand and a new image pops up onto her plasma screen. "The bullets Ducky took out of the Tennus are favored by both the Russian Mafia and no less than three Colombian drug cartels."

Bishop hears that, and it clicks. She knows why this doesn't fit. She turns and goes sprinting up the stairs.

"Draga, you've got that almost photographic memory, right?"

He rolls his eyes. "I've got good visual recall. I don't have an eidetic memory."

"Good enough, I hope. When we drove up, it was a split driveway, right? Four houses off of it, but the mailboxes were all at the end of the driveway, right?"

He thinks about that. "Yeah, that's how I remember it."

"Did the Tennu's house have a number on it?" She asks, clicking through the pictures on the plasma.

He thinks for a few minutes. "Don't remember one. Just that it was way the hell back in the trees."

She gives up on the photos. She took literally thousands of them, not like just flipping through will find a house number or not. She turns back to Draga. "According to Abby, the bullets that killed the Tennus are a sort that's popular with several drug cartels and the Russian Mafia."

"What?" Draga had to admit that he didn't think this looked right, either. The financials, the phone records, the service records, social media, everything he could dig up on the Tennus showed a very average, middle-class, Navy family. Nothing he could find should have gotten them killed, let alone by any sort of organized crime syndicate. Unlike Bishop, who had decided that this was "wrong," he decided he'd missed something and was looking through their lives even harder.

" _That's_ why this isn't right." She's clearing off her desk, quickly stacking her collection of photos up on the corner of the desk.

"There's nothing about them that would get them involved with…"

"Check their neighbors! Long driveway, out in the sticks. The houses all look kind of the same. They were the second one on the left, but no one's got a number. I think they got the wrong house."

"You think someone broke in and slaughtered everyone because they were at the wrong house?" Given what he's found on the Tennus, that's making a distressing amount of sense.

"I think if we check the neighbors we're going to find a hell of a lot more motive for this than we are by studying the Tennus!"

She's sitting behind her own computer pulling up her notes. They talked to the neighbors. Well, the neighbors at two of the four houses. No one was home at the fourth one. They'd left cards, and told the LEOs to keep stopping by, and from the looks of it, completely forgot about it because the vast amount of everything else in this case took precedent.

"The empty house was the second one on the _right._ Ian McKenna and Brigit Heyn live there."

Draga's keying those names in. "Those are some really Russian Mafia sounding names."

"'Cause no one in the history of names ever had a fake ID. I had one back in the day."

He looks up from his computer, really surprised. "You had a fake ID?"

She pauses, staring at him. "You didn't?" She's amazed by that.

"So did I," Tony says, sending them his best _stop fucking around_ glare, watching both of them jerk in their seats. "Ziva had tons of them, but I'm not seeing how this is relevant to solving a triple homicide,"

Bishop almost runs up to him and starts talking, fast and excited.

"Breathe between sentences, Bishop."

"Okay." And a pile of new words spill out. But, he's liking those words, and Ziva is looking very interested by this idea.

"Draga," Ziva says, "track down McKenna and Heyn. Come on, Bishop, we are heading to check on their house."

Tony just nods at Ziva, pleased with her grabbing Bishop. "You want extra back up?"

Ziva shakes her head.

"If McKenna and Heyn are the intended recipients of that treatment, they are long gone by now. And if Abby is correct about who was shooting, our shooters know they will not be back to that house."

Tony nods at that. He knows what his job is, get the warrant, connect this to any other similar hits. If these were pros, they're long gone, and that burns, but there's also a good shot that he can find more of their work, and get a hint of where long gone might be.

And, if he's right, and hiring pattern-girl was a good plan, maybe she can turn a hint into a clue, and a clue into four professional killers in custody.

* * *

And learn from the house they did.

"They left awfully fast," Bishop says, once they get in. Everything is still exactly as it was dropped. There's cold food on the table, the refrigerator door is open, as they get upstairs they can see that the closets are full.

The house looks like they just… stepped out to the back porch or something.

Or something.

Upstairs and downstairs are a normal looking home. Nothing suspicious, nothing out of place.

The basement was an entirely different story.

"Is this a…" Bishop's squinting at the tables, chemicals, cooling equipment, chewing her bottom lip. "Meth lab?"

It doesn't quite look like that to Ziva. She shakes her head. "Ecstasy, I think. They do not use," she points to a massive pill tabber, "for Meth."

"Oh." Bishop looks around. She can tell Ziva's seeing something, but she's not sure what it is, and then she is. There are four empty boxes for zip lock bags, but no zip lock bags. "Oh! How much do you think they took with them."

Ziva picks up a box. "Fifty bags per box. They are sandwich bags so… what do you think? They'd hold about a cup of pills?"

That feels about right to Bishop. "So, a trunk full Ecstasy?"

"I believe so."

* * *

"What do you have, Ziva?" Tony asks when she calls in.

"Possible good news. McKenna and Heyn are definitely on the run, with what looks like a trunk full of Ecstasy."

"A trunk full?"

"I'm sending you the photographs." And she does, then says, "As you can see, they've got a full production lab set up down in the basement, and we found boxes that held bags, but no bags, and no pills."

Tony nods at that. "So, they'd have a difficult time moving from one car to another."

"They'll at least have several large bags to carry around. And once they sell their product, they'll have bags of cash. They cannot travel light until they stash everything."

"And if they're still out there…"

"With any luck our assassins are out there, too."

"With any luck. Fornell put me in touch with Gables, an FBI agent who specializes in the Russian Mafia, and according to him, what we've got matches four other open cases. He hooked me up with Hallahan, who's out of the DEA and also works with them on these cases, and all three of us are going to be confabbing soon. I've got Draga setting the BOLOs and making sure that McKenna and Heyn are on everyone's radar."

Ziva's nodding along with that as Bishop dusts everything for prints.

"I will be sending prints to Abby soon. She can make sure we are not looking for unidentified bodies in a morgue somewhere."

"Thanks." McKenna and Heyn are their only good leads. Having them turn up dead would end this case.

"We will get back as soon as we can."

"Good. Love you."

"And you."

* * *

Part of how he envisioned this whole working on bigger cases, more terrorism angles, was the idea that he'd be working with other organizations, team building, and sure, this isn't precisely the sort of case he was thinking of, but it was the same skillset.

Getting all of the info out of Hallahan and Gables took all of his skill, all of his charm, a bit of butt kicking, and when push came to shove, his own version of the Gibbs-stare-of-doom, but he did eventually get access to what turned out to be eleven cases with the same type of bullets (shot from different guns though), same MO, believed to have been carried out by the same four man team. (They have concrete DNA samples of all four of them, but not all in the same places at the same time.)

"Okay, Bishop, find me some patterns. Where do these guys go when they aren't working?" he says, dropping the stack of paperwork on her desk.

She stares at what is literally a foot high stack of paper with three thumb drives on top. Then she starts spreading things out, grinning. "Ziva, you need your desk right now?"

Ziva shakes her head. She didn't have anything to run down right this second that would require her desk. (She's calling everyone she knows in Interpol, and also a few associates in Russia who she "technically" doesn't know, but might be willing to slip her some intel on this.) She can do that just as easily leaning against Tony's desk.

* * *

Bishop may be every shade of green to ever green. She may be gently rolling hills of misty Ireland, green upon green upon green, but here, now, with a pile of hard data and dots to connect and blanks to fill in, Bishop is in her element.

Her very untidy, chaotic, and wild element. Honestly, Tony finds it vaguely uncomfortable to have this much buzzing (She's got music she's listening to, sometimes when she's really thinking, she hums along to it, and she's constantly eating something, so between the dull music, the humming, and the chewing there is a literal buzz that goes with Bishop at work.) activity spread out all over the place right next to him.

But it also seems to be working.

She's building maps. The maps he follows. He's good with the maps. Where the attacks were, who was at them, (They don't have hard names yet, so right now It's just A, B, C, and D.) and who died.

She's building a timeline, which he's also good with. Once again, who was where, when, doing what.

And she's got a database going, which Tony doesn't understand, but as he takes a quick break from the hunt for McKenna and Heyn, Draga checks her work, nods approvingly, and then gets everyone more to drink.

It takes two hours before she gets her first of what Tony considers useful conclusions. "They aren't leaving the US between jobs. I don't think they're leaving the east coast." She points out what happened when and where, adding in a few cases that the FBI and the DEA didn't offer, that she had culled from local PDs that also matched the pattern. "They're working too hard, too fast. And this one," she points to a job in from 2009. A woman found dead in her home in Ohio, her husband went missing, is still missing. "I think this one is the key. A's DNA, his prints, too, but nothing for B, C, or D, and usually we find traces of at least two of them. When the… LEOs?" Tony nods at her, "First looked at it they assumed that A was one of the men who broke in, because his rap sheet was a mile long. I don't think that's right. This is A's house. His prints were all over everything. They found his blood, because someone went after him there. Then there's two years where A's prints don't show up, but B, C, and D are active. And then in 2011, they're all back and working again. Someone grabbed A, held him for however long, and then he got out again."

Tony's listening to that, looking up the case. "Yitzack Havawicz was the name of the missing husband. Sounds more Polish than Russian."

"Fake name? Fake ID? How many people in Woodduck, Ohio can tell the difference between a Polish and Russian accent?" Draga adds.

"Good point." Tony keeps reading, while Draga tosses a shot of Yitzack (Blurry, quarter profile, Yitzack appears to have done a very good job of avoiding having his picture taken. There wasn't even a wedding shot of him.) up on the plasma. Along with the only full face photo they could find of him, his driver's license.

"According to what I'm seeing, he's a Polish national, immigrated in 2005, his and the wife's tax returns list him as self-employed as a long-distance currier/delivery person," Draga says.

"Good excuse to travel all the time," Ziva says as she comes back to the bullpen.

"Draga, can you put up the file I just sent you?"

"Sure."

Two more shots pop up, and one of them Draga squints at, and then throws up next to Yitzack's driver's license shot. "If they aren't the same guy…"

Tony's nodding.

"Illyan Fedoryvich," Ziva says, "was serving time in Russian prison for multiple murders until 2000 when he, and," she looks to Draga, and he tosses up the next shot, "Mikial Blezun escaped. They fell off the radar from 2000 until…" She looks at Bishop's timeline. "2003 apparently. Abby is running the prints to make sure, but Blezun is probably C; he was known to be handy with a switchblade." Evidence of C showed up at several cases that seemed to involve knives as well.

Bishop's smiling. "This is great, right? We've got names to go with two of them!"

Tony nods tiredly at her. "Yes. Names are good. But even with names, we don't know where they are, we don't know who B and D are, and cases that involve professionals tend to be sticky because they're usually good at hiding."

* * *

Truer words were never spoken. By Monday, a week into the case, they had all four names. (Fedoryvich, Blezun, Poppotic, and "Smith," no one knew who "Smith" really was.) They had a list of cases attached to those names two feet long. They had physical evidence, circumstantial evidence, financial evidence, electronic evidence.

What they didn't have was any clue (beyond somewhere on the East Coast, maybe, probably, ish) of their perps were.

The FBI came back to him saying that if they put their computers on it, they could, if they get lucky, turn up with someone on the facial recognition software anytime between now and the end of time.

So, after hearing that, a little before noon on Monday, Tony heads down to Cybercrime.

It's buzzing away down there. He can hear fingers clicking, dull music through earbuds, the sound of two Minions playing something… When did they get an X-box One down here? Yet alone sofas? He knew McGee was going to change the place up, but… He sees the Caf-Pow dispenser on the far wall and smiles.

Looks like McGee found a way to get Abby down here.

He follows the far wall toward Tim's office, and sees him in there. He knocks on the door, and Tim glances up at him, looking… really tired.

"You okay?"

"Hmm?" And distracted, he's looking really distracted as he says, "Oh, yeah. What's up?"

Of course, Tim gets that way when he's into his code up to his elbows, so… maybe this is just him working hard. Tony explains his facial recognition software issues.

"And you're what? Hoping I can do it faster?" Tim's actually sounding really testy to go with tired.

Tony shuts the door. "Really, are you okay?"

Tim shakes his head. "Fine. Just… No. If the FBIs on it, I can't do it faster. They've got more resources to throw at the problem, and this is a resource problem."

"Tim? Screw the case for a second. What's up? Or is it classified?"

He shakes his head again. "No. It's not a work thing. It's… I don't even know who we're telling… Gibbs and Jimmy because we told them at Bootcamp, but…"

Tony's feeling cold down his back. "What?"

Tim doesn't look at him as he says, "On Saturday morning, the pregnancy test was positive, and today she started her period… or miscarried. We don't know. According to her doc, this early on, there's no way to tell. Could have been a false positive."

"Oh, shit, Tim." Tony closes in on him and puts his hand on Tim's shoulder.

"It's not the end of the world. It's not Jimmy and Breena and Jon. We barely had time to get excited about it, but… It's really, really disappointing."

"God, yeah… Shit!"

Tim nods, slowly. "Yeah. It's really common. And, like… I mean if we weren't using the most sensitive test out there, we probably would have never known. But, we did know, so, it hurts."

"I'm so sorry."

Tim nods. "I know."

"How's Abby?"

He sighs, and shrugs. "'Bout like me." Tim shakes his head. "It's not a good day to be a lab tech."

"She's here?"

"Stay home and dwell on it, or work it away here, helping to catch bad guys and give someone else a good day. I think we're both quitting early, though, spend some extra time cuddling Kelly."

Tony nods at that.

"You want me to tell Jimmy?"

Tim shakes his head. "Already made lunch plans with him."

"Okay."

"You can tell Ziva, too. We'll be okay, but, just sad and disappointed right now."

Tony nods. Hugs him, fast. "I really am sorry for you."

"I know. Wish I could solve your problem for you."

"Don't worry about it. We'll wait for the FBI."

Tim manages a limp smile for him. "I should get back to…"

"I'm out of here." So, in addition to so frustrated by waiting he wants to chew his own arm off, Tony's got a good dose of sad for his friends. He makes a quick detour to the lab, and sees that Abby is off. Everything about her right now is depressed and droopy. (If she still had ponytails, they'd be drooping.)

"Hey Abby."

"What do you need, Tony?" She's also sounding sharp and prickly. He can see the LabTechs staring at her, wondering what on earth is wrong with their Boss today. He knows they don't know, and he's sure Abby doesn't want them to know.

He smiles at her and opens his arms. "The case is kicking my ass, and I need a hug." She rolls her eyes, not in a hug mood, but he wiggles his finger in a come here manner, and she does, wrapping her arms around him, him wrapping his around her. When she gets into his arms, he whispers in her ear, "And Tim tells me you need one, too."

She sniffs at that, swallows hard.

He kisses her ear and once more whispers, "I'm so sorry."

She nods, melting against him for a moment. Then she pulls back from him. "Better?"

"Yeah. I needed that. So, you got anything interesting for me?"

"AFIS linked in three more cases."

"Anything that breaks Bishop's pattern?"

Abby shakes her head. "Nope. Judging by how busy these guys are, I'd say this is the main hit squad on the East Coast for the Russian Mafia."

"Lovely."

"Any idea why they're so careless about leaving fingerprints around?" Abby asks, and he can feel her focusing in on the case as a distraction.

"Bishop thinks it might be part of the message. She called it, 'The Dread Pirate Roberts' effect."

Abby perks up slightly at that. "Everyone knows the Dread Pirate Roberts leaves no survivors, but somehow the rumor has to spread, and these prints is how they're build their reputation."

"That's her idea. Not sure how well it's supposed to work on people who aren't cops, but maybe that's the idea, keep the cops nervous about going up against them."

"I guess." Abby thinks about that for a second. "Could be darker. If the Russian Mob's as connected as they're supposed to be, see those prints and you start losing evidence and you put the D Team on the case."

Tony hates that idea, but it's plausible.

"You have anything new?" Abby asks.

He shakes his head. "Waiting for facial ID. Waiting for McKenna and Heyn to surface. Just, waiting. Trying not to channel Gibbs looking for Ari."

She nods at that.

"Okay. I'll get back to it. Thanks for the hug."

She nods again.

* * *

More waiting.

Tony hates waiting. This is possibly months of waiting, for what might be a hint of a guy walking through a mall ten months ago.

He hates the fact that he can't tell Rob and Maryanne Tishuccia that they've got the men who killed their daughter, son-in-law, and grandson. Telling them that their family was in the wrong place at the wrong time was bad, having no answers for them is worse.

He hates the fact that they can't find Heyn or McKenna, either. If they could find them, they could sit on them and wait for the next attempt on them. Then swoop in and grab everyone all up at once. But even with everyone BOLOed out the eyes, they're getting nothing.

Not exactly a shock. Sure they've got to be driving something big enough to move their pills. But they're basically a walking ATM. Scrape up enough cash to get into a club with a handful of pills. Come on out again with a pile of new cash. No financial pings. No electronic pings. (Because the first damn thing they probably bought with their pile of cash was a mess of burner phones.)

Nothing.

* * *

No one likes working with the DEA. As Federal Agencies go, they're only one step above the IRS when it comes to having a reputation for being flaming assholes. However, Hallahan, appears to be a decent guy, and, much to Tony's surprise, is waiting for him in the bullpen on Tuesday morning.

Smiling.

"Guess who got word of a big player on the E market coming into town looking to move a _lot_ of product."

"Are you for real?" Tony asks, feeling himself relax for the first time in days.

Hallahan nods, grinning. "It's even the right sort. Snake-eyes!" Heyn and McKenna had stamped their pills with a little set of die showing snake eyes.

"Thank you."

"Now, look. I know you want them for bait, but if they get away, and I don't get a bust on them, not only will my ass be in a sling, but I'm going to hunt you down and stick yours in one."

"We'll keep track of them. Where's it supposed to happen?"

Hallahan sighs. "At a club, where else? A hot, trendy, young place that you and I can't get into." If Hallahan's a day under forty-five, Tony wouldn't believe it. Neither of them are young or hip anymore. And while it's true that he'd much rather have experienced hands for something like this, at the very least he's got people who are young and can probably fake hip.

"Lucky for you, I've got some hot, young things on tap."

Both of them look at Bishop, on her desk, drawing more dots on her map, and Draga, walking into the office.

* * *

"We're going undercover!" Bishop's so excited she's about ready to pop. Draga's only marginally cooler. It's like every single James Bond fantasy is about to come true, for both of them.

"Yes, you are, but on a tight leash. There's exactly three things I want you two doing. Do not arrest them. Do not let them know you're watching them. The whole goal of this is to get a bug on one or both of them, preferably on their car as well," Tony says after sharing Hallahan's bounty.

"Cool! Oh… do we have micro RFID trackers? We could buy some of the E, stick the trackers on the bills. They're selling because they're unloading and getting ready to run, so they'll probably keep the money with them, right?"

"And if we can get one on the car, and maybe… How big are those things?" Draga asks.

"The ones we used at the NSA were smaller than a grain of rice. Brush up against someone's coat or something, and they'd never find it tucked into a fold or pocket. The ones we used on the money, well, you know those strips in the bills, we'd yank 'em out and stick one of our own in."

Draga's grinning at that. "Good. So it's a club, people will be dancing, rub up against one of them—"

"They probably won't be on the dance floor," Tony says, seeing both Draga and Bishop stare at him like he's a million years old and probably couldn't identify a club if he tripped on one. "They're there to move a lot of product. Pounds and pounds of it. This isn't the sort of thing you do slipping pills and bills to each other."

That seems to make a distressing amount of sense to them.

"So, yes," Tony continues, "You are going to arrange a buy. The RFIDs on the bills sounds like a good plan. Got to talk to Abby to see if we can get them on there in a way that won't stick out," _and if we have them_ , "plus get you two all suited up for the job. Ziva and I are going to get their car, and if there's a chance for it, Ziva'll lift one of their phones, and get a tracker in there, too."

Ziva nods, _Child's play_ on her face.

"And then we hope Fedoryvich, "Smith," Blezun, and Poppotic go after them again?" Draga asks.

"And then we hope. And when they do, we sweep in and grab everyone."

Bishop thinks for a moment. "Um…" She's biting her lip, looking nervous and resolved. "Judging on what we found in the house, how do we sweep in without ending up in a firefight?"

"You're qualified on a pistol and a rifle, correct?" Tony asks her. She had said she had all her FLETC proficiencies, but double checking is always a good thing.

"Well, yes, but…" She's looking a little green at the idea of a shoot-out.

"Hopefully the 'You're surrounded, give up,' technique works. If it doesn't, then we'll all be wearing vests, making sure we've got good cover, and going in and taking them out," Tony says.

"You don't think they're going to go after them at the club, do you?" Draga asks.

"Nope," Bishop says. "Way too messy. The only thing, besides connections to the Russian Mob, that all of their vics have in common is they were hit at home or in a hotel room. These guys aren't going to storm a club with two hundred other people."

Tony's pleased by that. "But…" he says, hopefully leading her on.

Bishop's thinking, but Draga catches it first. "But if they're hooked in like we are, and they probably are, they'll be watching the club, too, waiting for them to move, get alone, and then go in."

Tony smiles. "Exactly right, Flyboy. So, hunting for them is what Ziva and I are going to be doing while you're in getting trackers on Heyn and McKenna. If we can grab them before they go after our favorite E dealers, all the better. _Then_ we can grab our favorite E dealers sweet and easy as you please."

"All right!"

"So, what's the club?" Draga asks.

"Unity," Tony replies and sees Bishop light up and Draga's face drop. "What?"

"Ravers," Draga replies, looking like he's sucking on a lemon.

"Oh, come on. This'll be fun!"

"We're not going in to party!"

"I know. But the music will be—"

"Crap. Electronic, overloud, crap."

"Eric!"

"It's crap!"

Tony cuts in, "We can talk about the music later, or better yet, never. Club opens at midnight. I want both of you going home, get some rest, back here at nine, with whatever the hell it is you wear to a rave already on."

* * *

"Good Lord." Tony is not, no matter what McGee might think, a prude. He's just not. And in any other circumstance, he'd probably appreciate what Bishop's wearing. But, well, it's lingerie. From everything he can tell, she left her outfit at home and just showed up in white thigh high boots and her undies.

They're really snazzy undies. White bra with little sparkly things all over it. White boy shorts panties, with more little sparkly things (spelling out LOVE on her butt) and dangly sliver chains looping around the waistband on the front. But they're still undies.

"You look perfect, Bishop." Abby says. "We don't have any white glasses with a camera in them… So…" She's rummaging through their gear. "I know! You okay with pony tails?"

"Sure." Her hair had been down.

"Okay, let's get your hair up. I can get a mic hidden in your ponytail holder." Abby pulls her hair into two high ponytails and leaves a few wisps by each ear. Then she hands Bishop an earwig. "That goes in, and then off to ballistics to do a sound test."

Tony's watching her set Bishop up. "So you're saying you can't get eyes on her?"

"I don't have anything that'll look right. And if these guys are as nervous as they should be, they'll notice if something is off. But," she holds up a pair of thick-rimmed, black, hipster glasses, "Draga'll have these on. We'll be good. Speaking of Draga, where is he?"

Ziva prods him into the lab at that. "Here," he says, sounding sulky.

They all look at him.

"I hate raves. I hate ravers. I hate neon."

"Yeah, you're the poster boy for Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect." Bishop says as she heads out. "Abby, how about you come. You're almost dressed for it, and I know you've done this before."

Abby smiles a bit at that, looking more like herself. "Not tonight, not for me. And Eric, you look fine." He does look fine. He's wearing a pair of sneakers, black jeans loose enough that the top inch of his boxers is showing, black light paint highlighting his tattoo and on his lips, and that's it. "Okay, let's get you geared up. Now you're the only one who's going to have visual contact, so remember, you're the one who's making sure that everyone else can see what's going on. You'll both have sound, but you're eyes."

"Great."

Abby got him wired up, tested his sound and visuals, and declared everything was good. Then she took them to the next level. "Okay, we've got cash. One out of every five of these bills has an RFID tracker on it." She shows them two pacifiers on necklaces. "These also have trackers on them. If you get a chance, drape them around McKenna or Heyn's neck. They're waterproof, so you can use them yourself."

"Are those Kelly's?" Ziva asks. She's wiring herself up, and getting into her (modified) stealth-ninja garb. No one's going to see her tonight. But, in that she's swapped out her usual black cargo pants for tight black jeans, and the extra warm, padded, pocket studded black sweater for a black leather jacket, if she needs to pretend to be part of the party for a minute, she won't look too off.

"They were going to be, hadn't opened them yet, so it's not like they've got baby drool on them."

"Okay."

Draga picks one up, stares at it, eyes narrow, and shakes his head. "Ravers," he says it like a slur.

Bishop grabs the pink one with the unicorn on it and drapes it over her neck.

Abby touches one last prop. They just look like strips of little stickers. Half of them are little sparkly bits of plastic that will catch the light, half are neon smiley faces. She hands one strip to Draga and one to Bishop. "RFID stickers. Peel it off, pop it on McKenna or Heyn, and you're good to go. They're really sticky, so they'll stay put."

* * *

"Can you loosen up at all?" Bishop asks Draga as they wait in line to get into Unity.

"I am loose."

"Uh huh. You're standing at attention. I'd hate to see you at a party."

Tony and Ziva are in the command center van. About two streets back, one block over. They've got a good view of the Unity parking lot through the window, and a great view of everything through the cameras they put up earlier today.

Tony can hear some movement, and the angle of Draga's camera shifts. Tony assumes that means that Draga's getting 'loose.'

Tony covers his microphone and says to Ziva, who's watching the feeds to see when McKenna and Heyn get here, and more importantly what they're driving. "Now I know why Gibbs had white hair." Then he uncovers it and says, "I can hear you two, you know?"

Bishop's hanging on Draga, and he's looking better, but still really stiff and uncomfortable. She wraps her arm around him and kisses his ear, saying. "Look, we're buyers, right?"

"Uh huh."

"Okay. Not anymore. I'm ditzy arm candy, just here to party. You're Mr. Serious Buyer on a mission. You keep them paying attention to you, and I'm going to be drunk and flirty and falling all over everyone."

"I can do that."

"Good."

* * *

"Got them!" Ziva says, pointing out a non-descript Toyota Camry that's riding just a bit too low.

Tony nods, switching the car to his main feed, secondary feed to the door of the club. (Bishop and Draga are now three places from getting in.) Ziva gets a third feed up, locking Heyn's face in place, so the camera will follow it where ever it goes in range.

She zips up the leather jacket and gets ready for part one of their plan.

Tony squeezes her hand and gives her a quick kiss. She smiles back at him and heads out.

He stares at the image of Heyn on the feed, watching carefully. Like Bishop, she's in a warm coat, and probably not much else. Once they get inside, it'll be hot, but out here it's in the high thirties, so everyone is bundled up.

"Left pocket's hanging lower than the right," he says to Ziva.

Ziva brushes by Heyn, a ghost, snagging her cell quickly, adding one of Abby's stickers to it, and putting it back into her pocket before she knows anyone was ever near.

"Done," Ziva says as she heads to the parking lot.

"They're in line, about a hundred people behind you," Tony says to Bishop and Draga.

He sees Draga's video feed bob up and down, must be nodding. "Great!" Bishop says, all perky and bubbly and cute.

Tony fiddles with the tracking software, map of the area coming up, all of the trackers are live, but most of them are in the money, in the trunk of Bishop and Draga's car, some of them are on Bishop, the pacifier and the stickers, more stickers on Draga, and one, he highlights that one, lets the computer know to keep track of that one, is on Heyn's phone.

"Onto the car," Ziva says. This is the tricky bit. If "Smith", Fedoryvich, Poppotic, and Blezun are also in on this, and are waiting for a shot to grab Heyn and McKenna, they're likely also watching the car. So if they see Ziva toss a tracker on it, they are going to get suspicious.

They'd debated about which was the better way to do it, make sure they saw her do it, but make it look like nothing had happened. Or have her do a full on ghost routine.

The parking lot dictated how it would go. It's brightly lit, the spaces are wide, and there are about five hundred spots where you can camp out and get a great view of everything that's going on. It's the ultimate stealth nightmare.

So, step two on the car involves Ziva shifting from one form of ghost, dark, subtle, silent, to another. Drunk party girl heading back to her own car. She's swaying, stumbling, fumbling for her keys in her purse, and with an exaggerated action, pulls them out, overbalances herself, and topples to the ground right behind Heyn's car. She crawls around on the cold ground, trying to grab her keys, missing the first few times, (and in the process tucking two RFID tags onto the car) and then finally gets herself standing, staggers over to a car, puts her key in, turns it, and "finds out she's at the wrong car" a moment later, she does find the right one, gets in, pulls back way too fast, rear ends one of the other cars in the lot (Tony makes a note of the tags, they'll reimburse the owner) and peels out of there.

He can't see the way she's driving, but he's sure she won't drive "sober" until she's a good mile away.

"Ziva's clear. Looked great."

"Of course. Did you catch anyone watching?"

"No. But, like we noticed before, there's more vantage points on that parking lot than there are of home plate in a baseball stadium."

She chuckles at that. "Back in a few minutes."

* * *

"And we're in!" Bishop says with a giggle. "Okay, drinks first, then dancing, then…" She sounds so cute and fun.

Draga lets himself get pulled to the bar, where Bishop holds up a finger, bopping around to the music, already moving to it.

Bartender sees her. And she shouts over the music, "White Russian, and for Mr. Boring over there, Dewars."

The bartender nods, and she places a fifty on the bar.

A minute later she shoots back her White Russian and puts the empty shot glass on the table.

"Bishop…" She hears Tony say in her earwig.

"Come on, Babe!" He sees Draga lift his, but it looks completely full when it goes back down. "Oh, Lord, you just really are no fun. Here." She shoots his back, too. "Come on, dancing!" She pulls him onto the dance floor, and once she's draped over him, she says quietly, so Tony and Draga can here.

"Cops can't drink on duty, right? Well, look, I'm not a cop."

"They can't drink because you're not supposed to be working drunk," Tony says, sternly.

"No problem. I can't get drunk."

"What?" Both Tony and Draga say it.

"Just, can't. Same reason I can eat all day and not get fat. My metabolism is insane. Seriously, an hour from now, you can breathalyse me, and I'll come up clear."

"Really?" Tony asks.

"Yep!" She's dancing close and wild, hands and body free and exuberant, but she quietly says, "As soon as we're in and we approach them, I'll have another drink in hand and be sucking it down. Probably buy them a round, too. Wanna be good hosts, right?"

* * *

Eventually, McKenna and Heyn come in. They don't get drinks. They don't hit the dance floor. They grab a table, and settle in.

Bishop and Draga continue to dance, watching different people head over to them, quiet deals being made. Twice McKenna gets up, heads out of the club, while Heyn sits with whomever was with the buyer, chatting.

After the third buy, they decide to go in.

Draga heads back to the bar, one thing he's noticed is that everyone who heads over brings drinks, so they'll bring drinks, too.

Bishop is sipping hers as they head over, and sits down next to Heyn. Eric slides into the booth next to McKenna.

McKenna and Heyn just stare at them. "Booth's occupied," McKenna says.

Eric looks at them, then looks at Bishop. "Goddamn, Babe, did you notice there were people sittin' here!" Then he turns to McKenna. "We're here because the booth is occupied, specifically because it's occupied by you, and we'd like to see about doing some business."

Heyn raises an eyebrow.

McKenna shakes his head. "Wrong booth. We're here to party, not do any sort of business."

"Uh huh," Draga says, sounding cool and bored. "Don't let the paint fool you, I'm not nearly as stupid as this looks. You're here to party," he pushes the drinks toward them, "which is why she's been sitting here all night, and you only get up after having a chat with someone, agreeing to a price and an amount. If that's a party, it's awfully lame. If it's a business, though…"

McKenna and Heyn look at each other, some sort of silent communication going on between them. Then McKenna says, "So, you're the brains; who's pretty girl then?"

Bishop giggles. "Watch. Eric." She stands up and he does, too. She takes one of the little stickers, they're about pill shaped, and he gets where she's going with this. He's got a bill in his pocket which rapidly ends up in his hand.

She kisses him the sticker while palming the bill, tidily tucking it into her boot. Then she sits back down, so cute, right next to Heyn, and puts another sticker onto Heyn's shoulder, kissing it, taking another drink. "I'm distribution. You don't think I'm wearing these boots because they're comfortable, do you? And honey, let's put it this way, these" she gestures to her breasts, "look great in this bra, but they're not really that big. Got a lot of room for a really good time in there. And no one gets strip searched at a place like this, so they don't ever find the goods."

"Uh huh." McKenna doesn't look impressed. "Goodbye, Smalltime," he says, waving at the door.

Bishop pouts and throws herself in his lap while Draga bristles. "Smalltime?" He pulls up his phone and pulls up a shot. It's the trunk of their car, in the trunk is a gym bag filled with nicely stacked bills. "Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars." (All the cash NCIS could scrape up on ten hours' notice.)

McKenna shakes his head and pinches Bishop's butt. "God, you two are cute, but I don't get out of this booth for under a million. Come back when you're ready to play."

Bishop pouts at him again, looking very cute and very determined. She drapes her pacifier over his neck and says, "Fine. You don't want our money, we're gone!" Then she gets up, very huffy, intentionally wobbling on her feet, and heads off. "Coming, Eric?"

Draga's stuck, he wants at least one more tracker on them. He feels around in his pocket and finds the matchbook he'd grabbed earlier and gets a sticker on it. He writes his name and number on it. "On the off chance you change your mind. My money spends just as well as theirs does."

McKenna rolls his eyes but takes the matchbook.

* * *

He's dancing with Bishop, well into the middle of the crowd when he feels safe to say, "Now what?"

"Leave them be. Get eyes on anyone who's buying. DEA'll like that. Ziva got their car, you got trackers on them, it's good enough," Tony says. The whole time he was watching them run the buy attempt he was halfway between wanting to shout directions in their ears and stay silent, afraid that they'd startle or spook or, God, worse, McKenna or Heyn might hear a whisper of his voice.

Silent won. He didn't want either of them looking like they were hearing voices in their head while they made the deal.

"Should we approach someone who looks like they made a successful buy?" Bishop asks.

"Sure," Tony says. DEA'll like that even better and it'll make them look even less like cops.

* * *

They dance for an hour, scanning the crowd, watching McKenna get up and head outside with two more men. One of whom did come back into the crowd to party and celebrate. And who they were able to buy two hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of Snake Eyes from.

Bishop sat there, smiling at McKenna and Heyn, waving, as Draga heads out into the parking lot, taking care of the actual sale.

Heyn heads over to her, which surprises Bishop, but she tries to keep it off her face. Heyn's holding a pill on her fingertip, looks like a Snake Eyes. "Could have sworn you were a cop."

Bishop snags the pill and downs it, giggling. "Why would you say that?" _What the hell are you doing!?_ Tony's yelling in her ear. He can't see what she's up to, but obviously he's got a feel for something going on.

"Because we know every buyer here, and we don't know you."

"Your damn loss. Wanna dance?"

Heyn shakes her head. "We'll be in town for two more days. You come by any more cash, come see us. We'll give you a better price than Green did."

"Sure." Heyn heads off, and Bishop heads into the center of the room. She's not feeling weird, yet, but she's guessing that she's got, at most, ten minutes before her body starts dissolving the tab. One song. She's going to dance for one song, then she's hitting the head and throwing up.

Yes, it's true she can't get drunk, but she's got no idea what'll happen to her if she gets any real dose of E in her system.

"Bishop, what did you just do?" Tony's asking in her ear, again.

"You don't want to know," she sings along with the music.

"Draga get back in there."

"I'm fine. Nothing I can't handle."

"If you test positive for E, your job is over."

"Uh huh." She starts bopping toward the ladies' room. There's a line. Fuck that. She stumbles into the men's room, retching, and the guys clear a path for her as she stumbles/runs to one of the stalls.

She's not a fan of throwing up, and throwing up booze is no fun at all, but the pill comes up, too, and it's in good shape. She staggers out, looking disheveled, a little embarrassed, but able to pass as just another drunk party girl. (Probably because she's in a men's room filled with drunk guys.)

* * *

Draga's scanning the room for her. He knows where she is, the com links are making sure of that. But the character he's playing doesn't.

She waves to him. He smiles and waves at her. She nods. Waves back to Heyn and McKenna, and the two of them leave. After all, job's done, they got their goods, why stick around?

* * *

Tony watches them make it to their car, feeling like he's got to have a very long, very detailed, very _explicit_ conversation with Bishop about what the hell is appropriate behavior when undercover.

Ziva, on the other hand, is awfully impressed. "She would have done well in Mossad."

"Yeah, great. You guys didn't have any rules. She gets hit with a random piss test anytime in the next year or two…"

"She will be fine. She got the pill up before it could do any harm…" He's watching Heyn and McKenna's car. (DEA was going to be thrilled with them, they have five buys on camera now.) Someone… "Do you think that's Blezun?"

Ziva squints at the feed. Right general shape and size. He's also doing the drunk partier routine, and like Ziva conveniently "trips" next to Heyn's car.

"Oh shit!" Tony says quietly. "Ziva…"

"I'm on him."

"Guys, things just got interesting. Blezun just planted a bomb under Heyn and McKenna's car. He did it fast and easy, so it's a remote detonator, not hard-wired in, which means he's got to stay close enough to set it off. Ziva's following him. Draga, get to her for backup. Bishop, I want you back in the club, if I say go, I want you to pull the fire alarm and get those people out of there."

"On it." "Got it." Came from Bishop and Draga.

"Ziva, I've still got eyes on him, he's heading back toward the parking garage across the street. Draga, what's your ETA for Ziva?"

"Less than a minute."

"Good. You got vest on?"

Tony can hear fast breathing, and the feed on Draga's camera is bouncing up and down, then for a second everything goes black, and he hears the ripping sound of Velcro. "Just pulled it on. You want me to find her, or just grab a good spot in the parking garage?"

Tony the husband wants him right on Ziva's ass. Tony the cop, the leader, has an idea of what might be going on, there's a white van on the third floor of the parking garage facing this parking lot. He can't see in, the street lights and garage lights are reflecting into the glass, making it opaque, but his gut is saying that's where to go.

"Third floor, parking garage. White van overlooking the club's lot. That's where I think he's going. Ziva, you have eyes on him?"

"Yes."

"Okay. I'm going blind right now." He gets into the front seat of his van, grabbing the sniper rifle they have in their inventory. It takes a second but he gets it set so he's got focus on the van, thanking God that they picked a spot where they could actually see the Unity parking lot, and by extension, the parking garage next to it. "And I've got eyes on the van. Blezun still heading in that direction?"

"Yes he is," Ziva answers.

"So, what's the plan? We follow him, close in, and ask them to surrender?" Draga asks.

"No. You are going to find a nice spot somewhere on the third floor where you've got a clean shot at that van. Ziva is going to follow him, close in, and ask him or them to surrender, and when he just about wets his pants laughing, I am going to very nearly miss his head with a bullet. If he or they don't surrender then, things are going to get sticky. But if he goes for a gun, you kill him. Got it."

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Ziva?"

"Entering the parking garage, heading for the elevator. I'm hanging back. Draga?"

"Just got to the third floor. Bishop?"

"Just got back in, looking for a fire alarm."

"He's in the elevator. The three is lit up."

"You want me to ask him to surrender?" Draga says. "I'm in position."

Tony wishes that he could keep aim on the van and still see from Draga's camera. A quick glimpse of who is in there and where would be worth its weight in gold. "No, let him get to the van. Better yet, try to see who's in the van. They aren't going to blow up the car until McKenna and Heyn are in it. They'll probably want to follow it until it's out of range of a whole lot of other people. They'll stick around for at least a few more minutes, long enough for Ziva to go in."

"Okay." Draga says, "Elevator just binged. Doors are opening. I've got eyes on him. He's coming toward the van…"

Tony scans his scope toward the elevator. "Got him." He watches Blezun head to the van, open the doors, and, yes, he can see Fedoryvich, in the far back for a second. "Smith" and Poppotic must be in the front seat, that is, if they're there at all. He gets a quick glimpse of a shit ton of guns, and what looks like a lot of electronics before the van door closes.

"You see that?" Draga asks Tony.

"Yes. They're in there with enough firepower to take out France. Ziva?"

"Entering the elevator right now."

"Bishop?"

"I've got the fire alarm. DiNozzo, how do I keep them from all flooding out toward the bomb?"

 _Shit_ , Tony hadn't thought about that. "Only reason I want you to pull it is if McKenna and Heyn try to leave. I'm hoping that with that much potential collateral damage they won't pull the trigger until after McKenna and Heyn are well out of range."

"Hope you're right."

"Me too! Ziva?"

"Elevator just stopped, doors are opening."

"I've got eyes on her, DiNozzo, and a clear shot on the van. Wish I had more than a pistol on me."

"You and me both." Ziva clears a truck, and Tony spies her in his scope. "Got you in my sights."

"You always do." Ziva says back. She raises her voice, pulls her gun, and calls out, "Fedoryvich …"

"Draga."

"Yeah, DiNozzo?"

"Tires, now." Tony says a quick prayer, hopes he's as good at this as he thinks he is, and then pulls the trigger, twice, fast, and watches the front tires of the van sink low. Less than a second later he hears two more shots and sees the back end of the trunk sink down.

Ziva's still saying… actually, he doesn't know what she's saying, it's in Russian. But he's pretty sure that it's some variety of come out unarmed with your hands up, you're surrounded.

He catches just the tip of the muzzle (thank God for 10/20 vision) peeking out from the front, passenger side window, pointing toward Ziva. He can't see inside, the lights from the parking lot and garage are still, even two inches lower, reflecting off the glass, but he's got about two tenths of a second before something very, very bad happens, so he fires again, straight through the windshield, about where he assumes a head would be for someone holding the sort of gun that barrel probably goes with.

The barrel jerks, falls back into the van as the windshield shatters, but holds in place. He's got no idea if he hit anyone, but there's no longer a gun pointing at Ziva, (that he can see.)

She's saying something else, still in Russian, but this time he hears a voice respond, also in Russian, and though he wants to see, he's not about to take his aim off the van.

"They're moving out of the van," she says. "Draga, to me, keep the door in sight."

"Got it."

She's barking orders in Russian again, and this time three of them come out, and line up next to the van, where he's got a perfect line of fire on them. Ziva holds her gun on them, too. "Draga, cuff them."

He sees Draga nod, and tuck his gun back into his pants.

"Stand down, Bishop."

"Okay. You want me back in the van?"

"Do you have eyes on McKenna and Heyn?"

"Yes."

"No, stay in the club right now. Keep eyes on them."

He can see Draga cuffing the other three. "Where's number four?" he asks Ziva.

"They say he is dead." She moves around to the side of the van, and looks in through the passenger's side window. He can see her nod. "Clean head shot."

"That's a miracle. From here, I can't see through the windshield."

Ziva says something in Hebrew. Sounds like a prayer. He adds a quick Amen to her words.

"All secure. Everyone is cuffed."

"Good. I'll be up there in a few minutes."

* * *

And in a few minutes he did get up there, with the van, to collect Fedoryvich, Blezun, and "Smith." And once collected, (and cuffed to each other, and to the steel bar in the back of the van. They aren't going anywhere.) he called Hallahan, explained exactly what they had done, and that they still had eyes on McKenna and Heyn.

"I'll be there with my guys as soon as I can."

"Good."

They didn't process the scene for the shooting, or do anything besides sit tight. He wants to maintain custody of everything right now. But, he also doesn't want ten thousand cops spooking McKenna and Heyn.

It took half an hour, but Hallahan gets to the scene. He's got a few plain clothes people with him, and they get into position to follow McKenna and Heyn.

An hour later, when it was getting onto five, the club was ready to close. Bishop radioed in. "Crowd's thinning out, they're going to notice me if I stick around much longer."

"Okay, get out of there. Hallahan's guys are watching for McKenna and Heyn."

So, Bishop heads out, wrapped in her coat, and eventually makes her way back to the parking garage.

She sees their van, and the blood, bullet holes, bullets, and and broken glass all over the parking garage and is very glad it's three stories up and not in anyone's direct line of sight from the ground.

From up there, she has a very good view of six DEA agents swarming on McKenna and Heyn as soon as they get out of the club.

And as soon as they moved, Tony has his phone to his ear. "Ducky, hi. Yeah, I know it's early. We need you here." Then he makes the next call to Vance. He updates Vance on everything that happened, reports the shooting, and requests the correct IA auditors to come and make sure it was a clean shoot.

"Does IA always come in?" Bishop asks.

He nods. "Any time one of us kills someone, there's an investigation. Just saves a lot of time and trouble."

He looks at Bishop, shivering in her coat. Temp's dropped during the night, can't be much above fifteen degrees right now.

"Go home. Get some rest. They'll be debriefing us until at least lunch time today. Bright and early tomorrow morning, these guys go to interrogation and you get to see what happens."

"Okay."

She turns toward the car that she and Draga had been using.

"Bishop," her name from Tony stops her dead. "Before you go. Coffee, donuts, more coffee, something with some protein in it for the three of us. We need food and we need to be awake to talk to IA."

"No problem!"

* * *

And eventually she was back.

And eventually IA questioned them, and processed the scene while Ducky and Jimmy took care of the body.

And eventually, not long after what should have been lunch Tony, Ziva, and Draga got to go home.

Right now, the official verdict hasn't been reached, but it was a clean shot, he knows that, and he knows IA's going to find that way.

Eventually they got Blezun, Fedoryvich, and "Smith" into custody and processed.

And eventually, they went home, and he and Ziva fell into bed, wrapped in each other's arms, and slept like the dead until the alarm went off at 6:05, the way it usually does.

Eventually there was questioning, but it didn't amount to much. Tony knows how to read the prison tats. These guys have already been through everything the Russians had to offer (including Siberia) and didn't talk. He's got nothing to scare them with.

So they sit there, silent, not even asking for a lawyer, refusing to say anything.

And once he's got them arraigned on everything they've got on them, he hands custody over to the FBI.

And that was the first full case for Team DiNozzo, and all in all, he'd say it was a job well done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * * *
> 
> A/N: And yes, we will back track to see what Gibbs has been up to and get the story of what happened with Abby and McGee. Just wanted to get a good Tony-centric case fic out there.


	61. Mona

January 18th Gibbs woke up at exactly the same time he did every morning. He'd gotten up, eaten breakfast, exercised, gotten two-thirds through the usual shit, shower, shave routine when, reaching for the shaving cream, he realized he didn't have to shave, because he doesn't have to go to work.

Because he's not a cop.

Not anymore.

And for all the dreading, for all the not wanting to be here, for talking about it with Rachel, for mentioning it to the kids, standing there, in his shower, water rushing over his back, shaving cream in hand, it still hits like a punch to the gut.

He's not a cop.

He doesn't have to go anywhere today.

He doesn't have anything to do.

The case, the case he was on, the case that the paperwork wasn't done on… Doesn't matter. It's done for him.

Tony and Ziva and Draga are on their own today. No they aren't. NSA Girl is starting today, sitting at his desk, filling out the forms, maybe going on her first case.

Whatever happens, he's not finding out about it until later. Maybe not until Shabbos on Friday.

Because he's not a cop. He doesn't work at NCIS, not any more.

* * *

It's a kneejerk move. One that he didn't think through. He just did it.

"Hello, Ruby Lemere?"

"This is Ruby."

"Hi. This is Jethro Gibbs, I don't know if…"

"I remember you Agent Gibbs. I'm sure Dex does, too. What's going on, something with the case?" It's been two years since her husband's case closed, three years since the investigation ended, but things come back up again sometimes.

"No. Nothing like that, at all… In fact… I'm retired now. No more cases for me. I've got time on my hands. I'll be home at a sensible hour every night, and I was wondering if you could tell me about what happens to military dogs once they can't serve any more."

He thinks he feels a smile in her voice as she says, "Sure, Agent Gibbs."

"You can call me Jethro or Gibbs."

"Did you want to talk on the phone, or do you have time to get some coffee?"

"I've got time coming out my ears right now."

* * *

He's always liked dogs. His internal mental image of 'home' had a dog in it. But they moved around so much, and there was no guarantee they'd be somewhere hospitable for a dog, so they didn't get one.

It's not a kindness to get something that needs a lot of space to run around and then end up stuffing it in a tiny apartment for six months or a year. That's a recipe for a miserable dog. (Doesn't necessarily make for happy humans, either, but that wasn't something he and Shannon ever really talked about.)

And, of course, his mental image of "dog" is something that did need space to run around. Dogs are large, occasionally slobbery, sometimes smelly, critters that like a lot of exercise and running around. Dogs keep you company when you go on your morning run. Dogs guard your home and can take down an intruder. Chihuahuas, most terriers, Corgis (shudder) and the like are, according to Gibbs, cats. (Strange, temperamental beasts that appeal to women for reasons he does not understand. In case this is not clear, Gibbs is not a cat person. He doesn't much like them, and previous experience tells him the feeling is mutual.)

And, as he was looking for Ruby's contact information, it was hitting him, he's got the house, he's got the space, he's certainly got the time, so why not get the dog to go with all of it?

* * *

Same house, though it feels different. The ripping ache of immediate mourning is gone. There are some signs of moving on, though nothing to indicate a new husband or even boyfriend, yet.

Three of those signs bound up to him as he follows Ruby into the living room, and are trying to jump up onto his legs and get petting and attention. Like Dex they're all black labs, unlike Dex, who is hanging back, watching his charges, seeing how they're behaving while keeping an eye on Gibbs, they're puppies.

"Max, Ken, Jake, down," Ruby says, firmly, smiling at Gibbs, but the puppies know they're about to get in trouble. They sit down, all around him, reluctantly, quivering, staring up at him with big brown eyes, hoping for some petting.

Gibbs looks at Ruby and asks, "May I?"

She nods, and he kneels down, making sure her three newest students all get patted. And after a minute, when he's been properly licked, sniffed, and accepted as a member of the group, they fall back from him, and return to Ruby.

"Three at once?"

"Sort of. Max lives here with me and is mine. Ken and Jake are his brothers. All three of them are training as service dogs, though Ken and Jake are learning to be seeing eye dogs. They're here today working on getting used to being in places other than their own territory."

"How old are they?"

"Three months." She gestures to the sofa, and he sits down. Once he does so, Dex ambles over, sniffs him, gives him a _hello again, it's been a while_ sort of look, accepts some petting, and then settles next to Ruby. "Training for these guys starts young, but it also starts pretty easy, getting used to being around people, dogs, new places, and not freaking out about it. Any dog that can't handle somewhere new every day isn't going to make a good Marine."

Gibbs nods at that. "Is Dex enjoying retirement?"

Ruby smiles. "He was a little edgy for a while. Once he was all healed up, he didn't feel like he had enough to do. He's a working dog, so he expected to be working. Just laying around wasn't doing it for him, but once we got another dog to train, and he started helping with that, he began to feel better." Ruby can see he's as much asking for himself as he is for Dex. "How about you, how long have you been retired?"

Gibbs checks his watch. "Officially, three hours and thirty-seven minutes."

"They drug you out kicking and screaming," she says with a smile to soften the fact that's pretty damn close to true.

He nods. "And stuck pictures of me next to the door with a 'Do Not Let This Man On The Premises' sign."

Ruby laughs at that. "And you're interested in sharing your retirement with someone else?"

"Yeah. I've always liked dogs, but didn't have the sort of life that would be good for one before. I've got it now, might as well get the dog to go with it."

"Then why not just head over to the local rescue shelter?"

"Depending on what you've got to say, that's my next stop. But, if there's a chance of providing a good home for a Marine who needs one, I'd like to do it."

She smiles at that, too. "Marines look after their own?"

"That's the idea. So, what does happen to service dogs when they get to…" he shrugs, "my age?"

"Well, it depends on the dog. Most of them are adopted by members of their units who are also heading home. Some are too hurt, they get put down. Some go to breed-oriented rescues. But most of them, the vast majority, go home with someone they already know and trust."

Gibbs figured that was probably about how it worked. "So, I take it you don't know of a four legged Marine in need of a good home."

She shakes her head. "Not right now. Honestly, not in the whole time I've been doing this." She thinks for a few seconds. "Beyond retired Marine, what do you want in a dog?"

Gibbs thinks about that. It was a knee-jerk decision so, beyond looking for something he could help, he didn't have much idea. "Not a puppy. I'm too damn old for a puppy. Plus, I've got three human ones, so I've got enough tiny critters chewing on my stuff, making messes in my house, and drooling on me."

She looks very surprised at that. "You have babies at home?"

"Grandbabies. Youngest is five weeks old, oldest'll be two next month."

She nods, that makes more sense to her than Gibbs with little kids of his own.

"But you're a hands on granddad with three little…"

"All girls right now, got at least one in the works soon, we all hope. Lots of little people in my house. So, whatever it is, it has to be laid back enough to be good with kids. Good with a lot of adults at family gatherings."

"Three kids under two don't have the same parents?"

"Noooo! Molly and Anna, almost two and five weeks belong to one set of parents, Kelly, seven months belongs to another, kid in the works soon hopefully is yet another set of parents."

"Not kidding about a lot of people at family gatherings."

"Nope."

"So, you're looking for… a kindred spirit or sorts. Some gray around the muzzle but not done, yet? Maybe a little gruff but good with people it considers part of its pack?"

Gibbs nods.

"Do you care about what breed?"

"Not a Corgi."

She's taken aback by that. It's really specific and not a breed most people who aren't dog aficionados are familiar with.

"Bad experience with a Corgi?"

He nods. "Maybe they're fine one on one, but the ones I knew were part of a pack of eight Corgis, one senile, old woman, and my friend who did his best to not ever be home."

"That sounds like a recipe for obnoxious dogs, of any kind. Doubt they got enough running around or socialization with anyone who was a human to be good pets."

"That could be the problem. Kind of mean, nervous, yappy creatures that didn't want anyone getting too close to their owner."

She nods. "They're usually pretty sweet dogs, good with kids, but… Anyway, if you want something that's middle aged, it's a good idea to keep in mind that smaller dogs live longer than big ones. Labs, Dobies, German Shepards, they all live ten to twelve years. Little guys like Terriers can get to fifteen. Great Danes, St. Bernards, you're looking at eight to ten."

He's nodding along with that, thinking that if he is looking for something middle-aged, it'd also be nice to know that he's signing up for more than three years.

"Collies, Border Collies, Shetland Sheepdogs, Australian Shepards, they're generally okay with kids, though they may try to herd them, with as many as you expect to have, that close in age, that might be a good thing. They live in the twelve plus year range. They're working dogs, so they're alert and focused. They do like attention and a lot of exercise. They'll get fussy if all you want to do is lay around. But they're good family dogs."

"Okay."

"Labs are the quintessential family dog. Laid back, friendly, at the age you're talking about they're a whole lot less bounding around with unending energy."

"Do they like water?"

"Good water dogs. You got a pool?"

"Boat."

"Might do better with a Collie of some sort than a Lab. Not because they don't love the water, but Labs can be… No offense to Dex here, but Labs can be pretty hit or miss on brains. Collies can be dumb as a box of rocks, too, but it's less common. My guess is, if you're on a boat, you want something smart enough to not leap into the water when you want them on board, and able to not be underfoot at the wrong time."

"Yes."

Ruby gets up, grabs a piece of paper, and writes on it. Then she folds it and hands it to him. "Beth Sanders runs a no kill shelter out of Arlington. I know she's usually got a few bigger, older dogs hanging around looking for someone to take them home. And if she doesn't have your dog, she'll know who does."

He stands up, taking the paper. "Thanks."

"Thank you. Would you be a one dog household?"

He shrugs. "Maybe. Don't know."

"If I ever hear of a Marine service dog in need of a home, you'll be my first call."

"Thank you. And if you do, I'll be an as many dog household as I need to be to take care of him."

* * *

Gibbs hates not having a plan. Sure, he can head straight over to the rescue. Or he can get some lunch first. Or lunch after. Or… or sit here in his car dithering about what the hell he's going to do with himself, because, really, this couldn't be less about food if he tried.

Food. Easier to make good decisions with a full stomach.

He's not in his usual digs so he just cruises around looking for whatever the local equivalent of his diner is and eventually he finds something like it.

At least, it's a local-looking place with lots of cars in front. Looks like it's a café. Food's food, might as well try it.

It's what he thinks of as a "Jimmy" place. Food on the menu looks tasty, but healthy. Really healthy. Salads, wraps, no burgers, no fries, he's looking more carefully and notices there's no meat, which means this is definitely not a Jimmy place. If he had to do no meat in addition to no carbs, he'd be one malnourished guy.

But the coffee in his hand is good, and three bean soup with fresh cornbread sounds like a decent way to warm up, and everyone around him seems to enjoy the food, so... Why not?

Everything else in life is changing. He can eat at a vegetarian restaurant for one meal.

* * *

While eating lunch (Soup's okay, kind of flat, needs some bacon or ham. The cornbread's excellent.) he thinks more about this dog idea.

Getting a pet, something that's going to live with you for the next… five, maybe ten years on a moment of _I woke up and I don't really know what I'm doing with myself_ panic isn't a good plan.

Getting a pet because you're a pet person, because you're lonely, because you're used to noise and something alive around you all the time, that's a good reason.

How would a dog do with his woodworking? He doesn't want something chewing on his tools.

More importantly how would a dog do with someone who will want hours of mostly alone time. Where it's okay if it just wants to hang out in the corner, (He's got a pretty clear mental image of one of those big pillows they sell as dog beds in the corner of his basement with a… something… that parts not clear yet, curled up on it.) but if it wants constant attention and petting, that'll be an issue.

He's also got the image of starting running again. His knee's been clear for a week now, so it's about time to add his morning run back into the workout. Having something to go with him would be good.

Would a dog want to actually run three miles? _Like you're gonna run three miles first day out! Try one, maybe half. Knee's not_ that _much better. You and whatever sort of pooch this is'll build up to it together._

Having a dog who likes water, one who's good on a boat would make traveling, and what he plans to do while traveling, easier. Extra set of eyes and ears on-board would be a good thing.

_Probably scare the shit out of any girl you'd be likely to take. Lot of Islamic cultures hate dogs. 'Course, at the same time that makes you look more like sea-granddad out for a sail with one of the kids._

_If you're going to do that, you'll have stuff in your house you don't want people getting into. A dog, and… hell, a lock on the door'll make a lot of sense._

He ate another bite of soup, noticing he's scraping the last drops out of the bowl, and decides, yes, a dog, assuming the right dog is out there, is a good plan.

And having really made the decision, with something more than just a knee-jerk don't want to be lonely issue, he's ready.

He leaves a twenty on the table, while punching the address Ruby gave him into his phone's GPS.

Time to find the dog!

* * *

It's loud. That's the first thing that really hits him as he heads into Sanderson's Rescue. Lots and lots of barking and woofing and yapping.

The next thing to hit is that there are three dogs, laying on the floor, just sort of quietly eyeing him as he heads in. One of them… he's got no idea what it is… It's a dog, very definitely a dog, but it's also the product of probably hundreds of generations of indiscriminate doggy sex. Four legs, medium length tail, medium size, medium length fur, two perky ears, mottled brownish gray color, yep, it's a dog. But beyond mutt, there's no categorization for this dog.

The mutt heads on over to him, gives him a sniff and looks him over.

He kneels down to pet him.

"That's Roscoe," a heavy-set woman with brown eyes and hair says.

"Hello Roscoe," he says to the dog, looking up at her, standing up, offering his hand. She shakes, firmly. "Hello. I'm Jethro Gibbs. Ruby Lemere told me that you were the person I should see about getting a dog."

Beth smiles wryly at that. "As you can hear, I've got a lot of them."

He nods.

"Beth Sanders. What kind of dog are you looking for, Jethro?"

He explains about what he's looking for, bigger than smaller, middle-aged, good with kids, good with water, good with other dogs. She's nodding along with that. "I might have a match for you. Come on out and meet Mona."

He follows Beth out of the main office, through a long hall with what looks like (to him) a collection of small holding cells, (about half of them are empty, the other half have dogs in them) though each one has a doggy bed, water bowl and food bowl in it, and most of them have some sort of toys.

"Out" is a large fenced yard where ten more dogs are running around playing with each other.

"Mona!" Beth yells, and another dog… this one he feels like he should know, she's mostly black, with a rust colored belly and chest, soft floppy ears, and a long waggy tail, trots up to them. Her face is pretty square and her coat's somewhere between short and medium length.

He holds out his hand and she sniffs at him. Not jumping up in an effusive wave of doggy love, but not standoffish either. All in all she's pretty cool.

"She's a little younger than you're asking for, four years old. But the family that had her before us had three kids, and she got on fine with them."

She's allowing herself to be petted, so Gibbs looks up from that and says, "I feel like I should know, but, what is she?"

Beth smiles. "Mona gets that a lot. Imagine upright ears and a short, upright tail."

"Oh." Once he does that, sure, he knows exactly what she is.

"She's probably, judging by her face and coat length, got some Labrador in there along with the Doberman, but we know for sure her mama was a Doberman, and her shape and coloring suggest daddy was at least half Doberman, too."

All of the Dobermans Gibbs have met have been guard dogs. They weren't exactly cute, little pets. "But she's good with kids?"

"She's good with kids she knows. She's good with her pack. I'm not saying you'd want to take her to a daycare and have fifty kids climbing all over her. I think that'd freak her out. But she's smart as a whip, and once she knows who's in the pack, she's very protective of them.

"I introduced you to her properly, and she's cool with you. But say you're at the park and some stranger starts moving toward your girls, she's going to start growling. No one gets within ten feet of the pack without an introduction."

"History as a guard dog?"

"Not really. She was a pet, had a family that loved her, but they adopted kids as well as dogs and their youngest child turned out very, very allergic to dogs, so she had to go find a new home."

He looks at Mona. She's looking up at him.

"I've got an extra run out back if you two want to get acquainted?"

Gibbs keeps looking at her, and she doesn't exactly nod, but she does turn, walk a few steps towards where he's assuming the run is, and then look over her shoulder at him as if to say, _Well, you coming or not?_

Gibbs nods and follows her.

* * *

He's tossing a ball, and she's tearing after it. She's not playful in the jumpy or overly perky sort of sense, but given the chance to run around and do what she was built for, she leaps at it.

Likewise, as they spend some more time alone, she's not effusively friendly, either, but she seems to be warming up to him.

_Kindred spirit._

He's pitching the ball to the far end of the run when his phone rings.

Tony.

He click the answer button and hears "I want you back."

That feels insanely good.

Mona brings the ball back, sees him talking to the black thing in his hand, figures out he's not talking to her, tries to get him to take the ball and toss it again, and he does, and she brings it back, woofing when it looks like he's paying too much attention to the phone.

Gibbs tosses the ball again and again, still talking to Tony, wishing, God, wishing so much that he could be back there.

He doesn't want to step all over Tony's time, but… triple homicide, that's a bad deal for a team that knows how to work together, for one that's half newbies…

Mona's back, seeming to understand that something's going on, she puts the ball down and nuzzles his hand. "Woof?" _You okay?_

And with that, Gibbs knows Mona's going home with him.

"Are you getting a dog?" Tony asks him.

"Back to work…" Friday, or whenever they see him next will be soon enough to introduce his new lady-friend.

He finally gets off the phone. "So, what do you think, want to come home with me?"

She tilts her head, giving him the doggy equivalent of _You'll do._ Then she picks up the ball and gives it back to him, heading for the gate to the run. _Let's go!_ clear in her walk.

* * *

Gibbs has not been to a pet store since before the invention of PetSmart and the like. The last time he was in a pet store, Fluffinkins III (fortunately Kelly decided to name him the Third, it's not like they ever had a Fluffinkins I or Fluffinkins II) was in need of more bedding and hamster treats.

That pet store had been small, cramped, filled to the rafters with stuff, and had a very distinct aroma of 'pet.'

But, if a store like that still exists, he doesn't know about it.

So, he is, with Mona, venturing into a PetSmart for the first time ever.

He is rapidly coming to a very firm conclusion as he wanders through the dog aisles (aisles!) namely, people are way, way, way too into their pets.

There's a whole section of nothing but dog clothing. It's probably a good thing Mrs. Mallard didn't live long enough to find this place, she'd have spent the whole fortune on coordinated plaids for her Corgis.

He can kind of understand, like, maybe, if you live in Alaska or Maine or something, or if you've got one of those little yappy things with no fur, that you might want to, when it's cold, stick a jacket or something on a dog, but… There's literally thirty feet of dog outfits in front of him.

And okay, sure, the ground gets cold, so maybe the little bootie things make a certain amount of sense, (once again, in like Maine, or if you get a really hard cold snap) too, but, they're dogs, they're designed to be outside, barefoot, that's why they've got fur and those pads on their feet.

He eventually locates what he's looking for, dog beds, and there's at least thirty options in all different colors for those, too. He grabs two of them, and quietly says to Mona, "These people need kids."

She's looking at the beds as he puts both in the cart. Her head tilts a bit. _Two?_

"Got three floors. Thought you might like one in the basement as well as upstairs."

Her head straightens out and she looks ready to head on.

"Food?"

Woof.

"Yeah, thought you'd like that."

* * *

She's sitting next to him in his truck, very alert, watching the road, and that feels, really right. He's even driving fairly slow (only slightly over the speed limit) and being careful about stopping and starting, because, obviously, she's not wearing a seat belt.

He pats her head. "You good?"

She looks at him and licks his wrist.

* * *

Back the… second… maybe third time they were out of Lejeune, it was after Kelly was born, but before she was walking, they had a neighbor who bred Border Collies. She had mentioned that they were very smart, and all you had to do was show them where your property ended, once, and from then on they knew what and where home was.

Well, she's not a Border Collie, but, she does seem awfully smart, and if it takes more than once, it takes more than once.

So, when he stopped the truck in the driveway (behind Shannon) he got out, attached the leash to Mona's collar, and walked her around the outside. "This is home." His back yard already had a fence around it, so that makes things easier. Front yard's tiny, little strip of grass between the house and sidewalk. But Mona seems to be getting the lay of the land.

Then he heads inside, takes the leash off and says, "Go explore."

He follows her from room to room, saying things like, "Living room, kitchen, spare room, my room," occasionally pointing out things he doesn't want her to mess with.

She trots over to the basement, peering down into it, and he says, "Go on down," while grabbing one of the beds. He plops the bed in the corner while she sniffs everything.

"Okay, see these," he's pointing to his tools and the bed. "No chewing on these."

Woof.

"Good girl."

Exploring takes the rest of the day. Then there's dinner. Gibbs is pleased to see that she's not begging for his food. (Leftover Chinese, not great for him, probably worse for her. But he's thinking that when he's making food that's good for both of them, she'll be able to eat it.)

"I'm usually working after dinner," he says to her.

Woof.

She follows him down into the basement, continuing to walk around and sniff everything while he works on the bed. He's getting pretty close to done. Veneers are going on tonight. Then assembly, which means pegging, lots and lots of pegging. Then finishing. Probably shouldn't have her down here for finishing. Varnish fumes and breathing in sanding dust probably isn't good for her.

Eventually she does settle down in her bed, head on her paws, watching.

* * *

Bedtime. (Two hours later than usual. He wishes he could say he just got so into it he didn't notice time pass, but it's a much more mundane thing, he just wasn't sleepy.) He heads up. She follows. He's heading toward the bedroom when she goes to the kitchen door, and it hits him what she needs. He makes a note to get a doggy door for his kitchen door, so she can let herself out, while opening the door to let her go about her bedtime routine.

A few minutes later he hears paws on the steps up to his door, and a _let me in_ woof.

He goes about his own routine, and when he gets out of the bathroom she's sitting on his bed, watching him.

He thinks about that for a moment. He certainly doesn't mind her sleeping with him. But he's also thinking that it would be nice to have a human woman in this bed at some point, and she might be less than thrilled with sheets that smell like dog, let alone have lots of little black hairs sticking in them.

He looks around his room, and comes up with a compromise.

Back downstairs, he grabs the second dog bed.

"I know it doesn't match up well now," he says, putting the bed on the chest he keeps at the foot of his bed, "but it will. I don't usually have my mattress on the floor. Usually there's a bed here, lifting this up about ten inches. That's what I'm building down there. When it's done," he pats her bed, and she ambles over to it, "This'll be a little bit lower than the rest of the bed, but right next to it."

She turns around a few times, nosing the dog bed, and then settles down, seeming to be satisfied with the compromise.

He pats her, and then gets into bed, feeling like, as first days of retirement went, it was a pretty good one.


	62. Of Phobias and Dogs

"So, why is Shabbos at Gibbs' place," Tim asks as he pulls into Gibbs' driveway.

"He just said he had someone he wanted us to meet."

"A someone who couldn't come to Tony and Ziva's?"

"I think that's part of this, too. I know I'm fried from this week, and they're worse. So I think a lot of it is letting them have the night off, get fed, taken care of, and have to do nothing more complicated than just sit around and eat."

Tim knows exactly how much work Abby's been doing for this case, so he assumes that Tony, Ziva, and Co. have to be even busier.

"Good point."

* * *

If you asked him, Gibbs would tell you that he remembers what Beth said about Mona being protective of her pack and that she has to be introduced to new people. He knows he heard that.

But as he's bustling around the house, getting the last bits of dinner ready to go, pulling the chickens out of the oven, (Mona's staring at them, longingly, and he's firmly telling her "No!") sticking candles all over the place, it's completely slipped his mind. No, what he's thinking about is that if he's going to host Shabbos, he's going to do Ziva proud.

But it's crashing back into the forefront of it as he hears his front door open, sees Mona go shooting out of the kitchen, barking and growling, off to stop the intruder who has just broken into her home.

"Mona!" He's yelling, but she's charging toward Tim, who has just pulled Abby behind him and has his gun out, in hand, trained on the black thing charging toward his family, growling.

"Don't shoot her!"

Fortunately Tim's better at taking orders that Mona is. She's stopped two feet away, growling at him, teeth bare, quivering, ready to leap, and Gibbs is absolutely certain that if Mona makes a move, that's one dead dog.

* * *

"So, any breaks in the case?" he asks Abby as she opens the door.

She's saying something, but he doesn't know what it is. His entire world narrows down the big, black, growling, barking, bared teeth, attacking thing that is coming straight for them.

He was carrying a bottle of wine, but it hit the welcome mat with a dull thud.

He yanks Abby back, hard, knocking her off balance, right now he doesn't care if she ends up on her ass as long as he ends up between her and Kelly and whatever that thing is. His left hand darts to his gun, and he's thanking God they asked Heather to drop Kelly off and that they are coming directly from work, so he is carrying.

He figures he's got one, maybe two more heartbeats before it closes on them, but he doesn't want to miss, he knows he's shooting into a house where Gibbs is, somewhere, so he pauses, makes sure is aim is good, makes sure he can anticipate where the thing, (dog, it's a dog) is going to be when it leaps for his throat, and is tightening his finger when he hears, "Tim, don't shoot her!"

* * *

Abby is, of course, aware of the fact that, when push comes to shove, Tim will and has, literally, killed people to protect himself and others.

She is aware of the fact that he shot Jethro when Jethro was trying to kill him.

She's seen him shoot before. (Though not at anyone.)

She's seen the nervous, scared side of him wanting to be protective.

She's seen him talk his way out of danger for him and her.

But she has never seen this.

It's only the fact that she's got on wide heels that she didn't fall when he pulled her back. There was a lot of force in that grab. And by the time she's got her balance right she can see he is blocking the whole doorway with his body, has his gun out, a completely focused, and honestly, _terrifying_ look on his face, and he's about a heartbeat away from murdering Gibbs' (apparently new) pet.

* * *

Of course it's Tim at the door. It's not a secret that Tim doesn't like dogs, but generally, he's got more of a run than shoot sort of mentality when it comes to them. Gibbs knows from Tony that the last time some sort of four legged critter came tearing out at them, barking and on attack mode, he ran for the car and slammed the door shut. (Tony could fend for himself.) However, Abby and Kelly are not Tony, and he's got them behind him, and Gibbs is awfully sure that right now Tim is on Def-Con One Defend Family Mode.

"It's okay Tim." He's intentionally using his 'calm' voice. "Don't shoot. _Mona! Get over here_."

Mona stares at Tim, who has not lowered his gun, growls one more time, snaps at him, and trots back to Gibbs, looking awfully satisfied that she has correctly defended her home against the invader.

Gibbs stares down at Mona. "Bad girl!" He head slaps her. "That's Tim and Abby and Kelly, and this is as much their home as your home. They are always allowed to be here, so you be nice to them!"

Woof. She's looking very contrite. The master is _not_ happy with her, whatever that thing he did to her head was, he's never done that before, and she doesn't want him to do it again. Vast amounts of doggy shame are visible in her posture right now.

Gibbs gets a good hold on her collar and walks her over to Tim. "You okay?"

He falls out of kill mode slowly, and then lowers the gun. Once it's back in the holster, his hands start to shake. He exhales long and slow before saying, "Ask me in ten minutes when my heart stops racing."

"Didn't think she'd charge like that, she's usually pretty friendly."

"Usually? You've already developed a usually?"

"She didn't try to kill the mailman or the paperboy."

"Your mailbox isn't in the house." Tim closes his eyes, takes another deep breath, tries to calm down, long experience from Jethro (his Jethro, not Gibbs) taught him that this doesn't work well if he's nervous, he takes yet another deep breath, and then holds his (still shaking, it'll take at least a half hour to get over the adrenaline spike) hand out. "I'm Tim." She sniffs him. "I don't much like your kind, but if you don't slobber on me too much, and don't _ever_ go running at my family like that again, we'll get along okay." She nosed his palm and he patted the top of her head. He takes another deep breath, and says, "Okay, I think you can come in now."

Abby's not looking overwhelmingly pleased with him right now. But she can see he's still shaking, so she squeezes his shoulder, nods, and hands him Kelly.

He can also feel that Abby's sure he just overreacted and by a factor of twenty or so. And he can feel that she wants to talk to him about this, because she had to have seen how he just almost killed Gibbs' pet. But it'll hold for after dinner. He nods to her, appreciating that. He's way too damn jittery to have any real conversation about this (or much of anything else right now).

So she heads in, while he holds Kelly, tight, he doesn't want his baby girl getting anywhere near that beast, and Abby kneels on the floor, while petting Mona and saying something to Gibbs along the lines of 'You got a dog!" sounding really excited.

Mona, of course, responds to this with a big helping of happy licking, and excited woofing, doing her best to look like the most harmless little ball of fluff on the East Coast.

Tim glares at her. Harmless ball of fluff is not going to make tonight any easier.

* * *

Tony walks in a few minutes later, heads straight to Tim, and hugs him saying, "I am deeply sorry for any crap I ever pulled on you. You were a prince among Probies and I will never, ever forget it."

"Uh… Thanks?" Tim's sure there's going to be a story to go with that later tonight.

Tony hugs him again, looks over his shoulder, sees Ziva petting Mona and says to Gibbs, "You did get a dog!"

* * *

The application of food, wine, and his family all around does, eventually, calm Tim down. By the time they're doing the (semi) weekly blessing of the children his heart is no longer pounding and he can look directly at Mona without wanting to run away.

Doesn't help she's some sort of Doberman thing. Granted, Jethro trying to kill him was the worst attack he's ever had from a dog, but he's not had a good time with Dobermans in the past, either. Basically, that… lizard brain? He thinks that's the term, is firmly convinced that four legs, pointy teeth, and black fur = bad news.

* * *

"So, how is it going?" Breena asks Tony and Ziva once the food is passed around.

Tony sighs, loud and extravagant, then face palms.

"It is going well," Ziva says. "He is being dramatic."

"They spent an hour bickering about music. Bishop likes every form of music ever made, except whatever it is Draga's listening to. They've both got earbuds, so it's not like they have to listen to each other's music, but because we're in waiting mode, they decided snarking at each other about how bad their taste is was a good way to kill time while messing around with their respective searches."

Gibbs laughs at that. "Two adults doing a real job, sniping at each other non-stop. So, you're saying that's annoying?"

"Go ahead, rub it in."

"Is Bishop useful?" Penny asks.

Tony nods. "Yeah. I think so. I hope so. She's found some good stuff I certainly wouldn't have. With a stack of cases and a computer, she's great. I'm less sure about in the field."

"That happens when you hire an analyst for a field job," Tim says, something of a smirk on his face.

"I'm getting that. I just don't know if, longer term, she's a good fit. I don't know if she's going to stick. She's pretty happy right now, because we're connecting dots and drawing lines and she's building maps and databases and… whatever it is she does over there. Making predictions. She didn't seem nearly as happy when we were processing the house."

"Like you did any better the first time you saw a murdered child, Tony," Jimmy adds. "Let alone on your first day."

"What happened?" Tim asks.

"She got sick," Ziva says delicately.

"That's not what I mean, Jimmy. She threw up, so what? First time we met McGee he had on a facemask and looked like he was going to pass out if he had to look at that body one more time. He stuck. She said to me she wasn't sure if she was right for this. More of a numbers girl. That's what I'm thinking of. We've all lost it at a crime scene one time or another."

Tim sees a glance pass between Gibbs and Ziva, and is getting the idea that no, _not everyone's_ "lost it" at a crime scene, but they're both too polite to say it.

"I remember saying to you that I wasn't sure I was cut out for this, once upon a time," Tim says to Tony.

Tony nods. "I remember. Different aspect of the job, though."

"True."

"What'd she do, after she threw up?" Breena asks.

"Washed out her mouth, straightened up, and went back out and photographed everything."

Ducky nods along at that. "I think that is the core constitution of Eleanor. She came down to visit us on Wednesday, pay her respects to the Tennus, talk about who may of done this, and why. She was not comfortable, but very, very determined."

"Smart, too." Jimmy adds. "Says when she got the job she read the Manual of Post-Mortem Pathology, all six hundred plus pages of it, so she'd be able to learn more about the crimes by looking at the bodies."

"She isn't a traditional profiler, but there are similarities. A profiler looks at the individual in front of them, studies the clues, and determines who that person is based on those cues. She has a… wider view of it."

Penny gets this. "The difference between social history, where you study huge swathes of people and their trends, and literary history, where you study the story lines of individuals."

"Exactly," Ducky replies. "She didn't have much insight into our killers as individuals, but some very interesting ideas based on the sort of crime this was and what sort of person engages in said activities."

"How'd Draga do with a murdered child?" Abby asks.

Tony exhales and shakes his head.

Ziva says, "I think part of the amount of bickering going on between them is him distracting himself from this. He's very frustrated. We got one break yesterday, the Tennus were not the intended target, which I know is making him feel better, because he was digging through their lives and he was sure he had missed something because nothing was coming up that should have gotten them killed."

"We're all frustrated," Tony adds. He's about to go deeper into it, but he looks over to Gibbs, who has been listening to all of this, not saying anything, radiating his own sort of frustrated, and decides now's a good time to get off of this topic. "But it's the Sabbath, day of rest, day of putting the working world behind us, so, talking about good things? Gibbs, how'd you end up with your new friend?" Who was sitting in the corner, watching all of this.

So, Gibbs told them about how he ended up with Mona.

"She looks like a real sweetie," Breena says. Mona, apparently having figured out they were talking about her, came over and rested her head on Breena's leg, looking at her with big brown eyes, silently asking for some ear rubs.

Tim's eyes narrow slightly, but Jimmy catches it. "What?"

Tim shakes his head.

"He almost shot her when we got here," Abby sounds exasperated by that.

"And that was the right thing to do," Gibbs says, hoping to shut this down. "A dog this big runs at your family, barking and growling, you stop it before it gets there. That one was on me. I should have had a better hold on her when you guys got here."

"Thank you." Tim says to Gibbs. "Apparently she turns into a fluffy little love muffin for the girls, but she charged the door when Abby opened it."

"You were going to shoot her?" Tony asks.

"He had his gun out and was physically blocking the door," Abby says.

Molly, who had been eating and not paying too much attention to the conversation, decided that was an opportune time to tune in and managed to put together gun and her. "Shoot Mona?" she asks, horrified. (Speaking of fluffy little love muffin, yes, Mona likes kids. Mona loves kids. Molly now has a new best friend.)

Breena's eyes go wide. "No, no honey. Mona's fine. See?" Molly had been sitting in Jimmy's lap, but he hands her over to Breena, who holds out Molly's hand and strokes Mona's ears with it. "See, she's fine." Mona licks Molly's hand.

"Soft ears."

"Yes, she has very soft ears."

Molly looks up at Tim, who's on the other side of the table. "Shoot?"

"I didn't shoot her. She's fine. She's licking your hand; that's a happy dog."

Woof.

* * *

"You were really going to shoot her," Abby says once they're home and Kelly's in bed.

Tim nods, that scary look back in his eye.

"She's a dog. A dog protecting her home, that's what she's supposed to do."

"I'm a dad protecting my family! It's what I'm supposed to do! Dog, bear, squirrel, rabbit, turtle, if it's growling and charging at you, it's going down. Nothing that looks like a threat gets through me to you. That's just the way it is. If I hadn't had a gun, Mona would have gotten kicked into the kitchen, and you saw, Gibbs wouldn't have given me an ounce of grief over it. He would have approved."

Abby shrugs, she saw the way Gibbs dealt with what did happen, and could feel that, if anything, Gibbs was proud at Tim for getting ready to blow away his pet in defense of his family. But that the same time… She's a dog. A pet. A cute, cuddly, furry little ball of love just trying to make sure her owner was safe.

"Tim, she wasn't—"

"No!" He says it firm and hard. He's never cut her off like that, and probably won't ever again, but this… Nope. "You can go commiserate with Hagrid about how misunderstood and safe all these animals really are. Not me." They're getting ready for bed, so he's already got his shirt off. He steps to her, takes her hand in his and touches the four tiny scars on his throat, and then his left arm, and the similar, darker, deeper scars there. The ones on his throat are tiny. He knew Jethro was going to kill him if he got his jaw closed so that wasn't going to happen. His bullet cut that short. His arm wasn't so lucky. The scars on his arm are very clearly the marks of something with a pretty nasty set of teeth on it. "You and Kelly never get marks like this on you. Not if I'm anywhere nearby."

Her fingers ghost back to the ones on his throat. He feels her touch each one. He sees her get it, really get it.

All those years ago, they got back to the Navy Yard, and he was up and moving, and Jethro wasn't. He had bandages, sure, but he was talking, and walking, and not giving her big, drugged, wounded puppy eyes.

Jethro was helpless, when she saw them, and he wasn't.

She didn't see his left arm, because he doesn't wear short sleeves at work, until they were dating again, and by then it was more than healed. The scars are white now, blend into his naturally pale skin tone pretty well, but they're there. If you look you can see something bit the hell out of that arm. So, she's seen them, knows them, but it's not something she (or he for that matter) really thinks about.

She touches the throat scars again, really seeing them, seeing where they are, and what's under them. They straddle both his trachea and right jugular. If Jethro had gotten his jaw closed, he would have ripped out Tim's throat.

He's standing there, watching her face, seeing her actually, truly, _get_ it.

She shivers, her eyes close, and she says, "I'm sorry."

He nods. "Okay."

"It was easier to think you flipped out than…" She smiles sadly at him. "Because if you didn't flip out, than that sweet, hurting baby in the car was a man-eater and needed to be put down. And those big, soft, doggy eyes were gonna shut forever."

He shrugs at that. Jethro lived with him for five years and was a sweet dog. He was good company. He made going out to jog bearable. A big chunk of the whole get in shape thing he did, the first time, was spurred on by noticing he was having a harder time keeping up with Jethro than he would have liked. (And getting back out of shape had a lot to do with not having anyone pushing him to go out and run twice a day. Just, didn't seem worth it anymore on his own.)

But Jethro was not a big, sweet baby. He was one hundred and ten pounds of trained drug-sniffing canine who spent his whole life getting in shape to find stuff and stop anyone his master told to stop. The fact that he was drugged, that he was a victim, too, didn't mean he was harmless.

"I didn't flip out. He was a dog. Just like anything else, just like _me_ , and _you,_ under the right circumstances, he was deadly. Mona is, too. Everything is. And I'm not taking that chance with you and Kelly. Just me, I'll run. I have run. I'm not too proud to run away from something that wants to kill me. I'm not going to be that guy who shoots the neighbor's pet for no good reason.

"But if you and Kelly are behind me, and if something is charging at us, you will be behind me, and I will kill it before it can get to you."

And that was the last word on that.

* * *

"Tim."

"Hm?" They're in bed, in that quiet space between turning off the lights and maybe having sex (he's not feeling wildly sexy right now) or falling asleep.

"I don't want Kelly to be afraid of dogs."

"Okay." He doesn't want her to be afraid of dogs, either. Cautious. He wants her to be cautious around strange dogs, but not afraid.

"She's going to be afraid of dogs if you're scared of them in front of her."

"Not much I can do about that. That's a gut response now."

"You can go over to Gibbs' tomorrow and get to know Mona well enough that you don't flinch if you catch her out of the corner of your eye."

"I wasn't flinching, was I?"

He feels her nod.

"Damn. I was trying not to."

Abby nods at that, too.

"I was going to go into the office for an hour or so. I'll head over, after."

"Sounds good. How do you feel about adding one more errand to that list?"

"What's the errand?"

"Get me some pregnancy tests? It's been three weeks, and still no period. Maybe we've got something to celebrate?"

He grins at that.


	63. Good Days

Tim's getting the sense that while it's true that his hours are ending more reliably by six (5:30, really) every day, that he's probably going to be heading in (or remoting) to work every day, as well.

Yesterday they got yet another fix in place for the job scheduling software, and he wants to make sure it worked properly all night long.

(If he'd been thinking about it, but of course, he wasn't, he would have complimented Tony on not being totally useless with a computer. It's astonishing how inept some of the guys on the other teams are. He spent an hour muttering at the job scheduling software about how even Gibbs could run this program without killing it while trying to figure out how to make it even simpler. He's redefined "foolproof" down twice now. He hopes he won't have to do it a third time.)

He gets into his office, sees Hepple, (Not happy about working Saturdays, he's sulking and working slow. _Good. Retire,_ Tim thinks at him.) Sturm, (earbuds in, bopping away, fingers flying over the keyboard) Ngyn, (Curled in a little ball, sleeping on one of the sofas. He makes a mental note to see what she's been up to all night.) and Patil (not officially on right now, but he's putting in extra time on the paperwork software.)

He gets into his office, logs in, and finds "Yes!" (he punches the air in victory at this) the job software has been successfully working all night and has correctly triaged and assigned every job it's gotten.

He writes a quick email to all of the Minions, lets them know it's working properly, and gives them the heads up on how they'll give it a week, reassess, and if it's still doing the job right, they'll start work on expanding it NCIS wide.

Tim checks in on Ngyn's work. It was a big problem, long, complicated, intense, but thank you job triaging system, in her wheelhouse. She handled it alone… Probably would have been a better team effort, but she's the only one on Friday graveyard shift right now, so not a lot of teaming options when it came to it. When he gets all of NCIS up on this, that'll change. He does know that he's overheard Patil and Soth mention things she had texted them about, so she's not completely going it alone these days.

His eyes scan over the jobs on tap, nothing's screaming for attention while everyone ignores it, and then logs out.

He stands up, sees Patil still coding away. He checks his phone, yep, Patil's shift ended at 04:00, four and a half hours ago. So, that deserves some petting.

Patil likes… Tim checks his phone, again; he's been surreptitiously writing down what sorts of treats the different Minions like. He likes the Dunkin' Donuts Dunkin' Dark coffee and Snickers bars. Tim heads over to the coffee machine, makes up a cup, grabs a Snickers from the vending machine, and takes them over to Patil's desk.

He puts the coffee and the candy bar on his desk, touches his shoulder, (Patil's working hard, hadn't noticed him come by, and startles at that.) and says, "Good job."

"Boss?"

"Your shift ended hours ago. You're still here, still working. Good job. I appreciate it."

"Had an idea for the paperwork software, wanted to get it out."

Tim smiles at him. "Good. Order yourself some real breakfast. If you're not sleeping, you've got to eat. So eat, okay?"

Patil's looking pretty surprised at this, but says, "Okay."

"I'll let you get back to it."

"Uh… Thanks."

As Tim's walking out he sees Ngyn curl up even tighter on the sofa. She's looking a bit cold. He makes a mental note to get some blankets down here, too.

* * *

So, having successfully gone to Target and picked up both pregnancy tests and blankets for the sofas, Tim gets to the part of his outing he's not exactly looking forward to.

He'd been planning on heading over today to get some one on one time with Gibbs all week. See how week one of retirement really went. (He's sure the version of it that came out last night and what really happened are, in some fundamental ways, not precisely the same thing.)

But, having Mona there is dampening his enthusiasm for heading over.

Abby's right, though. The more time he spends over, the more he gets to see cute-ball-of-doggy-love the less he'll see mile-long-teeth-and-one-hundred-pounds-of-leaping-black-death every time he glances over and catches Mona in his peripheral vision.

But, like with Jethro, making that transition won't happen overnight, and it will take effort.

He pulls in front of the house, walks up to the front door, and stops. Usually he'd give a quick knock and head right in. And sure, Gibbs says Mona's smart, and that once she knows someone she's cool with them, but, he doesn't trust it. Can't feel safe, not in his gut, not yet. Like anytime he heads into work, he's wearing his gun. (The Navy Yard isn't in the most desirable neighborhood in DC.) So, hand on gun, he knocks, opens the door, (gingerly) and pokes his head in.

Nothing comes running at him, that's a start.

"Hello?"

Nothing.

Okay, they can't be too far off, Gibbs' truck is in the driveway.

He heads down to the basement, fairly sure they aren't down there. Gibbs' hearing is more than good enough to respond to a hello from the first floor if he's down there, but he'll check just in case.

Nope, not down there. Tim looks around again, seeing what's really down there.

A finished bed. Well, almost finished. It's not assembled. But it's done. Tim's fingers ghost along dark brown oak, and warm-golden burl. He can see how it'll look all put together, light but solid. Wood finished to a deep, warm satin sheen.

The footboard is all slats. Mostly the dark brown oak of the original bed, but the top and bottom cross pieces are new, finished with the same golden stain that's lit up the burl in the headboard's veneer.

Gibbs had explained what he was going to do with the legs. How he'd split the beams from the old bed in four, set them into blocks of new wood at the so there'd be a stable space for the side supports and for the head and footboards to fit in, along with a block at the top and the bottom to make a secure column, and Tim had nodded along with that, no idea how it would look.

The correct answer is awesome. It's very strong looking without being overly heavy. Gibbs pegged all the pieces together, and the pegs are in contrasting wood colors.

Tim thinks if Mission and Art Deco got drunk and hooked-up one night, this bed would be the result.

The headboard draws him over. Wood is wood is wood to Tim. He likes it well enough, but it's not meaningful or special to him. But, even as a woodworking philistine, Tim can see this is exquisite. Once again, the cross pieces are the new, golden wood. Between them are four, he'd call them screens for lack of a better word. (Slats? Too wide for slats.) Each screen is edged in the dark brown oak from the old bed, with a ten inch wide panel (panel, there's a good word for them) of gleaming, golden burl. The rest of the bed's got a satin finish, matte almost, but the burl is glossy to the point of looking like glass.

If he had never seen burl before, didn't know wood could do this, he'd think it was some sort of liquid, many colors of gold swirling together in rivers and eddies, somehow frozen, captured in a wooden frame.

Tim knows one other thing, looking at this beautiful work in front of him. Last Friday, at the retirement party, Gibbs thought he had three weeks' worth of work left on this bed.

Today it's finished. Tim, tentatively, on a spot that won't show, touches the finish, really pokes it, not the barest brush he had done before. It's not just finished, it's dry.

Gibbs isn't sleeping.

Or probably doing much of anything else.

* * *

He's thinking he'll wait for up to an hour. If Gibbs and Mona aren't back by then, he'll text and make a time to see them.

But, in less than five minutes he hears, "Abbs?"

Tim heads up the stairs, seeing Gibbs sitting on the sofa, unlacing his sneakers, breathing hard, covered in sweat. Mona's flopped on the floor, belly on the carpet, panting, next to him.

"Me, this time." He drove the roadster. Doesn't take the SUV if he's going out by himself. "Good work out?"

Gibbs nods. Tim heads into the kitchen and pours him a glass of water, then comes back with it a few seconds later.

"Thanks." Gibbs takes the glass and drinks it back in one long series of gulps. Mona watches him do it, eagerly.

Tim shakes his head at her. "I don't deliver water for you. But it looked like there was plenty in your bowl."

She slowly gets up and trots into the kitchen. They both hear contented slurping a few seconds after that.

Gibbs is rubbing his knee.

"You want some ice for that?"

Gibbs nods, breath starting to slow down.

Tim heads back to the kitchen, makes up an ice pack, and heads back, sitting down next to Gibbs on the sofa, handing over the ice pack.

"How far'd you go?" Tim asks.

"Three and a half."

"Farther than usual. Knee holding up okay?"

"Yeah. Sore. Ice it down. Hot shower in a bit. More ice tonight. It'll be good to go tomorrow."

"Really? No jogging for five months to more than three miles a day in a week is good to go?"

Gibbs shrugs. He is sore. But he's also sure he's not ripped his knee up. He remembers Basic, he knows, intimately, exactly where the line between pushing as hard as you can go and injury is, and he may be dancing on the line, but he hasn't crossed it, and doesn't intend to.

"Jimmy ever wants to give up the Morgue and go into rehab, he'd be great at it. Didn't think I'd be back this fast."

Tim flashes Gibbs his best _cut the bullshit_ look.

"I'm not ripping it up. Spent too damn long on my ass to go and tear it to bits the first week out."

Tim raises an eyebrow at that. He knows exactly how little pain you feel while you're pushing yourself, and how you ache later when the endorphins wear off. But Gibbs doesn't say anything about that. He just sits there, continuing to cool off.

"I saw your bed. It's beautiful. You want some help getting it upstairs and put together?"

"Yes."

"Thought you said just the peg work alone was going to take ten days."

Gibbs shrugs at that, too. It would have taken ten days if he had been working on it the way he used to, from 20:00 'til midnight. "Bit more free time then I'm used to."

Tim nods at that, really looking at Jethro. Yes, he looks tired, really tired, but he just ran three and a half miles, tired is normal for that. His eyes are a bit red and bloodshot, too.

"You sleeping, at all?"

"Enough."

"What's enough mean?"

Gibbs holds up his left hand, looks at it, and then looks at Tim, shaking his head. "We get married when I wasn't lookin'?"

"I'll back off. Just want to know you're okay."

Gibbs looks frustrated. "I'm as _okay_ as I can be. Tony and Ziva and Draga and Tinkerbelle—"

"Tinkerbelle?"

"That's what Tony's been calling her."

Tim snorts at that. There is a sort of Tinkerbelleishness to Bishop.

"They're on a triple homicide. They're hunting down killers. You're running a department, changing how NCIS does Cybercrime. Abby's running her lab, catching killers. Jimmy's looking through bodies for clues. Ducky's putting together psychological profiles. I'm jogging, and putting together a bed, and right now, the highlight of the day is heading over to visit with Kelly or going over to Breena's and taking Molly out so Breena can get a real nap when Anna goes down. I'm not exactly feeling _vital_ right now."

"Sorry."

"Yeah, well, bed's done. Shannon's next. At the rate I'm going, I should be able to get her in the water by early March. That'll help. Getting out there was always good. But… it's just… busy, you know?"

"Yeah, I do." (No he doesn't, not really, but he can empathize.)

Gibbs stares around the house. "Just really noticing how shabby the inside of the house looks, so, there's some more stuff to keep me occupied. Get Kelly's room redone so the girls have their own space when they're over here. That'll eat more time."

"You've got hobbies; you need a job."

"Yeah." Gibbs is feeling very close to telling Tim about what job he's hoping to start up once he's got Shannon ready for the water, but he doesn't. It's not that Tim wouldn't approve of his abused girl underground railroad. (He's sure he would.) Or that Tim would feel torn, that he'd have to report Gibbs (because he's sure he wouldn't). No, it's that if he tells Tim, Tim's going to feel like he has to help. More than that, Tim is going to _want_ to help. And so will Abby, which means Breena and Jimmy will be in, and then comes Tony and Ziva… And, no.

It's one thing to put his own future, freedom, life on the line for this. If he gets caught, he'll go to jail, and that'll be it. (Of all the things he could or should go to jail for this strikes him as the most... worthy.)

But he's not willing to get his whole family into this. If he gets caught, he doesn't want them going down. Doesn't want his babies in foster care because their whole family ended up in jail for this.

So, he doesn't tell Tim what he thinks his next job might be. But he does see the way Tim's watching him, sees that recognition that something else is going on in his head.

"Should I ask?" Tim says.

"No." Gibbs stands up, slowly, and hands over the ice pack. "Should get that shower before I get stiff."

Tim nods.

"Church and bootcamp tomorrow?" Gibbs asks.

"Sure. You want to come over for dinner tonight?" Tim sighs, looking at Mona who's sitting in front of them right now. He forces himself to stroke the top of her head, and she... he'd call it a smile, but she's a dog and dogs don't really smile. She looks very pleased by that. "Mona's invited, too. She's um… got a standing invite at our place."

Gibbs smiles. Tim couldn't have sounded less enthusiastic about that if he had tried for a week. But Gibbs knows he's making an effort, and appreciates it.

"Sounds good. See you then."

He's halfway up the stairs when Tim says, "Bed?"

"Right. Yeah, let's grab that."

Doesn't take long for both of them to get it up. Not long to get his mattress and box spring out of the way. An extra set of hands made assembly a lot easier, and Gibbs had the whole thing designed so that once all the pieces were slotted together, one peg per leg kept everything tight and solid.

"I'll get them glued in after the shower."

Tim nods at that, taking a shot of the bed all together for Abby. "This could be your next job. Might not be catching killers, but it's real, and beautiful, and people would pay well for it."

Gibbs shrugs at that. "You looking forward to the day where all you do is write?"

Tim shakes his head, because no, he's not. Maybe one day he will, but... Just like Gibbs, he needs the justice. He needs to be doing something bigger than just him.

Gibbs nods.

"I get it. See you tonight."

* * *

Tim gets home just as Kelly's waking up from her morning nap. So, he gets her, and Abby gets working on lunch.

Kelly's sitting in the high chair, munching down Cheerios between bites of mushed ham and peas that he's trying to get into her mouth while Abby makes them omelets.

"How'd it go?"

"Do you mean, did I shoot Mona?"

She flashes him a mildly exasperated look.

"Fine. We have reached detente. I told Gibbs he's always welcome to bring her over when he comes here. Might have to get a doggy door or something so she can get in and out easy."

Abby nods at that, sliding the mushroom, caramelized onions, and Swiss omelet onto a plate, and grabbing two forks for them.

"How's he doing?" she asks as she puts the plate in front of him, sitting next to him.

"Worse than he looks, not as bad as he could be?" He grabs his phone, and pulls up the pic of the bed. "Here. He's got this done."

"Oh, that's beautiful." She says, looking through the picture.

"Yeah, it is. But it was supposed to take three weeks."

Abby nods. "He sleeping? At all?"

"He says he's sleeping enough. I asked what enough was, and then told me to stop acting like his wife."

She laughs at that.

"He's got something cooking."

She cuts a bite off the omelet and offers it to him while asking, "What sort of something?"

He chews for a moment, scooping mushed peas off of Kelly's chin and back into her mouth.

"Don't know. He told me not to ask."

"Think it's bad?"

He thinks about that. "No… Not bad… Didn't feel bad. More like… protective? But whatever it is, he doesn't want to talk about it. Not to me, at least."

Abby looks puzzled. "What doesn't he talk to _you_ about? _You're_ the one he's most likely to talk to."

"I know. But he was thinking about it and I could literally see the wall go up. He had that sort of open, grouchy look, we were talking about him getting Shannon done and heading out, and then his eyes went blank and his posture shifted. So, something on the water, but no idea what it'd be."

"Hmm…" She chews her own bite of lunch.

"Yeah. Mysteries. One thing's sure, he's never going to say anything about it unless he wants to."

"And let me guess, one other thing is true, you're not going to snoop."

"I'm not going to snoop. That's true, too. But, he's coming for dinner, so you're welcome to try and grill him, too."

She shakes her head at that. "No thanks." She eyeballs the bags from Target. "Maybe by the time he's here, we'll have something else to discuss?"

Tim smiles at that.

* * *

Last time they were in that space between ovulation and pregnancy test time, Tim couldn't make time move fast enough.

It hasn't been so urgent this time. Part of it, he assumes, is that they've done this once.

Part of it is they've got Kelly, so yes, he'd love, _love_ another baby, but if she's not pregnant, is not as big of a deal.

And part of it, a big part of it, is that wedding planning is significantly less absorbing to him than setting up his own department and hacking his way through red tape and code.

Last time, he had hours for his brain to sit there thinking: Is this is? Am I a father? How is life about to change?

Well, he doesn't know if this is it. But he is a father. He's fairly sure how life will change with the addition of another baby, and he's spending way fewer hours on rote paperwork filling out (not that he's got less paperwork, but it's new paperwork, so he can't just slide into automatic and do it without thinking about it) so he's got less time for thinking about it, and fewer questions to wonder about.

Which is not to say, that when Abby came out of the bathroom, and they stood, hips against his dresser, her holding the test up, his arm around her shoulders, staring at the little electronic grains of sand shifting from one side of the hourglass to the other that he was any less excited than he was last time and they were reaching to flip the test over and see what it said.

And that same golden rush spreads through him when the hourglass blinks three times and the word Pregnant pops up. Abby shrieks with excitement again. (Quieter this time, Kelly's napping.) And once again he's grinning so wide he doesn't think his body can hold it. His fingers, toes, ears would smile if they could.

He's giggling a little, and thinks a bit. It's the end of January, so, nine months out means… "Happy second anniversary to us!"

She pokes him gently. "No. It won't be that late." She grabs her phone and finds a due date calculator. "September 16th!"

"Happy almost anniversary then!" He kisses her, pulling her so she's standing between his legs, his hands on her hips. "Happy new school year, to you," he says, hand cupping her belly.

"We've got every season now."

He giggles again. She's right about that. He's winter. She's spring. Kelly's got summer, and new McSciuto has fall.

"We're gonna need one of those two seat strollers. If Kelly takes after me, she'll barely be walking by then."

"Two cribs, or try to get her moved into a big girl bed?"

"Oh… Well, Jethro said he was looking for more projects."

Abby laughs. "Think he meant this?"

"I think he's eyeballing wood for Tony and Ziva's crib."

"Too bad! He's got a new order in place."

"You know, they're talking about starting when Gibbs left." He strokes her belly, slipping his fingers under the waistband of her skirt to make contact skin on skin. "Your cousin might not be much younger than you are."

"Cousin might already be in the works. Cousin might be older than you are."

Tim's head shoots up to look Abby in the eye. "You speculating, or is Ziva sending out some hints?"

"Speculating." She laughs again. "Can you see it? Gibbs and his girls? Him and five little baby girls? Three of them under a year old?"

"I can see the fifteen-years-on version of this. Pop, Pop's sniper rifle, and putting the fear of Gibbs into future boyfriends." He kisses her again, nibbling her lower lip, then pulling back. "Gibbs and his girls… You thinking this is a little sister?"

She thinks about that for a second. "Yeah. Another little green-eyed blonde."

"Wavy hair, like yours?"

"Yeah… Laura Rose McGee?"

He squints at her. Not that it's a bad name or anything, just seems kind of random.

"You don't like it?"

He shakes his head and kisses her. "Just don't get it. It's not bad, but… how about Maggie?"

"Maggie McGee?"

He hadn't thought that through. "Not Maggie. Bridget?"

"Is that what you're calling Breena's character in the dragon book?"

"Uh… Yeah."

"That intentional?" He nods. "BreeAnne?" She asks, coming up with something closer.

He shakes his head at that. "Nope. We've got time, lots and lots of time. Might end up having to whip out some boy name, you know?"

"Eight months. And, nope. Just like last time, this is a girl. I can feel it."

"Okay." He likes the idea of two daughters.

"Gabrielle McGee? Gabbi?" she asks.

"Abby and Gabbi?"

She winces at that. "Not Gabrielle."

"Nooo!" He's shaking his head, feeling wonderfully fine, so amazingly happy, and just goofy all over.

She scoots a bit closer, rubbing up against him in a very pleasant way. "Like you said, lots of time." She kisses his lips.

He kisses back. "Lots and lots of time."

She's unbuttoning his shirt. "However, we don't have lots and lots of time until Kelly wakes up."

He glances at the clock. Little under an hour. "Nope." He kisses her throat, while turning them around so she's back to the dresser. "Not lots and lots of nap time. Not anymore."

Her leg slides up his, curling over his hip, and he cups her face in his hands, taking a few seconds to just look at her and smile, bask in her smile back. "Love you so much."

Her lips find his, kissing "Love you," back to him as she unbuttons the last button on his shirt.

She slides his shirt open, hands stroking over his chest, lips following, trailing over his throat, collarbone, and chest.

"Mmmm…" His hands settle under her skirt, palming her butt, stroking gently, and when she kisses her way back up to his lips, he finds the zipper and undoes the tan plaid skirt, letting it drop to the floor. He steps back, wanting to look. Abby, white knee socks, small white thong, white t-shirt, and one of his black leather jackets. "God, you're so hot!"

She smiles at that, stroking the few hairs leading below his navel, before hooking her thumb into his belt, and pulling the tongue through the buckle.

He grazes his knuckles over her thong, just a light touch, while she gets his belt undone, and starts to work on the zipper.

He slips the bit of cotton to the side, thumb finding her clit, rubbing gently, enjoying the way her eyes close and she sags for a second, just feeling it. He bites, gently, below her left ear. "Good?"

Her hands grasp his jeans, pulling them down past his hips, then she shifts her grip, giving him a warm squeeze. "Yeah."

He moans quietly, letting her feel the vibration of his voice against her throat, as she continues to gently squeeze him. She hops up onto the dresser, wrapping her legs around his hips, pulling him close again.

For a few strokes, he's just next to her, dick rubbing on the soft cotton of her panties and the silk-suede of her skin. And that's good, but they both want better. She takes him in hand, and he slips in long and slow, both of them groaning at the feel of it.

This is an old dance, familiar, well-loved. His thumb knows what to do, her body squeezes around him warm and lush. It doesn't take long for both of them to be shuddering and gasping, high on each other and this shared joy, shared ecstasy of their life, their love, and the life it's made.

* * *

Even if Gibbs wasn't a trained investigator, even if he hadn't spent years working with Tim, even if he wasn't Tim's defacto dad and hadn't seen him earlier today, he'd have known _something_ was up.

When he gets a wide hello hug as soon as he walks in the door, and then Mona gets affectionately petted while Tim just oozes happy all over the place, _something_ is _definitely_ up.

Abby bouncing in a few seconds later, also all aglow, is also a remarkably unsubtle hint that _something_ is up.

So, the list of _somethings_ that can be up resulting in this level of happy now, but not four hours ago when he last saw Tim is awfully small so…

He stares at Abby for another minute, and she's happily playing with Mona. He knows some people claim they can tell a woman is pregnant just by looking at her, but if that skill actually exists, he doesn't have it.

It'd be one thing if she was far enough along for there to be some level of change. He can spot that like an eagle, but if she is pregnant, they would have just found out, and knowing them, that probably means she's about nine seconds pregnant.

Tim's got Kelly in his arms, sitting on the sofa next to Jethro, quietly, in a very happy, very satisfied sort of way, contentedly watching Abby play with Mona.

"You two just gonna sit there beaming at me, or you gonna say it?"

"Told you he'd figure it out," Abby says to Tim.

"Yeah, well, this time we don't have a wedding to hide behind."

And with those words a wide smile spreads across Gibbs' face, too, that's exactly what he wants to hear. "When?"

"Middle of September," Abby says, getting up, sitting on the sofa, between her guys, snuggling both of them. "Little girl's," she pets Kelly's face, "gonna be a big sister!"

Kelly's remarkably unimpressed by that.

* * *

They told Jimmy and Breena at breakfast, and after several moments of congratulations, when are you due, and the like, Jimmy appeared to do some math in his head, smirked at both of them, and then says, "So, Merry Christmas to you, huh?"

Tim laughs at that.

Abby gently slaps Jimmy's shoulder.

"You really need to sterilize your upstairs bathroom," Jimmy says to Gibbs.

This time Tim whacks Jimmy's shoulder. "Shut up!"

Gibbs rolls his eyes and says dryly, "Like anyone doesn't know what you two are up to when you vanish for fifteen minutes during a party. Clean up after yourselves, don't be too obvious about it, and I'll keep pretending I don't know about it."

Abby blushes scarlet at that, and Tim spends a minute, head down, staring at his food, laughing silently.

Then Gibbs looks Jimmy dead in the eye and says, "And just because you two are quicker and sneakier doesn't mean I don't know about you, either. Same rules for you."

"So, who are we telling?" Breena asks as she takes a bite of her pancakes, utterly nonplussed, while Jimmy sits there, gobsmacked. "Making the announcement at dinner today?"

Abby shakes her head. "Nah. Want to just enjoy the secret for a bit, you know?"

Breena and Jimmy both nod at that.

"Tony and Ziva, Ducky and Penny, tomorrow. But that's it for a while," Tim says.

"Once I can't keep my eyes open anymore, that'll be time to make the announcement."

"So, Tuesday after next?" Breena asks.

"Oh… don't remind me. I hate how out of it I feel when that first trimester tired hits."

"At least you're not getting ready to buy out the drugstore of all the anti-nausea meds."

"Good point."

* * *

Jimmy's in the locker room with Tim and Gibbs post-Bootcamp. They've worked out, fought, Jimmy double checked Jethro's knee, and it seems to be holding up properly, and have finished up with showering and are getting ready to split up and go home.

"So, you really knew?" he asks Gibbs, "I knew you knew about him," he points to Tim, who's pulling on his boxers, "'cause he'd tattoo _I JUST GOT LAID_ on his forehead if he could." That comment earns Jimmy another whack from Tim. "Didn't know you'd caught me."

Gibbs is toweling off his hair. "You think you and Lee sneaking off at Duck's was stealthy?" Gibbs gives him a _get over yourself_ look.

Jimmy looks a bit chagrined by that. "I think the word is horny, not stealthy."

"Yeah." Gibbs nods. "Already knew you'd pull a stunt like that, otherwise I wouldn't have caught you."

Jimmy nods. "Good. Didn't think we were ever gone long enough to make it easy to tell."

"Most guys don't brag about being Zippy the Wonder Rocket," Tim says.

"If Zippy can get his girl off in three minutes, he gets to brag about it." Jimmy deadpans back at Tim.

Gibbs rolls his eyes at both of them. "Just because it's been a million years since I've had a girlfriend doesn't mean I've forgotten what that shit-eating just-got-laid grin looks like, and I've seen both of you strutting around my house wearing it."

"Speaking of which," Tim adds. "Did I see Borin kiss your cheek at the retirement party?"

Gibbs half nods, that did happen. He's not sure it mattered though. "Her and about twenty-five other women."

Tim nods slowly. "Uh huh… Didn't hear twenty-five other women tell you to not be a stranger."

"Really?" Jimmy hadn't seen that bit. "You like her?"

Gibbs doesn't exactly shrug. "Never thought about it. Not much anyway." Which means that since he's worked with her several times, it's just easier to see Borin as a cop. Cops are, in Gibbs' mind, sexless. With the exception of the occasional fantasy, (after all, he's not blind, but said fantasies reinforced why he needed to see Borin as a cop first, second, and last) he'd kept Borin in a non-sexual/colleague box. After Hollis, he expanded 12 to cover any woman who he ran an investigation with.

But she's not a colleague, not anymore.

"Maybe you should. She's single, attractive. You two have a lot in common. You know you get along. Might be fun to spend some time with her," Tim says as he buttons his shirt.

Gibbs nods. He's heard worse ideas, and she did tell him to call her. (And, if he were to let himself explore those fantasies a bit, he'd admit that they did push his buttons nicely.)

Tim pulls his jacket over his shirt and hefts his bag onto his shoulder. "See ya, tomorrow," he says to Jimmy, and then lays his hand on Gibbs' shoulder. "Any day you're getting stir-crazy and want some company that talks back, come on over for dinner. At the very least, I'm home every night now, so don't feel like you've got to be on your own, okay?"

"Don't want to wear out my welcome."

"I had you within arm's reach for ten hours a day five days a week for fourteen years, you can be at my place for dinner every night until the end of time, and you're not going to wear anything out."

"Okay."


	64. Bad Days

Abby knows that sensation. She figures all women do. That sort of dull, aching, low gut, wrong but familiar sensation.

But she's not supposed to be feeling it.

Not… for another year, at least.

But she is.

Mildly crampy, wet, bit of a headache.

Yeah, she knows it. And it's not the way she wants to wake up at, she glances at the clock, 4:38 in the morning on Monday. She reaches out from under the blanket, grabs a handful of tissues and stuffs them between her legs before getting up and heading to the bathroom.

For a second, she begs God that they come away white, but, as she pulls them away, they're the intense red of first day of her period blood.

Usually her period's not much of a big deal. Light flow, lasts about four days, not too much emotional craziness (she's got more than enough of that just on her own, her cycle doesn't seem to effect it), mild cramps the first day. As periods go, they're not bad.

So, it's probably not any sort of hormonal issue that's making her sit on the bathroom floor and sob.

It's just pure, unadulterated, heart feels ripped out sadness.

* * *

Tim woke to… he wasn't sure, he took a second to place it, and then he knew. Abby crying. He's half tempted to go back to sleep, because she does cry a lot when she's pregnant, and as of this point he's still zero for nine million on thinking up some way to fix whatever has caused the crying.

But, something, his "gut" probably, really doesn't like the way that crying sounds. This doesn't sound like a bad dream, sad thought, snuggled Kelly and just burst into tears crying. This sounds… off.

So he drags himself out of bed, knocks gently on the bathroom door. "You okay?"

"No."

That 'no' scares the shit out of him, but he's not going to just barge in on her. "Can I come in?"

She opens the door, eyes bright red, chest heaving, and immediately collapses into his arms.

"Abby…" his question dies on his lips. He sees the tissues, wadded up in the trash can, sees the open box of tampons, and puts two and two together and rapidly comes up with four. "Oh."

She's nodding against his chest and he kisses her temple, stroking her back.

He doesn't have any words. He's not even sure what he's feeling. This hurts, but it's not sobbing pain. Maybe it will be, eventually. It certainly is for Abby. This is more an aching, breath knocked out of you by the sucker punch that gets you right in the solar plexus, sort of pain.

* * *

It's an hour later, after her crying has calmed down, when he tentatively says, "Do you think you should see Dr. Draz?"

She shrugs at that.

And he really doesn't know the answer to that. He's not trying to gently nudge her toward it. He's honestly not sure if she should or not.

"Would you like me to give her a call? Get an opinion?"

She nods.

"Okay. I'll go do that."

He's on the phone, on hold, when he hears Kelly wake up, so he heads toward her, but Abby's got her. She nods at him, letting him know she's got this, and he heads downstairs where he can talk without a fussing baby in the background.

He finally gets Dr. Draz and explains what happened.

"Okay, first thing first, do you have another pregnancy test lying around?"

"Yes." He bought a two pack, because if it was negative but her period kept not showing up, they'd want to test again.

"Have Abby take it. Just because you're bleeding doesn't mean you aren't pregnant anymore. Give me a call back in a few minutes when you know what the result is, okay? This might be a lot of upset for nothing alarming."

He heads into Kelly's room where Abby's nursing her. "Doc says it's a good idea to retake the pregnancy test. See if this really is your period or just some sort of bleeding. Which can be normal."

She looks up at him, not seeming very enthusiastic about that. And he can see from the way she's looking at him that she's certain this is not just some sort of little bleeding thing.

"Do you want to take it?"

She shrugs. "When Kelly's done."

"Okay. I'll… um…" He feels so useless right now. Normally, he'd be getting his morning shower, she'd be feeding Kelly, Heather will get here soon, and the day begins. "What do you want for breakfast?"

"Uh…" He can see she doesn't really want to eat, and he's not exactly hungry right now, either, but they may as well eat. "Make me some scrambled eggs?"

"Okay."

She comes down ten minutes later, and shakes her head. "Negative."

"Fuck." It comes out pretty flat. Mostly just expressing how disappointed he is. He didn't have much hope that it was going to come up positive. He puts the plate with the eggs on it in front of her, she looks at them, pokes them a few times, and then they hear Heather coming in. She gets up quickly, tosses the eggs in the trash, and Tim understands she doesn't want to explain why she's not eating.

"Hey guys! How's this morning going?"

Abby plasters a really fake smile on her face. "Fine. Kind of slow. But I know someone wants to play." She hands Kelly over.

"Hey, Kelly girl! Did you have a good weekend?"

Kelly grins up at Heather.

Heather seems to notice that both of the grown-ups are still in their pajamas. "You weren't kidding about a slow start. I always have a hard time getting up and running on cold, gray days like today, too."

"Yeah, it was a good day to stay in bed," Tim says, taking his cues from Abby. "Shower time for us."

"Okay." Heather's looking like that's probably more information than she needed. "Have fun?"

"Sure," Abby says, voice flat, and they head upstairs. She does head into the shower, and he calls Dr. Draz again.

"The test was negative."

"I'm so sorry." Her voice is soothing, or would be if he was in a willing to be soothed mood.

"Uh… Thanks. Do we need to come in?"

"Probably not. You said it's been, at most, four weeks since she would have conceived?"

"Yeah."

"If the flow gets very heavy, or she's passing large clots, or very bad cramping, then sure, come in. But, if it acts like a normal period, then she doesn't need to."

"Okay."

"I know this probably isn't very comforting, but this happens all the time. Something like four out of five embryos don't implant in the first place, and a decent number of them don't stay long after implanting. It usually means something's gone wrong in the cell division."

"Okay."

"And it's also possible that she wasn't pregnant at all. False positives aren't unheard of, and the hormones involved in nursing can throw off a test sometimes."

"Okay."

"She's going to be fine, and this will in no way effect your chances of having other babies."

"Okay," falls, numbly, off his lips again.

"I'm sorry."

"Thanks. I should go."

"Goodbye."

And he hung up.

* * *

Tim joins Abby in the shower. They're quiet in there for a long minute, just holding each other. She's not crying anymore, and he hasn't.

Her voice is very quiet, practically a whisper as she says, "I can't stop thinking about what I could have done differently. Gotten more sleep, worked less, those two cases where I worked all night can't have been good for this, and I had eggnog at the Christmas party, and… I'm standing in a hot shower. I know you're not supposed to get hot showers. Get your body temperature too high and you can cook…"

Tim's not sure how much ranting she needs to do to feel better, and when he needs to jump in and stop it, but as she jumps from hot showers to took two Advil four days ago, and the sushi she had for dinner last night, he's thinking now is probably the time.

"It's not your fault."

"I've had three Caf-Pows this week. I know that can't be good!"

"Abby. It's not your fault. We don't even know for certain that you were pregnant. Dr. Draz says that the nursing hormones can cause a false positive, and even if you were, it usually a cell division thing, not a you made an inhospitable womb for your child."

"But I should have…"

"NO." Because he can't have her going there, because nothing good lives _there._ "Would you have told Breena she should have done something different, quit working, stayed away from the embalming chemicals?"

That horrifies Abby, and she swallows hard, blinking.

"It's not any different for us. It's not your fault. It's not my fault. It just is. Or isn't. Because we don't really know, not for sure."

She's looking at him, so sad, and that's crushing him. "If it's not my fault, then there's nothing I can do to change it for next time."

He kisses her.

"And we did know, Tim. Doesn't matter if it was real or not, we _knew_ and we _felt_ it and that's all the real anyone ever gets."

He kisses her once more. "I know," and he does, because she's right, they did know. They watched it turn positive, they felt the joy of it, and they _knew._ And now it's gone. And that starts his tears.

* * *

"You want to go to work?"

She nods. "Might go home early. But if I spend today snuggling with Kelly, I'll just dwell on it."

"If you want to stay home, you can snuggle with me, too."

She shakes her head. "Not that I don't want the snuggles, but we can go out and make life better for someone else today, maybe break Tony's case open or something, or stay here and cry."

"Then let's go."

* * *

Jimmy might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to picking up non-verbal cues, but when his two best friends, who should be in a jubilant mood, join him for lunch, both of them looking like they've taken a hard beating, he's not having a difficult time figuring out what's going on.

So, he doesn't ask, "Are you okay?" It's clear they aren't. But, though he's awfully sure what flavor of not okay this is, he doesn't want to assume either. Just because he immediately jumps to they lost the baby doesn't mean it's true. That's his own past feeding into this, and it could be something else.

But it's not.

So, it's a very quiet lunch, with a lot of hugs. He makes sure both of them eat, because you've got to eat, and hearing how this morning went, he really doubts they had breakfast.

When they head back to work, he stops the elevator, pulling his phone out, ready to call Breena.

It doesn't hit him as hard as he expected it to. This time last year, this would have dropped him to his knees. There's distance here, now. This loss aches, but when he was sitting in the booth at the restaurant, waiting for one of them to say the word miscarriage, he was expecting it to feel like knives.

And it didn't.

And he doesn't know if that's himself healing, or if it's a sign that the calluses and scars have numbed his ability to empathize.

He does know he's worried about how Breena will take it. He's half-afraid this will be like going back, like being in the Doc's office getting the bad news all over again. He's hoping, that like for him, this will ache, the sadness of disappointed friends, but that it won't be an instant flashback.

He thinks about waiting to get home to tell her, but… He'd like to stop by Tim and Abby's tonight, bring food, make sure they aren't alone.

He hits Breena's contact number.

"Hey, Jimmy, what's up?" she says when she picks up. He's not calling the way he was after they lost Jon, not every half-hour, or hour even, but he still does check in once or so a day, usually just to say hi, see how things are. So, she expects to hear from him at some point during the day on slow days. And, since he never knows how long he'll be out on non-slow days, she expects a call on those days, too. "Catch another case?"

"No. Not today." He sighs, and she catches the flavor of that sigh.

"What's wrong?"

"Abby miscarried."

"Oh." He can hear and feel her wince. "Are they…"

"From the looks of it, they're as okay as can be." He's quiet for a moment. "How about you?"

"Me?"

"Yeah."

"Sad, disappointed. That's what should happen, right?"

"Think so."

"How about you?" she asks, getting why he's asking, and from the sound of it, hoping that he's okay, too.

"The same. I saw them sitting in the restaurant, looking deflated, and… I kind of expected it to hurt worse, but…" He can't see it, but he knows she's nodding, understanding.

"This may hit harder, later, but right now, just… sad," she says.

"Okay."

"Have they told Gibbs, yet?"

"Don't think so."

"He's out with Molly and Mona right now. When they get back, I'll tell him."

"Thanks."

* * *

Beth wasn't kidding. Mona likes kids. She's smart as a whip, and when she hears the words, "Come on, let's go see Molly," she bounds up to the truck, leaps into the cab as soon as he opens the door, and sits in the front seat, looking very alert, beaming, _Well come on, get moving, let's get there already!_ at him.

And Molly loves Mona. As soon as she hears the quiet clicking of Mona's claws on the tile floor in the mudroom, she comes tearing in shouting "MONA!" (Followed by, "Shhh… No shouting in the house," in Breena's voice as she follows, more slowly, pets Mona's head, and gives Gibbs a kiss. While it's true that the rest of the crew met Mona for the first time on Friday night, Breena and Jimmy were sworn to secrecy on Tuesday, because Gibbs wanted to take Molly and Mona out.)

And thus, last Tuesday, Adventures with Uncle Jethro, began.

Anna, at six weeks old, has gotten to the point where she's reliably sleeping for at least an hour and a half out of every three. So, a bit before lunch, he and Molly and Mona go out for 'adventures,' (The park, the mall, "the zoo" (Petsmart, both Molly and Mona like to watch the fish,) anywhere he can go with a toddler and a dog.) where they go run around and play, followed by lunch at his house (or Jeannie's if she's home, and he's thinking he'll check in with Penny and see if she's got any days where she's got some lunchtimes free), then more playing, and bringing Molly home for naptime, thus buying Breena two full nap cycles where she can sleep.

It's, as he told Tim, the highlight of his day. And Breena certainly appreciates it, too.

Today's adventure is a Petsmart run, where they get more food for Mona, and then spend twenty minutes watching the fish. Gibbs idly wonders if the fish get nervous with two sets of eyes tracking them as they go swimming back and forth, but decides that fish are awfully stupid, so they probably don't notice.

Then over to the diner. ("Shhh… our secret. Mama thinks we're having peanut butter and jelly at home." Of course Breena knows what's really up, but the idea that she and Uncle Jethro have secret outings tickles Molly to no end.) Elaine hooks them up with one burger with everything, rare, for him, peanut butter and jelly, for Molly, and one burger, hold the bun, lettuce, ketchup, cheese, tomato, mayo, and pickle, raw, (packed up to go. Eliane would have liked to let Mona in, but the health department is awfully strict.) for Mona.

Followed by romping at the park, and then back to Jimmy and Breena's with a sleepy toddler he goes.

When he gets in, Breena's nursing Anna. He's already carrying Molly, so he just nods toward her bedroom, and Breena nods back.

He kisses the top of Molly's head. "Stories and snuggles and naptime?"

She nods. "Nigh' Moon?"

"We'll do Goodnight Moon. You gonna find the mouse for me?"

"Yes!"

Goodnight Moon's a hit with Molly, though, unlike Kelly, she likes to see the pictures, so, once he's got her changed and his hands washed, he finds a copy of the book, and they settle into the rocking chair in her room, and he quietly reads the story to her. She cuddles in his lap, looking at each page, finding the mouse in each picture, and sucking her thumb.

He gets to the end of the story, and tucks her into her bed, kissing her again, as she goes off to sleep.

It's not a shock to Gibbs, he knows her parents after all, but Molly Palmer is the sweetest child he's ever met. Sure, she gets crabby and frustrated, and if you get her overtired she's an all-out holy terror, but for day in day out life, when the grown-ups are doing a good job of managing her, she's just a little ray of sunshine and cuddles.

He's wondering a bit (for example he knows Ed will talk your ears off about how sweet his girls were as babies, but part of that's time and distance rose colored glasses) what Breena and Jimmy were like as little kids.

He's also wondering if Anna's gonna be a spitfire just to mark her own territory out.

He heads into the kitchen, getting himself a cup of coffee, and calls out quietly, "You want anything while I'm in here?"

"I'm fine."

And a minute later he heads toward Breena, sitting across from her in their living room.

"Go well?" she asks him.

"Went fine. Those two'll sit there watching the goldfish for an hour if I let them." He smiles, but notices she's not looking that happy. "You okay? She nap?"

Breena nods. "Anna napped just fine." She smiles at him, but it's sad. "Jimmy called me after lunch…" He can feel bad news coming and braces for it. He knows it can't be the worst, she wouldn't be here alone if someone had died, but whatever she's about to say won't be good. "Abby miscarried."

"Fuck!" He says it low and quiet, wincing at the news.

Breena nods. "Yeah."

"Are they… okay?" He finishes, lamely. Of course they aren't _okay_.

"They both went to work today. Probably heading home early."

He nods at that, already making plans in his mind.

"I'm going to head over."

Breena nods. "We'll join you when Jimmy gets home, bring some food."

Gibbs waves that away. "You rest. I'm on food."

If he was paying more attention, he would have noticed that Breena didn't nod along with that. But he wasn't. He's mostly just feeling very disappointed, and trying to think of what to do to be comforting for Tim and Abby.

He heads off shortly after that, planning on going to the grocery store, grabbing something for them, and then going to their place, letting Heather go home early. (He's guessing they wouldn't have told her what was up.)

He's standing in the grocery store, debating chard or kale (neither of which he has ever given a flying fuck about before, or for that matter, could have identified as something other than "Spinach?" but he's shopping for Tim and Abby and they like curly green veggies) when he can feel Rachel in the back of his head saying, "You're avoiding it by being busy. They don't care if you get them the perfect dinner or not. Just being there is enough. Let yourself feel it, Jethro, don't push it away."

He put the greens down and left.

* * *

He's been sleeping like shit since he retired. Too much time, not enough work to keep his brain active, and that means no sleep.

But last night, and Saturday night, he'd slept pretty well. He'd been dreaming of Tim and Abby's son.

And yes, he does know that anything you want to do with a boy, you can do with a girl. He really knows that, and maybe it's because for as many sons as he's collected over the years, he's never started out with one from the beginning, but he was really looking forward to a little boy.

It's not even so much that he's got "boy" things he wants to do. His fantasies of camping and rough housing and teaching them to shoot and drive involve the girls, too.

But, God, he _wanted_ a little boy. He wanted _Tim and Abby's_ little boy.

He especially wanted Tim, and Tim's _son_ to have men around him that adored him no matter what.

He wanted to be able to give that to Tim as much as to the image of the child in his head.

And he knows it's not like this is it, that there will never be any other babies. He tells himself the same things that he figures everyone else in this situation says to themselves, there'll be other chances, this isn't it, but saying goodbye, or maybe, he hopes, putting that dream on hold, hurts.

* * *

Gibbs is waiting for them when they got home. He sees they're surprised to see him, but he smiles a little, puts Kelly on her play mat (Mona immediately trots over to her and lays down right next to her, keeping her company), and pulls both of them into a hug. "Breena told me when I took Molly home. She and Jimmy'll be over if you want them. Or just me if you want more quiet."

"They're already on their way," Abby says, quietly. Jimmy had texted her about that when they were driving home. "They wanted to make sure we ate."

Gibbs smiles at that, kissing both of them. "You think I didn't bring food?" (And he did. He told Elaine he had some sad people at home, but not why, he hinted it was a bad day at work, and she did her magic. Much better than him glaring at greens in the grocery store.)

There's a quick knock, followed by Tony and Ziva heading in, also with food. It's a mitzvah to feed those who mourn, and it looks like if there is any obligation owed to those who hurt, this is the one their family is all over.

Jimmy and Breena are there less than half an hour later, with yet more food.

It's a very quiet meal, even Molly seems to sense something is up, so she's staying close to Jimmy and Breena. There's lots and lots and lots of food. Tim and Abby aren't going to need to do anything other than put food in the microwave to heat it up anytime this week. Which is probably the plan.

Whether or not they were telling Ducky and Penny came up, and Jimmy got deputized to pass that along tomorrow. With everyone else knowing, there was no way it wouldn't slip out.

And eventually everyone but Gibbs went home. It's not so much that he thinks he's got anything that'll help, but having him near is comforting, and if he's being honest, being near is comforting for him, too.

* * *

It's not late. In fact, it's honestly not all that long past Kelly going to bed, but they're tired. Physically tired, it's been a long day, and emotionally drained.

So Gibbs doesn't say anything when they go to bed two hours early.

Tim appreciates that. He appreciates all the things people haven't said to him today. And yes, his family learned, the hard way, what not to say to someone where they are, which he supposes is the tiniest damn silver lining in the history of silver linings, but…

No one minimized it. No one said they shouldn't be sad. No one tried to jolly them out of it, or make them look on the bright side, or any of that hollow, meaningless cheering-up shit.

Today they were allowed to be sad, allowed to grieve an idea or a hope or whatever it was.

And tomorrow will be better, he knows that, Abby does, too. Tomorrow, they'll get their minds wrapped around next month, and trying again, probably start charting so they know what's going on. They'll rally round each other and move on. But they needed today, too, and he's very pleased they got it.

Abby's cuddled up in his arms, spooned against him. His face is pressed against the nape of her neck. He feels her take his hand, lift it to her lips, and kiss it.

"Next month will be different," she says.

"Yeah, it will." He kisses the back of her neck. "Valentine's baby."

She nods. "Valentine's baby."


	65. Interlude

There are times Tim thinks he understands love. Times where he just feels so full of it that he can't contain it.

There are moments, like this one, here, now, when he's hyperaware of himself and Abby, of breath and bone, pulse and heat.

There are moments where he believes there is more to this whole human thing than skin bags holding together various solids and fluids. Moments where he's aware of the energy of his life and hers and how their love for each other brings that to the front, allows him access to it.

Right now, they're kissing, soft and deep and he's aware of lips, and tongue, and wet, and hot. Aware of the scrape of tooth and the slide of lips. Right now, there's the light rasp of his stubble on her mouth, and the flavor of her toothpaste on her tongue. Right now, lips are moving, but bodies are still, waiting for the fullness of this moment, for that second where they both can't not move.

He's aware of the feel of the pillows behind his back, and the blankets under his legs. He's tuned into her toes against his thighs, just above his knees, and the smooth expanse of her calves against his thighs and hips.

Her thighs, quivering, soon, but not yet, sinking down on him, are rapture.

Her butt, cradled in his hands, soft and full against his fingers, delight.

Her pussy, just barely touching the head of his dick, wet and slick, and just the meerest hint of friction every time his heart beats, there's life, and heat, and love.

And there... one moment shifting into the next, the fullness of waiting sliding into a new moment needing to be filled.

She slips down him in a golden rush, and he groans into her kiss, aware of all of it, from her fingernails in his hair to the palm of her other hand on his chest, the smell of her skin, and the heat of her body.

And love isn't sex, and sex isn't love, and he knows that and it doesn't matter because right now... here... there is an aching, filled, contentment of having and wanting and need fulfilled with cherishing. This is all of it mixed together, bodies exultant, moving past bodies without losing the actual concrete experience of his body and hers together.

Tomorrow this will fade. Ten minutes from now it will be vague. But this, right here, right now, is love made real, made tangible, made light and ecstasy.

And right now, it's what both of them need, so very, very much.


	66. The Grand Conspiracy

The thing is, there's only so much woodworking you can do in a day.

Or maybe there's only so much woodworking that Jethro can do in a day.

He didn't think it was possible, but, by the end of his third week of retirement, when he'd finished his bed, and gotten most of Shannon done, too, he'd hit the point of feeling bored with woodworking.

It's not working it's mind-quieting magic anymore.

Probably because it's not a refuge from anything anymore. Now it's a symbol of what he's trying to escape.

Tons and tons of time. He gets up, eats, finishes working out (longer and harder than he had been doing, which kills another hour) and… oh look, hours of nothing planned. From eleven to three he's been heading over to Breena's and taking Molly out. That buys Breena a bit more quiet and downtime, which she's appreciating, lets her grab a nap when Anna goes down, but come March both girls are going back to daycare because Breena's going back to work.

Likewise, he heads over (sometimes with Molly, sometimes in the afternoon without her) to get some baby snuggles with Kelly, and it certainly eats up time, and he enjoys it, but…

You're not supposed to say it, but babies are _boring_. Molly's big enough to be getting into everything and asking questions and exploring, so that's fun, but, no matter how much he loves Kelly (and he does) she's just seven months old, so the majority of her awake time is spent laying on her back or tummy kicking at things and chewing on them. And sure, that's cute, but hour after hour of it… (He doesn't know how Heather hasn't gone stark, raving mad.)

He lets Kelly chew on him, and they work on standing (where he holds her under her armpits and she stands, not holding any of her weight) or sitting (she's got that pretty much down by now). He'll build block towers and she'll knock them down and chew on the blocks, and peek-a-boo is a perennial favorite, but that's not exactly keeping his brain active.

* * *

Part of the problem is time. Hour and hours of it. Part of the problem is sleep. He's never been good at sleeping if he isn't tired, and unless he's got something that tires him out, some sort of work that makes his body feel like it's earned some sleep, his brain keeps going, and he can't really shut down.

He was never a huge sleeper to begin with. Six-seven hours a day and he was good. And now, even with working out as hard and as long as his body will let him every morning, he still doesn't feel _sleepy_ at the end of the day. He gets to midnight, his usual end of the day, and he's not ready to sleep. He's tired, but not restful.

So, bedtime has shifted from midnight to two or three, but wake up time is still firmly set at 06:30.

Three more hours of nothing much to do.

By the end of the third week, his bed is done, every part of Shannon that can be done is, and besides finishing and sanding and more finishing and more sanding, he's out of woodworking projects.

* * *

He's getting Shannon done for a reason, so, as he's waiting for her finish to dry (so he can sand it again and put more finish on it. Boats, because of that whole in the water thing, take a _lot_ of finishing), he gets all of Mike Franks' files out, and begins to go through them again.

And then he put them all back in the hidden space behind that shelf and heads to the hardware store.

He'll tell you that he doesn't have a lock on the door because there's nothing worth taking in his house. This is true but misleading. Once upon a time he had a lock on the door. There was certainly one when he lived here with Shannon and each of the wives that followed.

But, in a… fit of pique… (blind fury, really) Stephanie decided her last parting gift would be to leave the house, locking all the doors and supergluing the keys into the locks.

So, he shot the lock. (Gibbs did not have a door he, or anyone else for that matter, could _kick_ down. That puppy was solid oak and steel and could have thwarted a battering ram.) And when he got a new door, he didn't bother to stick a lock in it. Which is how he ended up with a house with no locks.

But if he's going to do this, he's going to have things in his house that he'd prefer people didn't get into. So, yeah, locks.

Fortunately, Mona's a good excuse for him to have a lock on the door. Anyone (and he's thinking Fornell or Vance may qualify as anyone) asks, and he's just making sure none of his buddies get killed by his pet.

Once he had the locks installed in his kitchen door and his front door, he went back to the hidden compartment, got Mike's files out again, and got to work.

Or, at least, getting to the preliminaries of getting to work. Time to try and figure out how he was going to do this.

And that night, sitting at his kitchen table, glass of bourbon next to him (untouched) files all around him, long before midnight, his body starts saying to him, "Sleep now, please!"

So he goes to bed, and dreams of sailing.

* * *

Mike was infuriatingly specific about some things and mind-bogglingly vague about others. He's got pages and pages of who he was blackmailing, he's got detailed numbers on exactly how much he was paying in bribes and to whom, and he's got excruciatingly specific information on how to get an undocumented person from any point A in the US to any point B.

What he doesn't have, and… okay, no, it's not actually mind boggling, it's… It's that Mike never knew if anyone else (besides Gibbs) was going to see this stuff, and if they did he didn't want to screw his supply chain.

So, what Gibbs doesn't have is how Mike found the girls, or who made the documents for them, or what happened to them once he got them to the US. All of that is completely off the books.

What he has is a pile of tantalizing, but years old, leads, and no real evidence.

So, what next?

It doesn't take him long to decide. There are probably hundreds of people Mike knew and used for this type of operation, and there's exactly one who he knows and might be willing to talk to him about it.

* * *

Leyla's married now. Lives in a nice home with Amira, her husband (also a Mike) and in the next month or so, a new baby boy.

"Don't get up. I can get myself a drink." Gibbs says when she offers to get him something. She looks like she's at least two hundred months pregnant and has hit the point where it's hard to move.

He grabs himself a drink, and one for her, and then heads over.

"Got a serious question for you?"

She's looking a little worried at that, and years of training tells him that she's got to know something because people don't get that kind of look unless they're afraid of what you're going to ask.

"What kind of serious?"

"About Mike serious."

"Oh. Mike." Yep, she's worried.

"Yeah. He was smuggling girls into the country, like you?"

She nods. "Why are you asking? His… operation… died with him."

"He left me all of his papers. There were hints of what he was doing in there, enough to put me on the right track, but…" he pauses, aware that saying this out loud commits him to, well, not much of anything, but it gets the idea that he's interested in this out there, out there in a way telling Rachel didn't. Best way to keep a secret, keep it to yourself. Second best way, tell one other person. There is no third best way. But he can't do this and keep it a secret. He needs help. "I don't know how to find the girls. I don't know what to do with them once I get them here."

Leyla looks shocked. "You want to do this?"

"I can do it. I've got a boat. I've got connections. I've got the time. And I can't think of anyone who deserves the help more."

"And you were hoping I knew…" she looks expectantly, waiting for him to fill in what he's looking for.

"Anything. But how to find the girls would be the first step. I can't just sail on over to wherever and grab girls off the street."

She smiles at that and shakes her head. "No. You can't. Unfortunately, I don't know how he found the girls. For years, I didn't know he was doing it. Then he had one that he needed to talk to, and I was the closest, most reliable translator available."

"Any idea where he took them… Anything about what happened after they got here?"

"No. After I translated… She was hysterical, and he couldn't get her calmed down on his own… They had walked past one of those video monitors that has a camera on it, and she saw herself on the television and was sure her husband and his brothers were going to find her because of it. After that, I never saw another of the girls. And he never actually said how he ended up with a fifteen year old Iraqi-girl who spoke no English and was on the run from her family, but I could put the dots together."

"Yeah, you would."

"So, he didn't actually tell you what he was doing?" she asks.

"He couldn't tell me because I was a cop. He left me a paper trail to follow, for when I was ready, if I wanted to follow in his footsteps, but he left enough of it out so that if anyone else got it, his people couldn't be hurt."

She nods gently at him. "I'm sorry I do not have more for you. I would have helped him if he had let me, but… It was clear he… they didn't want me in on it. I think… but I don't know…They didn't exactly like each other, but I think my mother was in on it, too."

Once Leyla says that, it all clicks for Gibbs. Of course Mike would keep it in the family. "She would have known who needed help."

"Yes."

"Could I talk to her?"

She shakes her head. "Only if you can speak to the dead. She died the year before last."

Gibbs hadn't known that. "I'm sorry."

"When Iraq went crazy in '14, she was one of the leaders calling for calm and peace. The men of our family decided they were done with that. I got word that she 'died in her sleep' and one of her half-brothers was taking over. I decided it wasn't a good idea to go home for the funeral."

Gibbs nods. "I am sorry."

"So am I. I wish she had stayed in Mexico. But she couldn't run things from there and she didn't want to spend the rest of her days laying on the beach."

Gibbs squeezes her hand.

"If you ever need a translator…"

"I know who to stay away from." He looks at her home, the pictures of Amira and her new husband, the baby growing in her. "You've got way too much to lose if we get caught. If they were in it together, I'm sure that's why Mike or your mom never talked about it, either."

She stares at Gibbs for a long minute. "And do you not have too much to lose?"

Gibbs isn't sure what to say to that.

* * *

His best first guess was a dead end, which leaves… He spends an hour with Mona, tossing the ball, she's tearing after it, bringing it back to him, while he racks his brain. It's not that he doesn't know some shady people who might be able to get him in touch with other people for something like this.

It's that he doesn't know anyone he trusts. It's not enough to know who to talk to, who needs help, where to look. It's that the person who finds that for him has to also know how to shut up.

He needs a contact who won't fold under questioning, someone who looks at cops with disdain. Someone who will tell the powers that be to go to hell if they get in her way.

And that train of thought brings up a mental image. Specifically the first time he met Penny Langston, sitting in his interrogation room, ready to tell him to go to hell and then kiss his own ass while he was there.

He feels the smile start as he thinks more about it, because, not only does she have the perfect temperament for this, but, if anyone he knows would know about this, it's her.

* * *

"Hi, Penny," he says into his phone as soon as he gets home with Mona.

"Jethro."

"You doing anything today?"

"I've got class until four."

"Can I offer you dinner then?"

"Is this an offer for just me, or for me and Ducky?" She sounds very curious. Gibbs doesn't often just call her up out of the blue to chat.

"You're the one I need to talk to, but he can and probably should come along, too."

"Mysterious."

He smiles into the phone.

"Shall I bring wine?"

"Just tossing some steaks on the fire. Bring it if you want to drink it."

* * *

Dinner's on the table. Steaks, baked potatoes, if it was just him and Duck, he'd leave it there, but since Penny seems to actually enjoy green stuff, he's made a salad and tossed some green beans in the microwave.

He hears his door open, followed by Mona moseying over to say Hi to his visitors. Apparently her hearing/sense of smell is good enough to identify people before they get in the door, and these are people she's already identified as part of the pack.

They settle in to dinner quickly.

"So, what is our mysterious assignation, Jethro?" Penny asks while Ducky pours the wine.

"Duck… this might not be good for you."

"Might not be good for me?" Ducky asks with a smile. "You intend to feed me a porterhouse and baked potato so loaded with sour cream, cheese, and bacon that my arteries are hardening just smelling it. What more possible ill could you have aimed at me tonight?"

"More intriguing," Penny says, sipping her wine, "why would it be bad for him and not me?"

"Because this is the sort of thing where if we get caught people'll think you're a hero and best he can hope for is fired and lost pension."

Ducky grins, wryly. "Sounds like a grand conspiracy. Which laws are we planning on violating?"

Gibbs shakes his head. "That's the idea. Few months ago…" He explains what he found from Mike, how that got the idea in his head, his conversation with Leyla, and wrapped up with, "and, since you're on campus and part of all those do-gooder feminist groups, and I know for a fact you're not going to break under questioning, I thought, maybe, you might know someone who knows someone…"

Penny doesn't seem to love the idea of 'do-gooder feminist groups' but she does seem interested in putting some action behind the rhetoric. "Tall order. I assume you're serious about this. You want it to actually succeed, so it couldn't be the kind of thing where we'd find someone just talking the talk."

"Yeah." He nods. "And if we're going to keep doing it, it can't be someone who's in it for the glory. This has to stay silent. Can't be parading the girls around, using them as examples. They've got to get here and vanish."

"And they've got to be willing to work with you," Penny says, eyeing him.

"What does that mean?" Of all of the things Gibbs has thought about this, the idea that someone might not want to work with him has never occurred to him.

"Jethro, everything about you screams COP."

"Oh." Yes, that could be an issue. If it looks like a sting, they won't let him in, and all the _really, I'm retired_ on earth won't help.

Ducky chuckles at that. Gibbs is looking somewhat less coppish these days. He's got at least two days of stubble and is wearing cargo pants and a well-worn Marines t-shirt. "You haven't seen full Vacation Jethro, yet. He makes an exceptionally convincing beach bum"

"I _was_ beach bumming."

"And you looked the part. He even has some Hawaiian shirts, if memory serves. However, I was thinking that looking like a cop or a Marine, while you are on the sea, would be a benefit."

"Old, retired, law and order guy on a handmade sailboat. Nothing about that screams human smuggler. One girl, maybe two, it's a long run, work on her English on the way, sail right on through."

"Act like you belong and everyone will accept it," Penny says.

"That's the idea. Probably go on a bunch of dry runs, take the kids out, stuff like that, make sure that I'm a familiar sight." Both of them are nodding. "But it doesn't work if I can't find the girls, and right now, I don't know how to find the girls. And it really doesn't work if I can't find what to do with them when I get them here." Now he was looking at Penny.

She thinks about it, going through her mental rolodex. "I don't know anyone off the top of my head. But I do know a few people who likely know people. Is two or three degrees of separation close enough?"

"I'm not in a rush, so I'd be willing to get to know them well enough to find out if they seem trustworthy."

She shakes her head at that. "I'll handle that part. Let me do the sniffing out. The kind of person I'm likely to get introduced to who's likely to be interested in this is also likely to be turned off by you."

"I'm not Attila the Hun."

"You're a cop, and a Marine, and a capitalist, and a Republican, and a Christian, and a gun owner. You _are_ the Patriarchy. If I can find someone on campus who is involved with this, they will not want anything to do with you."

"Other than I'm the old, white guy with the boat who will risk his life and his freedom to get women in need of a new home to the US."

"Doesn't matter. They'll assume it's because you hate Arabs more than you dislike women."

Gibbs rolls his eyes. "Wonderful. Why do you like these people?"

"Because people aren't just labels, and I like getting to know who's under those nametags."

"And you enjoy being a bridge between cultures, and doing what isn't expected of you," Ducky adds, toning down the tension a bit. Then he moves to more practical matters. "Speaking of 'taking the kids out,' are we telling the children about this?" Ducky asks.

"I want to. I almost told Tim. You'd know they'd support it, and you know they'd be useful. But… no. This is for us, and just us." Gibbs shakes his head. That isn't up for debate.

Penny immediately gets why he didn't tell them. "They've got a lot to lose. What happens if Ducky and I get arrested? Good publicity. No one is going to take octogenarians to court for helping to smuggle oppressed girls into the country. Realistically, we'll be dead before the case is over."

Gibbs nods. "Not quite the same boat for me, but retired law enforcement, retired Marine, four…six... no… seven… distinguished service medals. Put me on the stand, get me talking about what we're getting those girls away from… I'm a nightmare for a prosecutor."

"If we do this, I think we need a good lawyer on standby," Ducky says, making an excellent point.

Penny nods at that. "And we certainly need a place for you to land. You mentioned looking for place on the water, just as a vacation spot… How are you set for buying one? I can put a good stake into it, or back expenses on this, because this has to cost money."

Ducky thinks about that, then nods as well… "If we can get an 'underground railroad' going, I can shift money to it."

"I…" the idea that this would be expensive hadn't occurred to Gibbs, but now that he's thinking about it... Yes, this will be expensive, and sure he's got some money, but he's not independently wealthy.

But both of the people sitting next to him are.

Both of them stare at him, then Penny says, "Waterfront property, even in bad shape, isn't cheap. You wouldn't blow your entire nest egg on a vacation place. But the three of us together might put up the money for something, the kids'll add sweat equity. It'll look like we got a family vacation home. Most of the time that's all it will be. Place for us to spend time on holidays and weekends."

"Timothy and Abigail will want to buy in."

Penny shakes her head. "We can't let them buy in. It's one thing to work on the place. Another to actually have money in it. That'll tie them too closely to it."

Gibbs nods at that. "They put money up; they have to know what we're doing with it."

"If they know the others will, too," Penny finishes.

"Then, I think we will take advantage of being old," Ducky says. "All of my estate is going to different charities." He looks to Penny. "Your estate is similarly designed. This is our present to them. Passing on some of that wealth in a way that fosters family and warm memories. Doing it in such a way that we will get to enjoy it, as well. You find a place Jethro, and we'll buy it. When we pass, it'll go to you, and from you to the children."

Gibbs nods, that would solve the problem nicely.

Ducky grins at them, "Did I ever tell you about the year I spent in Prague? Officially I was part of a medical conference, trading western and eastern surgical techniques. In my spare time, I was helping to get dissenters out from behind the Iron Curtain…"


	67. Family Weekend

"Okay, Molly, what do you think?" He's at the hardware store, Molly in the cart, Mona standing next to them, staring at the paint chips.

"Pink!" She's very definite about that.

He nods. There are twenty-six million shades of pink in front of them.

"Which one?"

"Alllll the pink!"

"Uh huh," he says dryly, grabbing a light one and a darker one pretty much at random. Gibbs is a guy, pink is pink is pink to him. Do not attempt to confuse him with concepts such as rose, mauve, salmon, fuchsia or, god forbid, peach. (A color he suspects that only women can see. Shannon once teased him about how he's probably colorblind. Diane would have agreed, having said the same thing to him once upon a time. All he knows is that he passed the color vision test when he enlisted.)

He holds them up. "Pretty?"

Molly nods, satisfied. "Pretty."

"Good. Let's go get them."

He's been thinking of it for a while, and at least as of 10:47 on Friday, all of his guys have the weekend off, so this weekend, they're going to re-do Kelly's room. He wants his girls to have a space in his home for napping and playing or whatever it is.

Plus he's a little tired of everyone at his house, girls going down to nap in his bed, and then coming back up later that night to find wet spots (That are drool, and that's all they are, and that's that, thank you very much.) on his blankets.

So, Saturday, they're redoing the nursery.

Though, the more he thinks about it… He grabs a few more gallons of paint. If he's got captive labor, he might as well put them to work.

* * *

When he was working, Gibbs didn't live for the weekend. He didn't exactly dread it, but he didn't love it. But now, Friday to Sunday is rapidly becoming his favorite time.

He found the first week that he likes making Shabbos dinner. At least, he liked having something very concrete to do that would make the people around him happy.

He's not Ziva, so he's not an inspired cook or anything, but he can learn, and, in that he's not working, it seems like it'd make sense for him to host their weekly dinner. At least, it makes more sense than Tony and Ziva racing home, cooking, and getting everything ready in the few hours between end of work and sundown. Maybe, come summertime, they'll take over on cooking again. (He knows Ziva likes hosting Shabbos, too.) But right now, him handling it is good.

This way they get to relax on their Sabbath, too.

Plus, he and Molly have a pretty good groove going now. She likes grocery shopping. So, on Fridays their adventures involve hitting the grocery store (and the hardware store today) followed by lunch at home, and she 'helps' him cook.

Today, he's got Ziva's challah recipe, and they're going to make it.

* * *

He supposes his kitchen could be a bigger mess, but it'd take actual effort. So, while it's true that Gibbs is a veteran dad, it's also true that it's been a while since he's done hands-on dadding, and as a result has forgotten certain aspects of toddler maintenance.

Specifically, he'd forgotten exactly how uncoordinated they can be. And he's never known how adding an excited Doberman to the mix makes things even stickier.

On the upside, Molly had an absolute blast.

And, the finished challah both looks and smells awesome.

And Mona was happy to help out by licking up the coconut oil, flour, eggs, and dough that got dropped on the floor. According to her, today is Christmas, Easter, Halloween, and her birthday all wrapped up in one and celebrated by yummy, sticky manna falling from heaven.

But he's thinking, as Molly naps upstairs, and Mona's still licking the floor (the floor he thought he'd gotten everything washed off of) that next week (and as long as he's doing this with a toddler helper), they'll buy the challah.

* * *

Gibbs knew Tim was going to change when he shifted from tech-specialist to Boss. He hadn't expected how fast or easy he'd slide into it, but he knew Tim would find his fit.

And he has. He's sitting at the table, telling them about how he's got the job scheduling software up and running, and how he's gotten the cyber searches for field agents out of the Navy Yard so streamlined that Leon headed down yesterday to congratulate him, and offered him three techs out of IT to help get it that much faster for the rest of NCIS.

"Are you going to use them?" Penny asks.

"Right now I've got a ton of coding, and the more coding someone else is doing, the more solving crimes my guys are doing, but I have no idea if any of the people he's offering can code their way out of a paper bag, and if they can't, we'll spend more time fixing problems then we'll save by them working for me."

"He's working on a test to find out," Abby says.

"Yeah, in my copious spare time," Tim says with an eye roll. Seems like every job he finds, every fix, every plan spawns more work. On the upside, last week he got rid of Bergener, and on Monday Howard starts. (Turns out it took her more than two weeks to get to NCIS, she wanted to finish a case she was working. Tim didn't mind, she's worth waiting for.)

"Any news on the paperwork software?" Jimmy asks. (Tim hadn't had much trouble enlisting Jimmy and Ducky as testers for the potential paperwork software. They too put everything into a computer, and then print out forms and fill in the forms with the stuff they just put in the computer. As soon as he's got a beta version, he'll roll it out to them and to his guys.)

"I told Vance I was working on it and should have a beta version for testing in the not distant future. He's intrigued. If it works, he's ecstatic. If it works and it's legal the champagne's on him."

Tony laughs at that. "I don't care if it's legal, if you can make it work on my computer, the scotch is on me, and I'll fund Abby's Caf-Pow for the next five years."

Tim laughs at that. "Alpha version's been up for two days. So far it's glitch-y, buggy, filling out the forms wrong, has crashed three times, and won't print."

"So, it's an alpha version," Abby says.

"Exactly!" Tim says, gritting his teeth. He'd been hoping to get a somewhat better product out of his team first time out, but… There's realistic, there's beyond realistic, and then there's the mountain coming to Mohammed, and he's fairly sure that any better than he's got right now fits in the third category. "Everything is slower than I think it should be. So, enough of my computing woes. How's the new team?"

* * *

Gibbs wasn't expecting how much Team Leader would change Tony. Probably because he watched Tony be "Team Leader" for months.

But, when the Old Boss is looking right over your shoulder, it's hard to really come into your own. Hard to be your own Leader.

But he's gone and the team is really Tony's now, and he is growing into the job.

Gibbs is sitting at the table, listening to Tony talk, hearing the details of the case, and seeing the change. For years Tony spent his time showing off, making sure he was the center of attention, and now he's not.

Gibbs doesn't know if he's hit the point where he doesn't need the constant external validation that he's doing the job right, where he knows, deep down in his gut, that he's got it, or if having the team met that need and is filling it, but either way, it's there. Tony's solid in a way he's never been before.

Solid Tony doesn't feel the need to be constantly showing off. He's not goofing around, making jokes all the time. He's comfortable enough to let the other people around him shine, too.

And that's a welcome change.

"And that's when Bishop said to Draga, 'You know if we set the search pattern in a..." Tony squints, trying to remember, but it's not coming to mind, "Actually, I don't know what she said, could have been in Japanese for all it meant to me, but Draga looked up at her, his eyes lit up, and then both of them grabbed their laptops and did something for the next hour, and an hour after that Ziva and I were driving to Quantico, where we grabbed two guys and broke the case wide open by leaning on them."

"They set up a financial search pattern that found a connection between both of our suspects and two other dummy accounts. The dummy accounts were linked to a third account, which was how they were being paid."

"What she said," Tony says, smiling at Ziva.

"Tink getting any better in the field?" Gibbs asks.

"She is getting more comfortable," Ziva answers. "Like Jimmy has said before, she's very smart. No… 'gut' as you would say, but if you show her something once, she will have it down by the next time she has to do it."

"Are she and Draga still bickering like crazy?" Breena asks.

Tony sighs. "Not this week. I think Draga's got a new girlfriend. He's way more laid back this week and just about sprinting out the door as soon as we call time. She's tried to tease him a few times, but it's just rolled off of him."

"And right now, he is not picking fights with her," Ziva says, with something of a smile. "I think all of his energy is currently directed elsewhere."

Breena notices it. "What's that smile?"

"I know who the girlfriend is."

"You do?" Tony's shocked by that. "How did you find out? He won't even admit there was a girlfriend to me."

"He told me this afternoon. Said that since I'd met her a few times, and knew some of her exes, could I give him any hints…"

Gibbs' eyes go wide, he thinks he might know where this is going. "It's not…"

She's grinning wide, very amused. "Oh, yes, it is. His new sweetheart is Diane."

Half of the table groans, the other half laughs. Mona and Molly look confused.

* * *

On Saturday, he's has Tim and Jimmy and Tony at his place, three gallons of off-white paint, a pint of light pink, a pint of darker pink, and a stack of cream and pink (Diane would have called it rose) colored carpet squares.

"You know, they might not all be girls. Maybe we don't need to coat everything in pink." Tony says to Gibbs as he helps Tim yank the ancient beige carpet off the floor of what used to be Kelly's room.

"Right now, we've got girls." Gibbs looks over his shoulder, pausing in taping the molding. He was about to say, 'When you three get off your asses and make me some grandsons, I'll paint a room blue,' but fortunately the little voice in the back of his head shut that up before it got out and changed it to, "I'll make you a deal, Tony. You make me some grandsons, and I've got another bedroom that we'll paint blue."

Tim rolls his eyes. "Tony DiNozzo III. Lord have mercy."

Tony shakes his head, rolling up the carpet as Tim cuts it into wide, easier to move, strips. "Nah. We're done with that. Two were more than enough. But… maybe… David DiNozzo. I can kind of see a Dave running around, chasing after his girl cousins, trying to freak them out with frogs and snakes."

Jimmy laughs at that. "You think there's any shot of any DiNozzo, boy or girl, successfully freaking out Abby's child with a frog or a snake? He'll have better luck wielding a Barbie doll."

Tim just nods along with that. Sure he's not a huge fan of frogs or snakes, but they don't hit his yuck button, either. "And I'm pretty sure Breena's girls aren't going to be scared by the Barbie," Tim adds.

"Yep, if you're going to produce the evil little cousin of doom, he's going to have to reach deep into his bag of tricks to pull one over on our girls," Jimmy says, opening the first gallon of off white. "This is way too much paint for just this room."

"It's not just for this room. We're getting the hallway and stairs and living room/dining room, too," Gibbs adds.

"Oh." Jimmy stares at Gibbs, fairly sure that when he got signed up for this, he was just working on a nursery.

Gibbs grins at him, then points to the paint and makes a little stirring motion.

So Jimmy gets to it.

* * *

They've been at it for a few hours when Tim says to Tony. "You're a lot less freaked out about the idea of David then you've ever been. Got some news for us?" He's wondering if, with it being barely two weeks since their own bad news, if Tony and Ziva may have good news they just aren't sharing, yet.

Tony shakes his head. "Nah. Just… Feeling settled, you know? Like I'm where I'm supposed to be."

Tim nods at that. Pieces fall into place and the scary things become less scary.

"So, you guys _going_ to have any news for us in the near future?" Jimmy asks.

Tony shrugs. "Do I look psychic to you?"

Jimmy smirks at him. "Shouldn't take psychic vibes to know that, Tony. 'Cause, you know, supposedly, you're there for the thing," Jimmy adds a very descriptive hand gesture to that, "that might produce the good news."

Tim and Gibbs laugh at that.

Tony whacks him (gently) with his (fortunately not very wet) paint roller, then rolls his eyes and shakes his head. "You're an asshole, Palmer."

Jimmy grins. "I try. Sooooo…." All three of them are now looking at him, waiting for an answer.

"Maybe. Like I said, I'm not psychic, but… yeah, maybe, soon… Don't know, yet, obviously. But… Sooner than later… probably." Tony shrugs. Because he doesn't know. Can't, but yeah, maybe soon. Maybe not. Seems like some women get pregnant just by thinking hard about sex, and some take lots and lots and lots of time and sex, and they just don't know where they are on that scale.

But he does know he's not completely freaking out, or rooting for Ziva's period to show up, and he's got his Dad searching for a beat the hell up house somewhere in the greater DC area that he can afford, so…

"Who knows, everything goes smoothly, maybe 'round April, we'll be doing this at my house."

That was met with grins, and whooping, and congratulations.

* * *

On Sunday, Tony joined them for Bootcamp. Gibbs smiles at that, sensing that this too is a mark of Tony coming into his own. He's not so worried about his status, not concerned with tarnishing his image of Boss, so he's coming to join the fight/training.

Or maybe, he, too is missing time with his family, and is trying to get as much of it in as he can.

Either way, Gibbs is happy to see him here.

Tony however, as the new man in, is having somewhat less of a good time. "God, Palmer, when the hell did you learn to fight?" Tony says, staring up at him from the floor. (The floor he did not expect to be lying on anywhere near this fast. He's rapidly coming to the conclusion that he _really_ needs to get back in shape if the Autopsy Gremlin can hand him his ass in less than a minute. Sure, he saw Jimmy fighting when they were teaching Ed a lesson, but he'd been paying much more attention to freaking out Ed than how Jimmy was actually handling himself. He went into the fight defenses down, figuring he'd take it easy on Palmer, and got clobbered, fast.)

Jimmy gives him a hand up. "You sound surprised. Ziva's not bragging on us when she gets home?"

Tony looks at his wife, who is smiling very smugly. "She told me you're getting better, not she's turned you into a ninja."

"He still hasn't gotten the invisible part down, yet." Tim adds. "You going a round with me, or are you begging off?"

"Begging off for now. Don't want my heart to explode. I'll take your next one."

"Okay."

So Tim and Jimmy sparred together, against Ziva, and Tony and Gibbs watched.

"Glad you're coming."

Tony nods. "Like you said, this is just me spending time with my family now."

"Good."

* * *

After Bootcamp, Gibbs lingers behind for a bit, watching Tony and Jimmy joke with each other as they headed out of the locker room.

"Tim," he says while Tim ties his boots.

"Mmmm…"

"Can you do something for me?"

"Sure, what?"

"I had Borin's number in my computer. Don't have access to that anymore. Could—"

Tim's grinning and pulling him, (they're both completely dressed by now) out of the locker room toward his office. "Yes!" He's shaking his head and nodding. "Oh, yes. I will get you her number!"

It takes a minute to get into Cybercrime, and like always there's the sound of people working, and Tim pauses in heading toward his office to look in on one of the Minions, reading over his shoulder.

"You in the weeds, Soth?"

Soth shakes his head. "Just thinking." He rubs his eyes, not looking away from the screen. "I can solve it big and messy, lots and lots of lines of code. Looking for a cleaner way."

"Got the dirty version done?"

"Sure."

"I'll be here for a few more minutes. Shoot it to my computer, and I'll take a look."

"Thanks, Boss."

"No problem."

A few more steps gets them to the conferencing area in the center. One Minion is standing in front of two huge plasma touch screens, moving images around with her hands.

"You really upgraded, didn't you?"

"Once Leon got the report showing that Navy Yard Cyber request times had dropped from an average of four days to five hours, he decided that some more money could flow my way." Gibbs sees Tim eyeing the work on the plasma. "How's it going, Dume?"

Absent nodding responds to that request, but Tim seems to think that covers his question.

Gibbs looks around Tim's office as they get in there. It was awfully bare the last time he was down here, but it's filling up. There are books on the bookshelves. (All mysteries, most of them from different writers, but one guy's got a quarter shelf all to himself. Apparently Tim McGee is a fan of some guy named Thom Gemcity. Gibbs doesn't know if any of the Minions have figured out why Tim's got the whole collection up on his bookshelf.) Pictures of the family on the walls and on his desk. There are a few things Gibbs has never seen before, Tim's diplomas from MIT and John Hopkins, for example, and there's a shooting target with a smiley face shot into it on one of the walls, and across the target's chest is a sticker with the words: _Achievement Unlocked_ in Abby's handwriting.

"What's that?"

Tim looks up from his contact list.

"Oh. We're Federal Agents, supposedly all of us passed FLETC. I added an extra reg to working down here. Everyone has to maintain their gun proficiencies and physical fitness certifications. Not like my guys get out into the field very often, but when they do, I want them able to handle themselves. This one's mine. Any of the rest of them do that, they'll get a treat."

"What sort of treat?"

"One of Abby's Achievement Unlocked stickers to go on the target. Already have a few of them in my desk, waiting for someone to bring me a target. Gonna put them up on the wall, sort of a hall of fame type thing. Haven't decided on the rest of it yet. Probably depend on who does it. I'm thinking I can wiggle some extra vacation time for them, but if I can't, I might end up using petty cash to buy some gift certificates for fun things." Tim looks away from his computer. "Okay, I've got Borin's number. Give me your phone."

And Gibbs does, and a minute later Tim hands it back, grinning. "All programed in. All you've got to do is tap the screen. So… When you going to call her?"

Gibbs rolls his eyes, waves at Tim, and heads off.


	68. Coffee Date

But on Monday, the weekend was over, and while he's got time with Molly scheduled, he's still, for most of the day, alone.

And lonely.

Gibbs didn't expect that. Didn't realize how much he needs actual voices around him. Maybe not people to talk to, but people to be near. It's not just cases he misses, it's actual, living, breathing, snarking people around him all the time. (Right now, he's missing Tony and Ziva and Tim just fussing at each other.)

And sure, Mona helps, and Molly helps, but they aren't exactly the kind of company he's yearning for.

So…

* * *

The retirement party was a little over three weeks ago. Borin had breezed in, said hello, given him a quick hug, ordered her drink, turned to talk to him, smile on her face, eye amused and interested, picked up her drink, and then her phone rang and she rolled her eyes, answering it.

Thirty seconds of 'Uh huh, yes. Got it. Okay.' wrapped up with 'Be there in forty-five.'

"Case?"

She nodded. "I thought when I moved up the food chain and got out of the field, that I'd get some sort of regular schedule." Leon laughed, loudly, at that. "Maybe even the occasional night off."

"It is a regular schedule," Leon said, still chuckling, "you regularly work all the time."

"Thanks, Director."

She hugged Gibbs again. "Don't be a stranger, Gibbs. Give me a call one of these days." And she kissed his cheek, and breezed right back out.

* * *

He knows that he told Rachel that he and Borin were really too similar to even try anything, but… Thinking about it, really thinking about it, he's not sure if that's actually true. They are a lot alike. So, to some degree that's a good thing, right? He won't spend so much time staring at her, puzzled, wondering what the hell she's thinking, because he'll _know_ , or at least have a good idea.

And he gets her job. Gets it in his bones and guts and soul, so there won't be that 'pay more attention to me,' 'which means more to you, me or that job' sort of thing. As he thinks about it, it hits him that if he and Borin start anything up, _he's_ going to be the girlfriend who's outside of it all, and he's not sure about that. On the upside of that, he'll get it, way easier than any of his outside of it girlfriends ever did. On the downside, he doesn't know how well he'll handled being kept out of things. Not sure how he'd do with someone who is clearly hurting but won't tell you why or let you try to help to solve the problem. (After all, he's never done well with that in the past. It's his _job_ to ride in and save the day.)

But when it comes down to it, he knows the job is her number one. He's fine with it being the job. It's an important job. (Saving lives and catching killers should outweigh 'I'm lonely.')

And he does like strong women who can look after themselves, stand up for themselves and better yet, stand up to him. He knows she can do all of that.

So… maybe… he pulls his phone out. He's asking for coffee not to get married. Hell, technically, this isn't even a date.

And for that matter he has no idea if 'don't be a stranger' means she's just looking to chat and catch up, they haven't seen each other since that debacle with the phony DEA agents, or, if she's interested in more.

He's also not sure what 'more' might be for her. She's married to her job. So… more probably means… what? Pleasant company? Friend with benefits? Casual dating? Gibbs isn't even sure what the terms are these days, but… probably… she's looking for someone who gets her, gets the job, and is willing to take a back seat to it, but keep her company when she has free time.

And if he's right about that… That's okay. That feels… he's not sure… but really… safe… maybe?

He's not going to disappoint her or break her heart, and he can take the time to explore this whole enjoying a woman for who she is instead of trying to shove her into a Shannon-shaped hole or giving up when it doesn't turn into the same kind of love he had for Shannon.

And that's a start, right?

* * *

And now he's holding his phone. Borin's contact number is up. And he's staring at it.

Been more than two years since he's done this. Hell, longer really. He didn't actually ask Susan out, they met through a case, she was an expert witness, he "needed more information," and one night they were talking about submarines and what pressure does to human bodies (found a dead sailor in one of the torpedo tubes, annoying case) and then they were talking about other things, and then they weren't talking at all, and all in all that made for a very pleasant five months.

But, at no point did he actually just sit his ass down and cold call her. He sighs… He hasn't done this, like this, since… honestly… ever. The last time he was staring at a phone with a girl's number in his hand he chickened out and didn't call. (He was also seventeen, so cut him some slack.)

Usually he'll see a woman a few times, keep "running into her," and just kind of toss himself into her path, show up at her office, develop some "questions" for her, or something. He'll just keep showing up and being charming, and sooner or later, he gets asked out or does the asking out. (Or, and this is his preferred method, said woman shows up at his house and they skip the whole date thing all-together.) If you don't really talk, and nine tenths of your charm is your quiet manner and looks (both physical appearance and the ability to communicate with your eyes), phones are not your ally. So, they're just not really part of his dating game.

But, unless he wants to drive over to… Where the hell does Borin work? He knows they were all in this one office building back in '11, but then they reorganized and moved to… He doesn't know. And, even if he did, it's not like he's got an excuse to be in her building. Say he googled her, because he could do that, there's still no reason for him to be there, not like he's got a burning case that needs him to head over to CGIS headquarters. So, his just 'ran into you' strategy won't work. On top of that, he knows she's busy enough that if he wants to actually see her, he needs to make an appointment.

After all, if you already know the job is the number one commitment, just showing up and hoping she'll drop it to entertain you is a good way to spend an afternoon alone.

Which is what he's trying to avoid.

So, the phone. In his hand. And talking. Making words, with his mouth, at a woman, requesting her company.

_Shit._

Okay, just staring at the phone's not going to do it. And she did say to give her a call. So, call. He's going to call. He takes a quick breath, and taps the phone icon.

"Borin." She sounds harried and distracted. Like he's the tenth call in ten minutes and she really doesn't want to deal with this crap.

"Hi…" _God, shit, what do I call her? It's not a work call. Abby? Abigail? Borin? Fuck! God damn it, plan these things before you jump into them!_

"Gibbs?" She loses some of the edge in her voice.

"Yeah. Hi, Abby."

"Hey." Just quiet on her side.

He's getting the idea "Abby" might not have been a good plan. He's wincing but says, "You mean it when you told me not to be a stranger?"

"Yeah, Gibbs." That sounds welcoming, which makes him relax a hair.

"Wanna get some coffee with me?"

He thinks she's smiling when she says, "Sure. When and where?"

He knows he's smiling as he says, "How about you pick? These days, I've got a real flexible schedule."

She laughs at that. "I've got budgetary meetings all day tomorrow. But we always break for lunch at noon, and have another break at four. Which one works better for you?"

"Four." Molly'll miss him if he skips Adventures.

"Sounds good. We've got a shop that knows how to brew a real cup of coffee a few blocks from my office. Java Jane's."

"I can find it. See you at four."

"See you then." And then she hung up.

* * *

Of course there are four Java Jane's in the greater DC area.

Fortunately he's hit the point where he knows what Google is, and how to use it, so he's able to not only locate where the CGIS offices are, but he also figures out which Java Jane's he needs to be at.

When he heads over to pick up Molly, Breena looks him over, he's shaved, wearing his 'work' clothing (which has been sitting, untouched, in his closet since he retired) and looking pretty spruce.

"You going back in? Got a deposition?" It's a good guess. Any case he investigated he can be called back in on, and the fact that he's retired doesn't mean he doesn't have a dozen cases still working their way through the courts.

"Nah."

She looks him over again, eyes narrowing, trying to read the outfit. "You got a date?"

He laughs.

"Oh, you do!" She's grinning.

"It's not a date."

"Uh huh. Just keep telling yourself that."

"Getting coffee with a friend."

"Uh huh." She's not buying that, at all. "I know your friends. You don't get dressed up for Fornell." Then her eyes go wide as she thinks of a "friend" he might get dressed up for. "Are you going to talk to Diane about Draga?"

"No!" That idea had never crossed his mind. Draga and Diane are both grownups, can handle themselves, and he has no desire, at all, to have any clear ideas of what they may be up to.

"Does your friend have a name?"

"Yes."

"You going to tell me what it is?"

He shakes his head, grinning. "Come on Molly, let's let your Mama get a nap."

"Tease!" Breena says to him.

* * *

He smiles and winks at her as he and Molly head out of the house in search of Adventure!

On the upside, he notices the handprint on his slacks before he gets to Java Jane's. The other upside is that he still has his go bag in his truck, so swapping out slacks with a milky toddler handprint is something he can do nice and quick at Breena's after he gets Molly down.

The downside is that the slacks in the go bag have been sitting in there since before August. Once he blew out his knee, he was grounded, so he hasn't been on any overnight runs. And between the slow getting in better shape he had been doing, and the working out like a maniac to kill time that he has been doing, they're two sizes too big.

Which is also forcing him, as he's tightening his belt, to notice that the slacks he had on before were a size too big, too, and for that matter, so are most of his pants, and that unless he's planning on giving up the exercise, he probably needs to add buying some new ones to his list of things to do.

* * *

In proper Marine and NCIS fashion, he's early. Not by a ton. It's 3:53 when he gets in, which is enough time to buy some coffee for both of them, and some cookies, which he has no idea if she likes or not, but people usually get food to go with the coffee… so… he'll get some food, too.

He's feeling a faint tinge of nervous, as well as pleasantly excited, which he knows means, protests to Breena about this not being a date aside, his body thinks this is a date. Or maybe a proto date. The step that sets up the date if all goes well here.

"Gibbs."

He looks up at her, and stands, pulling out her chair. "Hi." She's in her 'work' clothing, too. Though, having been booted from Team Leader to management, her 'work' clothing is now a tailored pantsuit. Navy, cream blouse, no jewelry he can see, but her hair's down, and he appreciates that.

"Jethro is fine." It's okay for Abby… McGee's Abby, not the Abby in front of him… He's got to get different names for them… to call him Gibbs, but… for a woman, a possible lover… No. Gibbs is Shannon's and Shannon's alone.

"Okay, Jethro." She looks a bit perplexed at him getting the chair for her, but accepts it gracefully.

"Did calling you Abby bug you?"

"No. Just seemed a bit odd. Wasn't sure you even knew I had a first name."

He smiles at that and sips his coffee. "How you liking the view from the other side of the desk?" Last time they worked a case together, she'd been on the warpath, so they didn't exactly sit around chewing the fat about how her new position was working out.

She rolls her eyes a bit, takes a deep drink of her coffee, and smiles at him for getting it right, and then says, "If I'd known then what I knew now, I'd have pissed more people off and gotten myself kicked out of the management track."

Gibbs laughs at that, watching her, eyes warm, inviting her to talk more about it.

"It's not all bad. It's not even mostly bad. Me doing my job means that my guys can do theirs. I do it well, and they don't have to piss around with stupid piddly crap that gets in the way."

"But you end up doing the stupid piddly crap?"

"Exactly. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow's the annual budget meeting, and I'm the one dealing with how we can possibly squeeze more money out of anything that isn't staffing or equipment. If I can figure out how to pull more money out of the air, I can hire another agent, who we sorely need. And if I can get that agent, my guys can actually get some of that vacation time they've been accruing since '14."

"You're that tight?"

She nods. "I'm not supposed to be in the field at all these days. But I am, just so my guys can get some down time."

"Ouch."

She nods. "But I think I'm onto something. Dworkins, my HR guy, is acting awfully squirrelly. He's hiding something. When I get back, we're going to have a 'chat' and with any luck that 'chat' will result in me finding enough money to hire someone else instead of finding out that he's embezzled away even more of the budget."

Gibbs grins at that. He's seen Borin work, and her running an interrogation is a thing of grace and beauty. "Bad day for him."

She nods. "With any luck it won't be a bad day for me, too."

Gibbs nods. "Here's to luck."

"How's retirement?" she asks him after taking another sip of her coffee.

He sighs, exaggerating the exasperation in his face. "You want a trained investigator, willing to take any case, for free, just to get back to doing something useful?"

She laughs at that. "You'd take orders from a woman?"

He flashes her a wry smile. He's about to say something along the lines of how he'd take orders from Mickey Mouse if it got him back on a team working murders, but the part of his brain that knows there's no shot of him getting on one of her teams gets together with the bit of his brain that remembers how flirting works and says, with a smile, "I'd take orders from you."

That tickles her, and her eyes light up at it. "Really?"

"Yes, Ma'am." Ohhhh that was worth it. She's looking him up and down, enjoying this. He lifts his coffee cup to his lips and takes a sip, eyeing her over the rim.

She laughs again. "You'd let me be your Boss?" Half-joke, half-testing, mostly not buying it.

"I don't always have to be on top." She grins at that, and he decides to tone it down a bit, sliding into a more serious mode. "Last six months I was on, it was Tony's team, and I was working for him."

That does startle her. "How'd you end up taking orders from DiNozzo? You finally piss Vance off so bad he demoted you?"

Gibbs shakes his head, smiling at her. "Nothing like that. We had some staffing issues…" He tells her about how they ended up with Draga, and how it wasn't working with Tony just lingering, not really in charge, not really second-in-command. He wraps up with how Team Gibbs has gone it's separate ways.

"As they say, all good things come to an end."

He nods. "Would have liked more time with this one, but it was time. Tony was ready. Tim was ready. Ziva's got some new adventures on the books. It's time. But that doesn't mean I have to like it."

She nods at that, sipping her coffee, nibbling the cookie. He likes the look of it between her lips, the little flash of white tooth snipping through shortbread pastry. "Felt that way when I left my team. But, it was time. Hogkins was ready to lead. But especially on days like today, I miss it."

He nods at that, too, taking another sip of his coffee.

He feels her eyes on his left hand as she says, "So, speaking of things ending… Last time we worked a case, you were wearing a wedding ring."

 _Shit_. Yeah, he had been, and just like they didn't talk about her new position, they didn't talk about the gold band on his ring finger. Gibbs sighs. "Kind of complicated, but, no I'm not recently divorced again."

She stares at him for a moment, eyes flicking to the now naked ring finger.

He holds his hands up for a second. "I'm not married, either. I… It's a long story."

"I've got time, especially if you're going to tell me how you ended up wearing a wedding ring without a marriage to go with it."

"There… there was one, but…"

Now, she's looking appalled.

"Here, let me get more coffee."

"This sounds like it's going to be a hell of a long story if we need more coffee for it."

He nods and grabs both of their cups, beating a tactical retreat.

* * *

Okay, so she wants to know about the ring, which is good from a this-is-more-than-just-two-colleagues-getting-together-for-coffee-standpoint, right? Would she be asking about that if she wasn't interested in him as a man? So that's good, right?

Except… he tries to remember where his hands were and if she could see the left one during the two minutes they were together at the party… it's entirely possible that when she asked she thought he was married again, which would be bad, right?

_FUCK!_

* * *

"More coffee." He puts both cups down on the table.

She drinks some of hers. "More coffee and the tale of the not quite wedding ring."

He sighs and licks his lips. He hasn't told this story, or any versions of it, cold, since Susan. He told Rachel, but she'd read his files, she already knew the basics. Well, the kids gossip, so maybe Borin knows the basics, too. And she was part of that thing where they were trying to find him a girlfriend, so, maybe they gave her enough background he doesn't have to do this cold. "How much scuttlebutt did the kids tell you about my marriages?"

"The _kids_?"

"They're not exactly my team anymore, are they?"

She nods, but she can also see there's more than just the change in employment status going into this. He thinks she approves. "Four times, all redheads, you've got a divorce lawyer on speed dial, but the last one ended in… 2000 or 2001, Ziva wasn't sure."

…Or they left out the important stuff and he does have to start at square one. "2001. I haven't been married since 2001."

"But you were wearing a ring last year."

"I took it off in October. My first wife and daughter were murdered in 1991."

Borin winces. "I'm sorry. I kn…" she stops, and he notices what she almost said, _I know how that feels._ Which makes him curious as to if she does actually know but he's the one telling the stories right now so she's not going to derail him, or if she stopped herself from saying something stupid.

He nods. "Didn't do a good job of dealing with it. Got married a lot. Bad marriages. One after another. Took nine years to figure out that was a bad plan. Slowed down, stopped marrying any redhead who gave me the time of day. Dated. Never let it really go anywhere.

"Back in '14 I'd ended another relationship, and was being an asshole about it, dumping pissed off on everyone around me."

She gives him her best _I'm shocked_ look.

He nods at that, acknowledging how in character that is. "Tim shows up in my basement with a bottle of bourbon and says, 'I've never done this before, do we just drink until you're ready to stop being an asshole?'"

"McGee talked to you like that?" she asks, stunned. Yeah, she noticed at the party that Team Gibbs has been changing, and Gibbs referring to them as 'the kids' and 'Tim' didn't pass unnoticed, but she didn't expect _that_ much change.

"I may be putting words in his mouth. Especially then. But I was acting out, and he called me on it."

"McGee?" She looks curious. "Really?"

Gibbs nods again. "He got me talking about Shannon and Kelly, my first wife and daughter, which was something I hadn't done. After a while, he asked if I still had my wedding ring, I said yes, he told me to put it back on, because I wasn't done being married. He was right. So I did. I wore it until October. I didn't date. I didn't go chasing other women. Said goodbye to the life and the future I had wanted. And started to really… get into this life. For my thirty-sixth wedding anniversary, I buried that ring with my girls and said goodbye for the last time."

"Oh."

He tilts his head, trying to brush off that rush of what feels like empathy from her. "Yeah, so that's the story behind the ring."

They're quiet for a moment before she asks, "So, what does getting more into this life mean?"

That gets a sigh, too. How to explain that… "Takin' better care of myself."

She looks him up and down with a smile. "Noticed that."

That pleases him, and makes him think new pants might be a decent investment beyond matters of not worrying about them falling off his hips if he's not wearing a belt. "Wasn't quite how I meant it, but that, too. Here…" he switches around so he's sitting next to her, and gets his phone out.

"Smartphone?"

"Turns out you can make them blow up."

"And _that_ sold you on one?"

He nods, pulling up the most recent picture of him with the girls.

"Who are your friends?" She asks with a wide smile, looking at a shot of him with Molly and Kelly and Anna.

"These are my girls." He points out who's who. "A lot of getting more into this life is about being here for them, and their parents, and being a Dad and a Grandad. It's not the guy I thought I was going to be, but it's fully being the man I am."

She smiles at that. "That sounds healthy."

"Hope so."

"You stopped being Boss and became Dad."

"Pop. Became Pop, or Uncle Jethro. That's what Molly calls me, and she's the only one who's talking. As for the kids, they don't need a Boss anymore. They are the Bosses. Tim's got Cybercrime, the whole department, all hundred and fifty of them answer to him." Borin looks impressed by that. "Tony's got the team. Jimmy'll have Autopsy before the year is done. Abby's always had the lab, but she's got people under her there, now. But they still need a Dad."

"And you need kids."

"Yeah, I do. Need a job, too. Going crazy with too much time on my hands, but… The kids help."

"I'd help out with the job if I could, but unless you've already worked for CGIS, I can't put you on, even as a volunteer, if you're over 57."

"Same thing with NCIS. They'll let me back on for ten days a year."

"We've got that deal, too. But, if you wanted some company to help eat up more time…" She lets that trail off, but he's hopeful.

"You'd be interested?"

"Sure."

That sounds very promising. "Would you like to have dinner with me?"

"Are you asking me out on a date?"

He smiles at her and cocks an eyebrow. "Would you like me to be?" They're both being a bit cagey, wary of actually committing to what this might be.

Then she laughs, warm and throaty. "If I say no, then we're what, buddies catching up? Old cops swapping tales, or does the offer vanish."

"Sure, _buddy_ , if that's what you want." He grins at that, too, eyes warm and, he hopes, flirty. He'd prefer more, but if she wants to be friends, right now, he'd like a friend.

She bites her lip, not nervous, sensuous, lip sliding between her teeth. "And if I say yes?"

He lightly traces the tip of his finger over the back of her hand, keeping his eyes on hers. "Have dinner with me?"

She's still smiling, but doesn't touch him back. "Yes."

That doesn't sound _friendly._ Sounds quite a bit more than friendly. But it also doesn't clarify if this is a date, or if they're just being friends. He spends another moment looking at her, letting his eyes trace over her lips, slipping down the line of her neck, taking in the fact she's got the top two buttons of her blouse undone, and then back to her eyes, hoping that is explicit about his intentions but not over the line. "At my house?"

Her eyes are warm and sparkling. "I'll bring the bourbon and the dessert."

He nods, very satisfied by that response.


	69. Gossip

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: REMF stands for Rear Echelon Mother Fucker. Namely, the guys at the back of the lines that keep the army moving.
> 
> * * *

A month into being "Boss" and there are some things Tim really loves about it.

The power is great. He sees a problem. He fixes the problem. He's not feeling like he needs to ask permission or risk stepping on someone's toes by not asking permission. Sure, this has resulted in an irked electrician from physical plant standing in his office, glaring at him, getting ready to give him a hard time about the new set up before putting new light bulbs in.

And then Tim stood up, took two steps, drawing Mr. Electrician's gaze to not only the smiley face gun target right over his shoulder (he's also got the skull picture next to it) but to the fact that he knew Mr. Electrician was coming today, and had, as a result, dressed carefully for this meeting.

First and foremost, his jacket (black, leather) is draped over his desk chair. Which means Mr. Electrician is getting a full view of the newest Department Head of NCIS, all six foot one inch and one hundred and seventy-five pounds of him, standing up very straight, very tall, in a black kilt, black leather work boots (adding an extra inch), dragon ink visible on his leg, crimson button down, top two buttons undone, sleeves rolled up to show off his wrist cuff, and black matte nail polish.

The man who walks into a Federal Office building dressed like that is a man who does not give a flying fuck as to what anyone else may or may not want to say to him about anything. The man who gets to Department Head and dresses like that is also the man who is so _amazingly_ good at his job that _everyone else_ doesn't give a flying fuck as to how he looks. Which means, that man is the last man in the building you want to mess with.

Tim has also noticed that one of the "every day" colognes Janice picked out for him, Lightning, smells like a storm coming in. This may be some people's cup of tea, Abby, for example, likes it, (Ziva _really_ likes it, to the point of having gotten a bottle of it for herself.) but it makes most people mildly nervous, but they can't figure out why. Their inner lizard brains smell that scent and know something they don't want to be near is coming, which results in a sort of barely conscious nervousness.

So, as Mr. Electrician is doing a double take and looking like he wants to get the hell out of Tim's office about two minutes ago, Tim says to him, mildly, voice quiet, arms to the side, posture open, "Yes?"

He tries, he really does. Tim sees his eyes narrow and the way he steels himself to get ready to lay down the law in regards to who's supposed to be plugging in the computer, and he gets about half a sentence into rules and regulations before Tim says to him, calmly, cutting him off, "You appear to have a fundamental misunderstanding as to what your job is in relation to mine.

"My job is catching killers, finding kidnapped children, and putting rapists behind bars. Your job is plugging in appliances. Now, I can, and will, and _have_ done your job when I need to, but you can't do mine, so if you want to keep yours, the next time I call down to Physical Plant and request any level assistance, you are going to drop every other thing you may possibly be doing, including wiring the Director's office, and _run_ your ass into my office to take care of it." Tim smiles, and it's a cold, sharp look. "Do you understand me?"

Mr. Electrician, nods, slowly.

"Splendid. Go put the LEDs in."

And Mr. Electrician does.

And he'll have to admit, that was a whole lot of fun.

The schedule is great. That's something else he loves about being the Boss. Yes, he's working a lot, but he's also able to go home when he needs to. He can imagine there will be cases when he'll need all hands on deck (including his) but so far that hasn't happened.

There are no dead bodies, no ships, no dogs, no one shooting at him, no explosions, nothing dirty, messy, or gross about this job. And if there was, he could make someone else do it!

He doesn't have to spend hours trying to outwit liars who aren't nearly as good at it as they think they are. He sees no panicked eyes trying desperately to figure out how much he knows, and what the most believable spin could possibly be on what he knows.

The work is interesting. Mostly. The paperwork sucks, and there's a ton of it. But unlike being on the MCRT, he's got the power to actually do something about it. So, while it sucks and eats a lot of time, it won't be doing that forever.

But, compared to hours of paperwork he couldn't do anything about, hours spent driving from point a to point b, hours waiting to testify, hours in depositions rehearsing what he was going to say when he got done waiting to get called to the stand, hours staring at things, waiting for someone to do something, a whole hell of a lot more of his time is now spent doing something useful.

And, for a lot of the work, he's doing things that are interesting in addition to useful. A month into the job, a lot of what he's doing right now is still getting everyone on the same page and up to speed. So far, the greater world is accommodating him with that, and they haven't been hit with anything bigger than computer work for the field teams.

At the rate they're going, even with half of his team working on the paperwork project, his triaging system and moving to a twenty-four/seven schedule means that by the end of the week they will be caught up on their case backlog.

Once they're through the backlog, once they've got the paperwork software up and running, then he'll be able to get them really working, and with a hundred and fifty guys under him, he's got some big plans coming up.

Among other things, he knows he's going to be splitting everyone into two main teams, attack and defense, and for the next year half of them will spend at least an hour a week trying to break into NCIS, the Navy, or the Marines, and half of them will work on defense. Then the next year they're going to switch, and they're going to keep at it, because it's not okay to assume that he built a firewall that'll keep everything safe always.

The military war games. They run scenarios, see how their men operate, put all hands on deck and watch responses. They find holes and plug them.

And his guys are going to do that, too.

And then they're going to start hunting. A lot of cybercrime works because no one ever notices it. Sneak in, move things around, skim some off the top, snag IDs, even in cases where hundreds of thousands of records are breached, it can take weeks, months sometimes, for people to notice. And smaller scale work? Please, no one's checking.

His guys will be checking.

He loves the fact that he's starting to mold his team. High standards and petting for good works seems to be having a positive effect. The whole you-will-work-as-a-team thing is speeding cases up, and for the most part getting better results out of the Minions.

He's starting to get "his" people into place. Howard started yesterday, and she's already slipping in, inching things closer to where he wants them.

She's a code wizard, so he stuck her on the clean-up team for the paperwork project, and she's not only got mad skills, but fresh eyes, so she can see the stuff they've all been looking at too long. He's thinking she'll be a good leader for the Navy Yard's Attack team, and can't wait to see where that goes.

Hepple filed his retirement paperwork; effective June (when he hits twenty-eight years in) he'll have another open slot soon, and Tim's already got his search parameters up for that. He knows what sort of person he wants for that slot, but not who that person is, yet.

He's also found, that since he's in the building every day, he actually does get to see Abby and Jimmy more often… Or for a longer chunk of time. Sort of.

He can have lunch with them on most days. So, instead of a few quick visits, he's got one longer visit. (Granted, he doesn't end up working in the lab anymore, but that was time near Abby instead of with her, mostly. He misses that.)

And on days when Tony and Ziva aren't in the field, they often join in.

But, on Tuesday, they were in the field, and Ducky and Penny were having lunch with each other, so it was just the three of them.

And both Tim and Jimmy have some interesting gossip.

"Breena called," Jimmy says as he takes a bite of his salad. "Apparently Gibbs showed up to take Molly out, all dressed up."

Abby grins at that. She already knows Tim's half of the gossip. "Like he was going out for a date, maybe?"

Jimmy nods. "She tells me he wouldn't say who. Though he did say it 'wasn't a date.'"

"He asked me to find Borin's contact number after Bootcamp," Tim adds between bites of his grilled chicken.

Jimmy's grinning at that, too. "So, tell me about her. I've seen her, twice, maybe. She's tall, has red hair, and a good voice, but that's about all I know."

"She's Girl Gibbs!" Abby says.

Tim takes over. Sunday night, after he got home, he and Abby did some 'research' on Abigail Borin. They've both met and worked with her, but they don't know much about her. "Drinks the same black as sin coffee, and bourbon, too, head slaps her guys, was a Marine, served in Iraq, under Bush II instead of Bush I, did ordinance disposal—"

"Which is insanely dangerous," Abby adds.

Tim nods at that. Really, really dangerous. "Her whole team got killed when a bomb went off wrong, so she left the Marines, floated around for a bit, and ended up at CGIS."

"Been there since, worked her way up, and now she's in charge of the Chesapeake division."

"So, not entirely Girl Gibbs," Jimmy says. "Can't see anyone putting Gibbs in charge of an entire NCIS region."

"Not entirely." Tim agrees. "No one out-Gibbs Gibbs when it comes to stepping on toes."

"Jenny left him in charge of the Navy Yard a few times." Abby sips her water. (Usually, when they're out, she gets soda. Jimmy doesn't know if she's trying to take better care of herself or just didn't feel like it today. Her tuna and edamame wrap is about par for the course. He'll keep his eyes open and ask Tim about it later if it's a pattern.)

"I think that was punishment, not career advancement. He certainly acted like it was punishment," Tim says.

"Probably." Abby nods.

"So, I mean, is she going to be good for him?" Jimmy asks.

Tim shrugs.

Abby nods, while poking Tim. "Of course she is! She's awesome, and we already love her." Tim shrugs at that, too. She is cool. He does like her. Unlike Abby, he's not quite ready to start picking out Gibbs' wedding tux.

"I think, out of all the previous girlfriends, he got on best with Hollis, and Borin's got a lot of the same sort of feel to her. He doesn't do well with clingy, needy people and Borin's in charge of herself. So, that should be good."

"Good? That'll be great! There won't be all the nagging he hates. She's not going to get annoyed when he won't talk about the job—"

"You mean the job he doesn't have any more?" Jimmy cuts in with.

"You know what I mean. She wouldn't know what to do with a man who spills vast oceans of emotions on her, and he'll run screaming from a woman who does the same thing. So, there's one mismatch they're not going to have."

"The true love of the emotionally closed off," Jimmy adds with a healthy touch of sarcasm.

"Something like that," Tim replies.

Abby glares at both of them, then blows them a raspberry. "You two." Another glare more frustrated than angry. This is good news, everyone should be excited and happy and they're both… wary. "They'll go slow. Get to know each other. Open up a little at a time. It'll be good! Sure, he won't admit they're even dating until, mmm… probably about a week after he proposes, but it'll be good!"

Tim and Jimmy look at each other, both of them thinking about the same thing, but in that Tim's the husband, he's the one who gets to say it. "Yeah, good, or a recipe for disaster."

Abby sighs again and rolls her eyes. "Breena and Ziva need to be here."

"If they'd be so good together, then why didn't Borin offer her own name up when we were looking for a girlfriend for Gibbs?" Tim asks.

"Whoa, when did that happen?" Jimmy looks quickly from Tim to Abby. He completely missed that.

Tim waves him off. "Years ago. He was moping, annoying the hell out of us, we tried to set him up, Borin helped, one of her buddies was the perfect woman. Turns out she really was. He'd already dated her, and yes, she was perfect, and perfect was boring."

Jimmy blinks at that, perplexed look on his face. "So, wait, he broke up with the perfect woman?"

Tim nods.

"She wasn't perfect for him. But Borin might be! He needs some challenge and she's got challenge written all over her," Abby says.

Tim nods at that. "Last time we talked about this, you were telling me that Gibbs had already found his perfect woman and no one else was going to work."

"Last time we talked about this, Gibbs was still married, in his heart, at least, to his perfect woman, and I don't think that's true anymore."

"Good point." Tim nods while chewing. He agrees that there's the possibility for a perfect woman, or as close as one can get, now, but… he's not sure if Borin's her.

"And as for why not add herself in… Uh, let's start with the bet between you and Tony that she completely knew about and end with, with both of them working, what would be the point of even trying to date? They'd never see each other. You can't successfully date when both of you work seventy hours a week. And now, he doesn't."

Both of the guys seem to think that's a good point.

"Can't you just see both of them," Abby sounds very excited about this, "and Mona, on Shannon, sailing away… Long weekends at sea—"

Jimmy shakes his head. "He cannot call that boat Shannon. Not if he's hoping to put another woman in it. 'Let's go sail off on my testament to my undying love of my first wife.'"

Tim nods in agreement with that and then adds, "Maybe it won't be too much of a problem, they'll have only been on it for ten minutes when she catches a case."

Abby seems to think that's a relevant point. "Yeah, but she'll never find someone who understands that better than Gibbs will. He's not going to be moping about her having to work."

"No." Tim steals a bite of the cantaloupe Abby's wrap came with. "He'll be moping about not getting to go along and _help_. Duty calls, I'm off to go catch killers, you stay home and play with the kiddies. He hates when _we_ do it to him, can you imagine when he's got to deal with a girlfriend doing that." That really does worry Tim, and it's why, unlike Abby, he's not immediately seeing this being all sunshine and roses for the two of them.

Jimmy winces at that, getting it immediately. "The two of them get together and he'll be the girlfriend. She'll be Gibbs, and he'll be Gibbs' girlfriend."

"Jimmy!" Abby's appalled by that.

"Oh come on, you think that's not how he's got it in his head? The man goes off and solves the crimes. The woman stays home and waits for him to get back from solving the crimes."

"You keep saying that, you're gonna get headslapped!"

"I'm not saying that's how _I_ think of it, but I'm sure that's how _he_ thinks of it. And it's fine if woman's out there solving the crimes. Obviously if he got on fine with Hollis, that's not a problem, but if you ask him who's _not_ solving the crimes, who's home waiting for the crime solver to get back, it's the girl, and being the girl might really flip him out."

Abby glares at him again, but he and Tim are sharing a look that indicates both of them think this might be an issue for Gibbs. Still, Jimmy decides to shift topic some. "Is he getting anything going? A real job or something, so that he's not just home waiting for everyone else to get done? Look, I love the fact that he's taking Molly out, and it sounds like they're having a great time, but Breena's actually getting a bit worried for him. The girls are going back to daycare in less than a month and if there was ever a guy who needed _something_ to keep him going, it's Gibbs."

Tim shrugs. "He's got _something._ But he's not talking about it, and I have no idea how much time it'll eat."

"Why isn't he talking about it?" Jimmy asks.

Tim takes a bite of his own chicken. "Knowing Gibbs, it's illegal, insanely dangerous, or _both_ , and he doesn't want us to worry."

"And Tim's not going to press," Abby says pointedly. It's not so much that she thinks Tim can get it out of Gibbs but is choosing not to, it's that she's frustrated that he likely can't.

"No! I'm not. And like I said last time, if you want to grill him, have at it."

"He'll just shut down."

"Which is why I'm not grilling him. He'll tell us if or when he can."

"And we're stuck hoping he won't be stupid about it and get himself hurt," Jimmy says.

"Exactly." Tim says. "His knee as good as he says it is?" Speaking of Gibbs possibly being stupid and getting himself hurt…

"Best I can tell, yes. But take that with the grain of salt, I don't have an MRI or X-ray, so all I can go off of is what he tells me, how it looks, how he's moving, and what I feel when I get my hands on it. But, yes, it looks like he's healed up." Jimmy inhales, about to tell Abby about Sunday's Bootcamp, where Gibbs went up against Tony, and neither of them held back, at all, which was both worth watching, and looked like a very good work out for both of them (because they're pretty evenly matched) but his phone chirps.

He gets it out and texts back quickly, reaching for his wallet, but Tim shakes his head. It's their day to pay for lunch. (When they eat together, Jimmy gets one out of three of them, which represents as far down as they could talk him. He wanted to do one out of two.)

"Case?" Abby says when he looks up from the phone.

"Yeah, gotta get going."

He leans over and kisses Abby's cheek. "See you tomorrow, or whenever we get back with samples." (He's still on delivering the samples to the lab.)

"Bye."

Jimmy waves at them and heads off.

Abby looks at Tim. "You going to talk to him?"

"Which him?"

"Gibbs, about Abby."

Tim shrugs. "What would I say that he hasn't already thought about?"

Abby shrugs back. "It sounds like they're going to be bringing in more evidence, and it's my night for the late shift. Go home, grab Kelly, grab dinner, and head over."

"You know, if his date went really well, he may not want me heading over."

She smirks at that. "He put a lock on the door, I'm sure he knows how to use it if he doesn't want anyone dropping in."

Tim laughs at that.

Abby takes a bite of his chicken, and then says, a bit more seriously, "You could tell him that it's not the end of the world to be the girl. Half of us do just fine, day in and day out as girls. You could tell him it's just as important to be the person who keeps the person catching the killers going as it is to be the person who catches the killers. REMFs, right?"

Tim nods, he knows that term, (Occasionally Marines who didn't exactly get what his role in the team was would call him one. He certainly is one now, and so's Abby, and Jimmy, for that matter.) but not sure where Abby's going with it.

"The world needs REMFs. Can't go off and be Big Damn Heroes without the REMFs in the back keeping you going."

He supposes that's true, but he also supposes that after forty years as a Big Damn Hero, REMF status may be a hard sale.

"You might remind him that the people who made being the guy who caught the killers worthwhile were all girls, too."

"Maybe you should have this chat with him?"

"If you don't, I will. But from you, from another guy, it probably means more. Sort of like how if I tell Jimmy eyeliner is cool he just raises his eyebrow, but when you do it, it means there's another guy who does stuff like that, so that makes it safer. You know… being support for the Big Damn Heroes didn't make your dick fall off; you didn't have to hand in your man card."

He figures Abby may have a point with that, though translating that to Gibbs might be a trickier proposition.

* * *

When he gets back to the office, there are three Minions (2/3rd of the paperwork program testing team and Howard) all waiting, eagerly, for him.

He sees the grins and says, "Progress?"

Three heads nodding.

"Set up a case," Roger says.

"Any type?" Tim asks, all five of them heading to his office.

"Any type," Connon replies.

So he does. As soon as Dispatch gets a report of a case, they stick a case number on it. Everything involving that case goes with that number. So Tim grabs a case number and starts a false report for it. He begins working on it, running a false phone records search as well as a financial report.

"Okay, now watch." Connon waves, indicating for Tim to move over, so he does, sliding his chair out of the way. Connon takes over, hitting the icon for the paperwork software, and then hits a few more buttons and… for a few seconds all four of them hover, nervous, hopeful, and then there's the whirling sound of Tim's printer kicking to life and he smiles wide.

"Don't get too happy. It only does the 5440's right. But, we've got one of the fifteen documents we fill out for every case running properly."

"And if you screw up the case tracking number the whole thing is fucked," Roger says.

Tim nods at that. But that's always been true for any computer work at NCIS. (That was part of having to try to figure out how to dumb down the job triaging software. Most cops can't type.) "But you've got at least one bit of it working?"

"We've got one bit!" Howard looks really pleased to be doing something this concrete and useful her second day on.

"Good job! Now, go get the next fourteen of them working."

"On it, Boss!"

* * *

Kelly in one hand, take-out pho in the other, Tim heads into Gibbs' driveway.

He can see Mona, perched on the bow of Shannon, (or maybe not Shannon, there's no name painted on her, yet. Though the outside is looking awfully smooth and glossy.) looking at him, very alert. She greets him with a woof and scrambles down the step ladder Gibbs has leaning against the hull. Tim puts the food on the hood of Gibbs' truck and pats (firmly, he wants to do it gingerly, ready to yank his hand and more importantly, Kelly's body, back in a second if he needs to, but he knows if he does anything other than look like the top dog, Mona will try to run all over him) Mona's head.

"Hey, Mona. He's in there, right?"

One more woof.

"I've got food and Kelly with me, and I'm not climbing a step ladder with her."

Gibbs pokes his head out. He's wearing a face mask and has on gloves. If he's wearing protective gear, whatever the hell he's working with in there has to be pretty nasty. "Out in a minute. Go in, get set."

Tim nods at Mona. "You feed her?"

"Not yet."

"Come on, Mona, I'll get some food for you, too."

Mona perks up at that, she's always in favor of food.

* * *

However dressed up Gibbs may have been when he was over at Breena's he's in ratty jeans, work boots, and an old t-shirt now, and he smells very strongly of shellac. But he had shaved, and that doesn't go unnoticed by Tim.

Apparently Tim's outfit didn't go unnoticed by Gibbs, either.

He looks Tim over and says, "Fancy."

Tim shrugs a little. "Electrician showed up today. Wanted to make sure he knew who he was dealing with."

"How'd that go?"

Tim nods, look satisfied. "I have the feeling Physical Plant's going to be a bit more responsive to calls from Cybercrime."

Gibbs smirks, very pleased, by that.

"Breena told us you were looking pretty fancy today, too. So… you put that number to good use?"

Gibbs sprinkles a little cilantro on his pho, and then adds a lot of hot sauce. He's not exactly glaring at Tim; he doesn't want to immediately shut him out on this, but he doesn't necessarily want to go spilling about this, either.

Tim lets him think. He portions out noodles onto Kelly's place, as well as giving the little jar of mushed green beans a good shake. He opens the beans and gets a spoonful into Kelly before seasoning his own pho. He takes a bite, adds a bit more lime, then one more bite.

"You know, it was almost getting blown up by Deering that made me decide what I wanted. That 'holy shit, I'm not dead, time to get my life in order' moment. Then everything went gray, and I blacked out. She took me home from the hospital that day, and this" he points to the pho, "was the first thing we did. She brought me home, got me on my bed, and I slept for… no idea. Until the pain pills wore off. When I came to, she had a bowl of pho waiting for us. She got the noodles and meat, I got the broth. She stayed with me that night. Nothing sexy or anything. Just slept next to me, held my hand, 'cause we were both scared and upset. That's where it started, for me, at least. I don't know if she knows that. Should probably tell her at some point." Tim takes a sip of his broth, and Gibbs waits, eating, wondering where he's going to take this.

"She makes our home, you know? Last three years, every bad day, every shit thing, every time the bullet barely missed, she's been there for me. She's been my home, my heart, my safety. All of this," he pets Kelly's cheek and squeezes Gibbs' hand, "doesn't happen without her. I can't be this version of me, without her."

Gibbs nods, still not sure where this is going, but he's agreeing with what Tim's saying.

"We want you to be happy. And we're thrilled with whatever it is that you're not saying about Borin. And just… you know… maybe she needs a home, too."

Gibbs just stares at him, honestly not sure what the hell to say to that. So, finally he nods and says, "How's the paperwork software going?"

Tim decides he's done his duty by Abby to try to get the message across and replies with, "Good. Got two of the forms working right."

"Good." Gibbs takes another bite of his pho. "What's with the other thirteen?"

Tim rolls his eyes, and feeds Kelly another bite of her green beans while grabbing some noodles out of her hair. "Stupid blanks all have different names and a computer's so dumb that if one form says Date and another form says Day and a third form has mm/dd/yyyy on it, it needs specific instructions to know that those are all the same thing. You and I and pretty much every human on earth can figure out that if one form has case number on it, and the next has case no. and one just says Number up at the top, they're all talking about the same thing. The computer can't. So we've got to tell it to pull one piece of data out of the information you're working with and stick it in all the paperwork blanks that it goes with."

Gibbs nods at that, he's following.

"Tricky bit is when the 5540s use Number to mean the case tracking number and the DF-56-A," phone tracking request forms, "use Number to mean phone number, and of course, they're both ten digit numbers, and then the 34Q-Self Report uses Number to mean your employee ID. That's giving all of us headaches, but Howard—"

"Interviewed with us Howard?"

"Started yesterday." Tim smiles at that. "She had some good ideas to help the computers figure out what means what. So, right now my database wonks are working on building up the database so it can pull the data out and put it in the right places, and she's working on an AI learning algorithm to help it figure out what the hell all of these blanks mean." Tim crosses his fingers. "Any luck, by the end of the month we'll have a functional beta version to roll out."

Gibbs smiles. "Good."

They both eat, quietly, enjoying the company, Tim switching between feeding himself and making sure that food gets into Kelly.

Eventually Gibbs says, "It was good."

Tim raises an eyebrow.

"Called her up, met for coffee."

Tim smiles.

"We've got a date Saturday."

Tim smirks at that, and Gibbs can feel there's something there, something Tim's finding deeply amusing, but he's not sharing.

"What?"

Tim shakes his head. "Just happy for you."

Gibbs knows that's not all of it, but he's clueless as to what else it may be.

"What are you going to do?"

"Dinner. Here." Gibbs smiles at that, and Tim's grin spreads even further across his face.

"Cowboy steaks?"

"That's the plan."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So, been getting some questions about the behind the scenes stuff lately, so here goes:
> 
> Yes, I do write ahead, and as of this point all of the remaining major plot points have been plotted out and written. (Though written varies from a note saying, "stick plot point here" to fifty pages of fiction that's been edited seven times.) Minor plot points, on the other hand, keep dancing around, and some major plot points are morphing as the minor ones come out to play.
> 
> This story continues to give me new surprises, so while I know what things _have_ to happen, there's a lot of new lines that pop up and keep me interested.
> 
> As of this point I've got an additional 200 pages ready to go. (STAW/Shards will top out at well over 1,000,000 words.)
> 
> This does not, however, mean that I've got the _next_ chapter (or the one after that) done. (Though, as of this writing, I do, in fact, have the next chapter done.)
> 
> Shards To A Whole has always been intended to be an epic, and it has always had a set plot arc. It has five "Books" (Lover, Husband, Father, Boss, and Tim McGee) and we're in book four. (Tim'll hit his whole before all the rest of the shards do, so that last section will still be Tim-centric, but his immediate growth arc will have finished.)
> 
> As for what those major plot points are... Well, there's the McPalmer line for the STAW version. There's the final confrontation with Tim's dad. There's getting Gibbs settled (the last of the Shards in major need of some whole-ing). Baby DiNozzo is in the cards, as well as additional Gibbs clan children.
> 
> Eventually we'll hit the point where significantly longer chunks of time (in story) will be going by between chapters, because the last remaining plot points need time but I don't necessarily have months and months of minor plot of fill them out.
> 
> I know where this one ends. I know I've got stuff set post-ending. I may run them as stand-alones, or just add them to STAW (because once I get done with the main version, I won't be doing two separate editions of the follow up work) as an easy-to-find Coda. I know that at some point we'll see Tim and Jimmy in their late fifties with their teenage kids (because the McGee-Palmer Sex Ed class is already written and _must_ be shared.)
> 
> But that's about as specific as I want to get on the spoilers. So, thanks for asking.


	70. Mallard Manor

On Friday night, Ducky and Penny stay late post-Shabbos.

They didn't plan it, didn't need to. Conspiracy, apparently, comes naturally to these three.

Once he had the second round of dishes all in the dishwasher (can't get an entire dinner's worth, at least, not dinner for nine adults and one toddler, in addition to pots and pans in one go) Gibbs fetches a file filled with real estate listings.

He doesn't much like computers.

However he likes real estate agents even less. And his other best idea for how to do this was to call DiNozzo Sr. up and see if he could find something, but… Even if this is 'officially' a vacation house for their family, he's got a sense of the kind of place he's comfortable with, and then there's the kind of place Senior would come up with and those two places are not only not even remotely similar to each other, they're also in vastly different neighborhoods.

So, given the assignment of 'find a place on the water,' Gibbs decided to do some googling.

And for as much as he doesn't love computers, he'd have to say that was a hell of a lot less painful than trying to find the house he's currently sitting in.

Penny and Ducky are on the sofa, and he pulls an armchair over, and lays out a collection of pictures of places on the water.

Penny and Ducky look at them, nodding, sorting through, nodding again, and he's having a hard time reading those looks. He feels like he's got a pretty good collection there, but they don't seem pleased by this. They aren't really reading the listings, they're mostly just flipping through.

As Penny tidily stacks them on top of each other, Ducky says, "Jethro, I think you may be missing the scale of what we were thinking of for this."

Penny nods, as she tucks all the listings back into the manila folder. "At least five bedrooms, seven is better, nine would be optimal, but we're unlikely to find it."

The cabins he'd found were all in the two to four bedroom range, and he'd been nervous about the four bedroom one, it was so expensive it made him want to blush.

So, it takes him a moment to stop staring, dumbstruck, at both of them and inquire, "Duck, Penny, did you _look_ at the prices on those?"

Penny nods. Ducky says, "Indeed."

"We have money, Jethro."

"At _least_ five bedrooms, similar number of bathrooms, seven bedrooms is even better because that'll give the youngest members some room to themselves and lets us set up a girls and boys room. Nine would be perfect because if Jimmy and Breena have their way, there are going to be a lot of children running around this place. It needs enough land to be private. As you know, it has to be on the water. It needs a pier and boat house of some sort, because we have to keep Shannon in good shape."

Gibbs still can't find words. He blinks and exhales and finally says, "That's gonna cost a ton."

"We know," Penny says, definitively.

Jethro shakes his head, he can't even think of how much that'll cost. The beat to hell up four bedroom he'd found had topped out at $650,000. "You've got to give me a price range then."

"Three point six million," Ducky says, calmly.

"Duck!" That takes Gibbs' breath away.

"We can put in that much. Though it would be a good idea not to put all of that into the real estate, a place like that will need furnishings, and we'll need to build some sort of trust to pay the property taxes on it. Call it two point seven, less if it needs extensive repair. The market was still hot when I sold the home I shared with Mother. That money has been sitting around collecting interest and dust for a long time. It'd be nice to do something interesting with it."

Penny adds in, "Likewise, the home I shared with Nelson sold well. I traveled but it would have taken years to burn off that sort of money. I'm a tenured professor. They pay me very well, and I live quite below my means."

"As Penny said, Jethro, we have money."

"We've been talking about it more. You're retired. Ducky won't be staying around for more than a few months. Jimmy, Tim, and Abby will all be running their own departments, Tony running his own team. Ziva at home. You won't be seeing each other every day anymore."

"The Navy Yard is no longer our home. And we need one. This needs to be a space for our whole family. Where we can all be together, at once. It will need to be big, at least one bedroom per couple. No matter what else we do with it, it has to be a comfortable space for all of us. Do you remember the home I shared with Mother?"

Gibbs nods.

"That was meant to be a family estate, Jethro. It was meant to have multiple generations of people who called it home. A testament in stone and wood to people who valued and loved each other. Children and grandchildren were meant to grow there. That didn't work out, and it was vastly too large for two people and eight corgis. But, we can do this. We have the money, and it may be late for us, but we can build a home for our family."

"Mallard Manor?" Gibbs says with a slight laugh.

"Something like that," Penny says wryly. "One of the things Nelson and I had wanted, one thing we had envied Terri's parents for, was that they had a family home. We were going to build one. A place where, no matter what, our children and grandkids could come in out of the storm. It didn't happen. But that doesn't mean that it cannot happen."

"So, would this space be open to Sarah and…" Gibbs doesn't know exactly how many grandkids and great-grandkids Penny has, but he does know John was one of four children, and that his surviving brothers had married and had kids, too.

Penny shakes her head. "Sarah, maybe, in that she lives here and seems to be getting closer to the rest of this group. But not the rest of the grandchildren. Can't have nine other people and their spouses and kids wandering in and out of the place, not with what we're talking about doing with it."

"Will that cause problems?"

Penny shrugs. "It's possible. But Tim's the only one I see on a weekly basis. I see Sarah monthly. The rest send me emails for my birthday, and drop by if they're in the greater DC area. If they're mercenary enough to feel like they deserve a chunk of the cash, then they can come and visit me on occasion, too. At this point I'm much closer to Tony, Ziva, Jimmy, and Breena than I am to any of my grandchildren besides Tim."

"Okay." Calling DiNozzo Sr. just went on his to-do list. Apparently Penny and Ducky's idea of this place is right down the street from Senior's idea of the place. "How's your end of it going?"

Penny shrugs. "Less concrete moving forward. I joined the Amnesty International group on campus, as well as well as a pro-immigration one. So far I'm just getting a good idea of who is who. Most of the 'do-gooder feminist' groups" she laces his term with some heavy sarcasm, "focus on women here, but there's a Mosque in Georgetown that one of the groups works with to help Muslim women here in the US, and I'm getting to know the woman who runs that outreach. Since most of the women that program works with are here legally, but weren't born here, she may have a clue as to who to talk to."

Gibbs nods at that.

"I've found us a lawyer," Ducky says. "Jason Ramsey is the brother of Alton Ramsey, the ME for the District of Colombia. He's something of a political gadfly. Active in pro-legal immigration circles. Penny and I had lunch with him, on the books, as clients," Gibbs appreciates that, as best he knows, if you actually hire the lawyer, everything you say to him is in confidence, "explained what we were thinking about. He's very pleased and has agreed to take us on retainer."

"Better yet," Penny's smiling at this, "the retainer is just to cover costs, he'll do the work pro-bono."

Gibbs blinks. He doesn't like lawyers, and the idea of one doing this… "So, he just gave us a blank check for all the legal wrangling we may need?"

"We'd have to cover expenses, court filings and the like, bailing you out if need be, and along with a trust to cover the expenses on the house, we're setting up a trust for that, but yes, he's willing to donate his time to any defense we may need. Granted, he would prefer we didn't get caught."

"Since it'll me my ass in jail, I'd 'prefer we didn't get caught,' too." Gibbs says, dryly. "I'm not going to try to get caught. The whole plan is to not get caught. Looks like Mike did this for more than five years, no one ever got close to him, and I'm a hell of a lot more careful than he was."

_You sure about that, Probie?_

_My network doesn't involve literally hundreds of people, Mike. And I'm not blackmailing them so none of them might decide they're just done with me and report me just to get rid of me._

"There was one other protection that Mr. Ramsey recommended to us, and it's something we'd like your help with," Ducky says, bringing Gibbs back to the conversation with the living people around his coffee table.

"Okay, what?"

With a smile, gently squeezing Penny's hand, Ducky asks, "Would you be the witness for our marriage? That way we cannot be compelled to testify against each other."

A night of surprises all around, apparently. "First of all, yes. Second of all, you two cannot just sneak off the Justice of the Peace and do it in secret. All six of them will whine and bitch at me if I let you two get married and don't do _something_ to celebrate it."

Ducky checks the clock. "Then you have a bit under fourteen hours to do _something_ because our appointment with the Justice of the Peace is at noon tomorrow."

"You're killing me, Duck. Both of you."

"We didn't see any reason to make a big deal out of it," Penny says.

"Or necessarily mention it, for that matter. Not getting married was about how it was easier in regards to our estates, so why that would suddenly change will cause questions that we do not have a good answer for."

"Easiest way to lie is to not have to tell one in the first place. And you of all people should know that."

Gibbs shrugs, that makes sense, and he's sure they've had a lawyer or accountant or someone go over everything… But he also knows that when one of them dies and it comes out that they got married and that it's his signature on the marriage license, he's going to be in deep, hot water for not telling anyone about it.

He squints at both of them, licking his lips, shaking his head, able to imagine in glorious Technicolor detail the level of crap Abby and Breena are going to dump on him if he keeps this secret. "Couldn't it just be… I don't know… Valentine's Day romance or something?"

There's something of a glint in Ducky's eye. Something… Gibbs doesn't know what it is, but he trusts it. There's a level here he's not seeing, yet. "Trust me, Jethro, it will be easier this way."

"Okay, Duck."

* * *

And so, on February 13th, 2016, at 12:14, Leroy Jethro Gibbs signs, with no fanfare, the marriage certificate of Donald Mallard and Penelope Langston.

He takes them out for a celebratory lunch, after, and when Penny excuses herself for a moment, he says to Ducky, "You damn well better have something so romantic planned that I do not end up with Abby and Breena _crying_ on me because they didn't get invited to your wedding."

Ducky grins at him, eyes sparkling. There's definitely something in the works. "Trust me Jethro, I will not leave you open to the weeping of distressed women."

Gibbs narrows his eyes, shooting his best _I mean it_ look at Ducky. "Good."


	71. First Date

Gibbs honestly hadn't noticed what day he'd picked when he set the date. Saturday. Made perfect sense to him. No Shabbos. No Bootcamp. He was completly free, and should things go especially well, the kids won't mind if he skips breakfast and church.

So, it wasn't until they all got to Shabbos on Friday night, and Jimmy reminded them they had Molly's birthday party at their place after church, that he realized that he'd made a date with Borin on February 13th, the day before Valentine's.

Which is when Tim's 'Saturday Date' smirk suddenly made a whole lot of sense.

Talk about stacking the deck for a first date, let alone his first date in two years.

* * *

There was a time when he knew how to do this.

There was a time when the whole get showered, get dressed, do fun thing with woman, hopefully resulting in sex was an actual pattern.

And it's not so much that he can't fall back into the pattern. Once he takes off the suit he wore to… he still can't believe it, _Ducky's wedding_ , he can feel himself inching toward his gelling-at-home casual-date clothing. He wants to fall into his pattern, because his pattern is comfortable. But he knows that falling back into the same pattern is just asking to make the same mistakes over and over.

Granted, he's not sure that making a whole crop of new mistakes is much of a better plan, but… At least it won't be boring.

And who knows, maybe he's learned something after all these years?

* * *

Okay, so, not following the same patterns he always does.

He's never been much of a get dressed up for dates kind of guy. Casual, laid back, go see a game or movie and easy dinner is usually his style. He's planning on cooking over the fire, so getting too dressed up doesn't make any sense, but maybe a step above cargo pants and t-shirt is in order.

He thinks about it a moment longer, tries to imagine what he'd like Borin to be wearing. Her smiling at him without a stitch of clothing on springs to mind. He enjoys that for a moment, and then shifts it to what she'll _probably_ be wearing, what kind of effort she'll likely put into this, and does his best to mimic a male version of that.

He hasn't hit the point where the Magic Clothing Fairy just shows up and deposits stuff in his closet. But he does know that Breena occasionally attempts to drag him out of his usual fashion rut. So, he's got a few button-down shirts that have been hanging, washed, nicely pressed, in his closet, that he's never worn.

He eyeballs the bright blue one. It's been sitting in there since October. (He thinks about it more and comes to the conclusion that those shirts showed up just about the time he took his wedding ring off.) When he asked about them, Breena had said something about how he'd be moving on to new and interesting things, and maybe he might, on occasion, want something other than a jacket with a golf shirt. He takes it out, checking and sees that it is his size. His size, now, not his size, then. He looks at it again, thinking it's been there since October, but wondering if Breena somehow snuck some new clothing in there. She'd certainly been looking him over carefully when he came out for the coffee date in the too big, but hand-print free pants.

He slips it on, and yeah, it looks good, fits very nicely. But, wearing this, he can't do his usual cargo pants.

He owns jeans. He wears them once or twice a blue moon. He even bought a pair of new ones during the great shopping extravaganza that ate up his Thursday afternoon. (Once he grabbed a few pairs of pants, it hit him that part of why the old ones didn't fit was that he was carrying around a whole lot less stomach, which meant he also needed new shirts, and once he figured that out, it hit that he needed a new suit for church and any testifying he still has to do, and by that point he'd already realized he needed new boxers, too. So, what was meant to be a ten minute grab-some-pants-and-run shopping trip ended up taking the whole afternoon.)

He takes them out, lays them on his bed, and turns to his dresser. He grabs the first pair of boxers he sees, and is halfway to putting them on before deciding that it might be a good idea to make sure they're in decent shape. (Just because he got new clothing does not mean he got rid of any of the old clothing.)

Kind of frayed around the hems. (Four inches too wide around the waist, too, but that doesn't matter so much if they're under another pair of pants.) He tosses them in the trash can and hunts around for a new pair.

He's reaching for socks when another thought hits, they're having dinner in his home. He's probably not going to be wearing shoes. Does he want to be padding around in socks? Jeans and dress shirt, what kind of socks go with that?

He realizes he hasn't put this much effort into a date since 1978. Hell, he didn't put this much effort into trying to look good at his last three weddings. And he hasn't put this much effort into impressing a woman since the last time he saw Shannon, and that this is, hopefully, a good thing.

He stares at the socks for a moment, debates calling Tony, has the phone in his hands before he shakes his head, imagining the level of ribbing he'll take if he actually asks for fashion advice for a date, let alone in regards for socks, and decides to go with bare feet. That's relaxed and intimate.

Jeans on. Another debate between shirt tucked in and a belt or out. He runs his hands over the shirt, flattening it, staring at his stomach, wiggling the fat that's still padding him, way less than there was this time last year, but not Marine hard, yet. Untucked hides that, but he's hoping she'll take his shirt off at some point, and tucked in is tidier, looks better with this sort of shirt… He tucks it in. Dark blue jeans, bright blue shirt, he skips a jacket, skips the belt, too. He's not going to work.

Hair brushed, teeth brushed, shaved… anything he's forgetting?

He looks at the little, heretofore untouched, bottle of cologne Tim got him. (Good Lord, what on earth goes through the kid's head sometimes? Cologne, for Christmas?) It's been sitting on his dresser, ignored since he got it home. Jolly Roger. (Really, Tim? Really?) But, it has been forever since he's been on a date. And he's always been a sawdust and coffee kind of guy, bit of his Old Spice (classic, none of those new, bizarre scents they've been coming out with lately) deodorant peeking through.

And if part of the idea is breaking molds and trying new things...

If it smells gross, he won't put it on.

He opens it, face already half-way into a protective grimace (He doesn't wear cologne because he's never smelled one he liked… Okay none of the wives or girlfriends ever found anything he was willing to wear more than once. Not like he's ever gone shopping for it himself.) but he's pleasantly surprised (okay, floored) to see this smells like… Like a day on a wooden boat on the sea.

It's actually really nice.

So, he tentatively puts a little of it on him, pretty much expecting it to turn sour or burn or… something unfortunate, but no, it just sits there on his skin smelling pleasantly of salt and sea and sun and wood and maybe some rum.

(Toss some Banana Boat suntan lotion into this and it's several of his best dates with Shannon.)

He heads to the bathroom and looks at himself in the mirror. He's fifty-seven, and it shows on his face. But he looks presentable. He's in… decent… Hell, really good shape… _for a guy his age_. He's hoping to drop that last bit in the next year. The exercising like a maniac seems to have tightened up things further, and sure, he's not cut or anything, but he's also no longer got anything that could even remotely be called a beer gut. He smells good. And, until he knows Borin better, he can't do anything else to try and make himself more appealing to her.

For right now, this is as good as he gets.

He looks himself over one last time. He'll do.

* * *

Fire's burned low to hot coals, steaks are sizzling away, potatoes are wrapped in foil, nestled in the embers, he's got a green salad in a bowl on the coffee table, along with plates and silverware.

Now it's just time to wait for Borin… Abby… Abigail…

He hears the knock, and jumps up to answer it. Borin's been to his house before, she knows his open door, let yourself in policy, but, it's polite to actually open the door for a date, right? (Plus, he very much does not want a repeat of how Mona met Tim.)

So he opens it, smiling, and she steps in, also smiling, holding a bottle of good bourbon and a box with whatever dessert is in it.

"Hi."

"Hi yourself." She looks him up and down and appears to approve of Date Gibbs.

He takes the bottle and box from her, nodding at the coat rack while nudging the door shut with his foot, and hopefully, discretely locking it. Tonight is not the night he wants Tobias or Vance just walking on in. Mona ambles over (coaxed away from the smell of cooking steaks by hearing a voice/smelling a person she doesn't recognize.)

"You got a dog."

Gibbs nods. "This is Mona."

Mona looks her up and down, decides Borin's acceptable, and comes closer to get her ears rubbed.

"Hello, Mona."

Woof. Mona tilts her head right and left, making sure Borin gets all of the good ear rubbing spots, licks her hand a few times, and wanders back to the spot she'd been using to keep watch over the steaks.

"Dinner smells good," Abby says, straightening up, taking off her cold weather gear. Once her coat and scarf is hung up, and boots off, she kisses his cheek and says, "You do, too."

He grins at that and looks toward the living room, letting her walk ahead of him, enjoying the view. Her hair's long and loose, wavy, which he enjoys. She's wearing a white cable knit sweater with a wide neck that's slipped off one shoulder. It's short enough that if she were to reach for something overhead he'd get a glimpse of her tummy or low back. Under that, snug blue jeans. (And he notices, that yes, she does not have any socks on either, and she's also got a tiny little silver toe ring on her right second toe, a very girly touch he didn't expect, but really likes.)

Yes, he's enjoying the view quite a bit. He sighs happily while he follows her in, and places the box and the bottle on his coffee table.

"You cook on your hearth a lot?" she asks when she notices the steaks on the grate on his fireplace.

"As much as I can. Tastes better like this."

She nods, sitting on the floor in front of the fire. "Smells like summertime."

"Camping?" He sits between her and the coffee table. He touches the bottle of bourbon, and she nods. So he pours each of them a glass, handing one to her, his fingers brushing along her index finger as he passes over the glass.

"Cookouts. Memorial Day to Labor Day, every night it didn't rain, my mom would fire up the grill and cook out in the back yard."

"Where did you grow up?"

"Little middle of nowhere town in Montana."

He hadn't know that. Her voice and accent suggested somewhere in the west, but he hadn't narrowed it down beyond 'not California.' "Montana to the Coast Guard?"

"There were a few stops along the way." She says with a smile, watching him sip his drink.

"That's good."

"Thanks."

She inhales deeply. "Add some pine to this and cold mountain air, and it's home."

"Wood grill?" Not a lot of people cook on wood, and especially when she would have been a kid, charcoal and lighter fluid would have been the norm.

"My dad built it for her, big thing made of cement and the rocks he kept digging out of the gardens. It had an oven and a grill. Made awesome pizzas. Really good pies. We'd pick the blueberries and blackberries. Mom would make up the dough while the fire burned hot. Pizza goes in first. It cooks fast and hot, all singed on the crust and bubbly top. While we'd eat that, the pie would go in. By the time dinner was done, it was too."

He'd never thought, wondered about her family or where she comes from. But he's enjoying these little glimpses into her past. "What does your family do?"

"Little bit of everything, farming, ranching, dairy. They headed out in the late seventies as homesteaders. They've got five hundred acres of mostly grass, but there's one section of the lot with a creek running through it, lots of pine trees there, and that's where the house is."

"Beautiful?"

"Yeah, it is. Their lot is pretty flat, but you can see the mountains. They run cattle, it's good grazing land. But that's not exactly profitable, so they built a few cabins and got the permits in place, and in the winter they've got cross country skiers, snowmobiles, and dogsledding.

"Summertime, the flatland's boring. Pretty, a million miles of grass and wildflowers, snow-covered mountains in the background, fat cows munching away, but all in all, it's boring. Wintertime though, it's miles and miles of space to just go. The dogs love it. They can run for miles. The snowmobilers have a blast. They make enough from October to May on tourists to keep the ranch running, which makes them happy."

"Why'd you leave?" Her description isn't precisely his version of heaven, too far away from the water, though a good sized lake nearby would take care of that, but little out of the way place covered in wild flowers and berries or snow… Sounds awfully good to him.

She sips the bourbon. "Finished high school in '94. I was sick of cows, sick of tourists, sick of snow seven months a year, sick of living with my parents. Don't get me wrong, I love them, and we get on fine, but I was eighteen and wanted to be on my own, so I signed on with the Marines. I did my three years, did college on the GI Bill, and I was seriously thinking of heading back to Montana when 9/11 happened and I enlisted in Officer Training."

He scoots over, so he's kneeling in front of her, in front of the grill, and pulls the steaks off the grill, setting one on each plate, but he leaves the potatoes on the coals and the plates on the hearth instead of handing them over. She looks at them curiously. He answers the unasked question. "According to Breena, they taste better if you let them sit a bit."

"Is she right?"

"I think so. You can tell me if you agree in about ten minutes."

"I'd have to eat two of your steaks to know. One right away, and one with the wait."

"Next time you can have one right off the coals."

"Next time?" That's a pleased sounding question.

"Hope so." He's not sure what to say after that, and looks over, seeing the dessert box. "What's in the box?"

She smiles, and he gets the idea that she's really looking forward to what's in the box. "You can open it if you want."

There's tape along the one edge and the name of a bakery stamped on the top. Like always, he's got a knife, so he slits the tape and opens the lid. He's not entirely sure what he's looking at. Two little chocolate cups with something brown and fluffy inside them, scent of sweet coffee hitting him, a swirl of what's probably whipped cream on top and a little coffee bean on top of that.

Whatever it is, he's thinking he'll like it.

He's looking at dessert, and hears her move. Then there's the warmth of her body against his back, the feel of her chin resting on his shoulder. He smiles at that, enjoying her body against his. He turns to look at her, really seeing the green and brown whorls of her eyes, the few freckles across the bridge of her nose, the tiny bit of makeup she's wearing, just enough to bring up the green of her eyes. Her gaze holds his for a moment, and he's fairly sure she's doing the same thing, really seeing him from close up. She's still smiling, so he thinks she likes what she's seeing. He knows he does.

She quickly reaches around, takes the coffee bean off of one of the desserts, balances it on the tip of her index finger, and offers it to him. He nibbles it off her finger as she says, "Chocolate cups, coffee mousse, whipped cream, and a candied espresso bean."

"I take it you don't want me asleep anytime soon?"

She grins, warm and seductive. He's watching her lips, feeling her breath against his cheek. He's about to inch forward, kiss her, then, still grinning, she pulls back before he can. She chuckles at that, teasing him, enjoying this game of getting closer but keeping him on his toes. For that matter, he is, too. Not that he doesn't appreciate a woman who will toss herself in his lap, but he also likes working for it.

So he grins back.

She licks the tiny smear of whipped cream off of her finger and says, "Like this could keep you awake."

He nods a bit at that, amused. Then he looks her up and down, eyes slowly mapping her curves, and carefully picks his words. "Like I'll need that to keep me up with you here."

She smiles brilliantly at that.

And Gibbs remembers that he really likes flirting.

* * *

It's comfortable, sitting on the floor, talking, eating, warm bourbon and dying firelight casting a sultry amber glow to everything around them.

They trade battle stories, been a lot of the same places over the years, just with a decade in between. Stories of Saudi, Iraq, the Med, going back farther, Lejeune, they know some of the same people.

When they get to dessert he stands up to get spoons, because he assumes something like this gets eaten with one, and plates for them. Heading back into the living room he kills the overhead lights, and puts a few more logs on the fire.

She smiles as he does it, approving.

A few seconds later, he lifts each cup onto its own plate, and then takes the remaining coffee bean off of the second cup, balances it on the tip of his finger, and offers it to her.

Like him, she nibbles it off his finger. He feels the warmth of her breath, and the delicate slide of her tooth along the top of his finger, and the wet of her tongue lightly touching his fingernail. He exhales a quiet sigh at that, loving the visual and reveling in the sensation.

He feels her place a tiny kiss to the tip of his finger, before crunching down on the coffee bean.

"Wasn't sure if you liked sweets. Figured this would be pretty safe." She dips her spoon into the coffee cup coming up a second later with some of the coffee mousse and whipped cream, and he watches her lick it from the spoon, seeing her tongue dart, pink and wet against the metal, thinking about every dirty, sexy, wonderful thing he wants to do to and with her tongue.

He swallows, mouth dry, and then touches the bourbon glass. "Usually drink dessert, but I like sweet things, too."

She lifts the cup and nibbles it. "Chocolate sweet or fruit sweet?"

He takes a bite of his own dessert, and yes, it's good, very strong coffee flavor, not too sweet, bit creamy, and there's probably some booze in there, too.

"Both. Or coffee. Love coffee. Tim and Abbs had coffee cupcakes at their wedding, those were great."

"Mmmm…"

"Yeah."

"Irish coffee, not too much cream, not too sweet, good whiskey. Love that."

He nods. Sure he's more of a bourbon guy, but he's got nothing against whiskey if it's in coffee.

"Turkish or Saudi style?" Anyone who spent any time in the Middle East and was serious about coffee has a preference. Turkish style is thick and sweet, strong enough to peel the paint off the walls. Saudi style is served hot, very, very hot, a teaspoon or so at a time, and both styles add spices to the blend.

"Spent a month in Kuwait, there was a tiny café, a bench, three tables, and five or six chairs on the sidewalk. Turkish style service," boiling water poured onto the grounds in a special pot, allowed to steep, then poured into the cup, let gravity pull the grounds down, "no sugar for this mix, but honey, thick and rich, golden, think it was flavored with saffron, and cardamom were part of it. That. Never had coffee like it before or since. Not even close."

He shakes his head. "Nothing ever tastes the same. You can try, but the air, the people… the place seeps into the food, changes it. Miller Lite, lame-ass, barely beer swill, smuggled into Baghdad for ten buck a can, same damn stuff you get here, bottled here, made here, but there…" He shakes his head. He'd been in Baghdad for six weeks, first alcohol in months, drunk with men he loved, and it tasted like heaven.

She nods. "First tour, I still smoked. Not much to do out there during the downtime."

He nods, knowing all about that.

"But it's the same thing. A pack of Marlboros in the middle of the desert with a zillion stars overhead… Just isn't the same here. Even in the mountains, same starts, same nights you can see forever, but, it's not the same. Quit when I got stateside again. It just wasn't worth it."

He takes another bite of the dessert, feeling the chocolate melt on his tongue, the bracing sharpness of the coffee fill his mouth. He may eat this again, he hopes he does, but it'll never taste like this. It'll never be this first meal together, first real conversation, first night of Jethro and Abby again.

Chocolate, coffee, cream, hint of wood smoke, tinge of beef, bourbon and her skin perfuming the air, filling his lungs and flavoring the treat in front of him. This moment will never be again, so this dessert will never taste the same again.

She takes another bite of her dessert, follows it with a sip of the bourbon, seeming to be thinking the same thing. They're sitting close. She's between the sofa and the coffee table, her back against the sofa, sitting cross-legged. He's at the end of the table, legs bent to the side, arm resting on the edge of the table, facing her. There's maybe two inches between her left knee and his right knee.

He can't feel the heat of her leg near his, but he can feel the heaviness of this moment. The way they're watching each other, the silence broken only by popping flames and Mona snoring.

She's golden and flushed by the firelight, and maybe, maybe by anticipation of what may come next.

He sets the cup down on the table and kneels, leaning forward, and traces his fingers across her cheek. She smiles, holding his gaze with hers, and turns her lips to his palm, pressing a kiss into his hand.

His eyes close for a heartbeat as he takes a deep breath, and they open when he leans in closer, lips finding hers, stroking gently, and she sighs quietly against him as he kisses her.

And it's slow, almost tentative, but not nervous. No, this is quiet, gentle exploration.

He's fantasized about this before, but in the dream images it's always been hard, rough, demanding kisses, desperate as they grind into each other, tearing clothing off.

And he's sure they'll get there, but not right now. Right now is like the honey she talked about, thick and gold and slow. One soft nibble at a time.

He's only touching her mouth and face, and she's got one hand on his arm, fingers on his wrist, but that's it. Right now is just about kissing, about lips pulling every sensation out of each second.

Eventually his knee tells him that he cannot keep kneeling, not on a floor this hard, not if he wants to do anything else fun tonight, so he eases back, and she smiles brilliantly at him, eyes sparkling, face flushed (he's sure it's not just the effect of the firelight now.)

She looks at the remnants of dinner. "Bout time to clean that up, wouldn't you say?"

* * *

He's loading the dishwasher, more and more slowly, because dinner's really over when everything's put away, and he's not entirely sure if she's going home when he gets done. (He's really hoping she's not.) But finally, there's no more lingering he can do, so he slips the last fork into the silverware caddy, tosses in a detergent pack, and then closes up the machine.

She's looking at him expectantly, and he thinks he knows what that look means, feels it rush through his skin and tingle his toes (among other places), so he's awfully hopeful that he's reading it right.

He steps a bit closer, not touching, but close enough to see her individual eyelashes, close enough to feel her breath against his cheek as she's looking up at him.

He strokes his hand over her hair, down her throat and across that one bare shoulder, stepping even closer yet, but still not touching.

"This okay?"

And she steps into him, pulling flush to him, warm, soft body tight against his, and that feels great. "Oh yeah. Been waiting for this all night."

"Didn't want to get presumptuous."

She laughs at that, warm and throaty, and then cups her hand around the back of his neck, where his head and neck meet and pulls his lips down to hers.

And, yes, kissing. Full body kissing. Making out! He remembers making out. He remembers how much he loves this, and how this is all sorts of very, very good and… Just, God, soft wet lips on his, gentle sucks, warm, hot, perfect tongue slipping against his, rich with coffee and bourbon and her, and, just, yes, all over yes, a thousand million yesses of unending wet, hot, firm, soft good God, YES!

Eventually she pulls back, breathing hard and fast, Gibbs thinks she was going to say something, but right now, he wants more, of everything, so follows her, not letting her catch her breath, hands spanning her hips as he keeps her close, full bodies touching, and Lord that's good too, that's so good. She's soft in all the right places and her hands are pulling him in closer as more kisses slip between them.

But finally the brain in the big head takes back over, and he steps back, giving her the space to say whatever it was she was going to say before.

This time she follows him, and his toes curl at. All of this beautiful woman, clinging to him, kissing him fast and deep, hands curled in his hair and cupping his hip, keeping him anchored to her.

She's rubbing against him, all over, making him feel almost light-headed it's so good. He manages to tear his lips away from hers, dragging them down her throat, ripping a breathy moan out of her that feels amazing, that he wants to hear again, over and over and over, wants to feel it against his chest and shoulder as she's pulling her nails down his back while he slams into her.

A low, hot exhale answers her moan, raising goosebumps along her shoulder.

"God, Jethro, you gonna take me upstairs?"

"Still not presuming," he whispers it to her, licking her earlobe.

She pulls his face up, eyes to eyes and gives him a quick, nipping kiss. "I am officially giving you permission to presume all you want."

He stares at her long and hot, raking his eyes over every inch of her body, and gets across, by look alone, that he may presume some pretty wild stuff.

She grins, wide and happy at that, sending back her own look of _anything you can come up with, I'll try_. "Come on." Borin steps back and takes his hand, leading him to the staircase. She looks up, but obviously doesn't know what is where in his house. He takes her pause, presses her against the wall, and begins kissing down her throat, long, soft, sucking kisses.

He nibbles her collarbone, hands finding their way under her sweater, heading up her back, looking for the strap, and he's very pleased to see that she doesn't have a bra on under it.

He didn't realize he'd made some sort of pleased sound until he heard her say, mirth in her voice, "Take it you like that?"

He trails his fingers across her ribs, palming her breast, and groans, teeth ghosting along her jaw. Her leg slides up his, hooking over his hip, keeping him close as she rocks into him, pulling another groan out of him. His hand buries in her hair, as he shifts to kissing her lips, and she arches into him, squeezing the hand on her breast, letting him know the kind of touch she likes.

He mimics her touch, harder, more insistent, and she moans at that, letting go of his hand, and cupping his ass, pulling him into her, grinding into him.

He pulls himself away, doesn't want to, but he knows this isn't going to work on the stairs. Actually, no, it'll work just splendidly on the stairs, several very good images of _exactly_ how this could work on the stairs flood through his mind, but… nope… Condoms are upstairs. Nice big bed is upstairs. Room to really spread her out and explore is upstairs.

He's holding her shoulders, keeping her about a foot away, and then turns her, swats her ass, and says, "Upstairs, second door on the left, now!"

She kisses the hand on her shoulder, biting his wrist, and heads up the stairs, quickly.

As soon as she's through the threshold of his room, she's turned toward him, pressing into him for more kisses and touching and rubbing. More of her sweet body on his, and his hands cup her ass, as he rubs into her, kissing her lips and throat and jaw and shoulder, wanting to touch, taste every inch of her all at once.

Her hand finds his dick, cupping, squeezing gently through his jeans, and he knows part of it is just it's been so damn long since a hand other than his own has touched his dick, but Holy God! that's good.

He didn't think it was possible, but right now, he's exceptionally glad to be fifty-seven because even ten years ago, with as good as this feels and as long as it's been, he would have come right here and now from the way she's rubbing him.

As it is, he's hard. Really hard. Drive nails with it hard. And she's gotten his jeans open, wormed her hand into his boxers and skin on skin… "Fuck…" It slips out of him on an exhale and she grins, loving having pulled that word out of him.

Last time touching a woman was this intense, it was Shannon and he'd been away for six months, got home in the afternoon, in the summer, and Kelly was old enough she didn't take naps anymore, so it was five hours of touching, and petting, and whispered promises, before he finally got some time alone with her.

Last time touching a woman was this intense it didn't matter if he got off in the first thirty seconds, he was still young and horny enough that he could get it up again in twenty minutes, half an hour, tops and he had more than enough stamina to keep her happy with tongue and fingers until his dick perked up again.

But he knows he doesn't have ten hours of oral in him, so he does not want to get off, yet.

He pulls her hand out of his pants, kisses her palm, nipping his teeth across her wrist, and goes to work on her pants. She's also wearing jeans, pretty tight ones, but a button and zipper aren't difficult.

He kneels in front of her (very happy his knees have decided to cooperate in this) and begins to tug her jeans off. Only takes a second to get them down and off, which means he's staring at her in that sweater, knowing she's got no bra on under it, and the tiny, little emerald green thong she's got on.

Tiny, green, _wet_ , thong. That hits him right in the balls, her body, hot for his, wet, slick, craving his.

He peels her panties off, very pleased to see she's a natural redhead, but he'd known that for a while now. (Okay, guessed... hoped) And then he gently kisses her mound, and part of him wants to stay here for hours, licking and kissing and sucking, burying himself in her pussy, and part of him wants to get that sweater off and see the rest of her. That part wins. He kisses up her belly, and licks her hip.

He doesn't say, 'You're beautiful' but it's clear in his face, and the way his eyes travel over her skin. And he knows from her smile that she understands the words he hasn't (yet) said.

Gibbs stands up, holding her close, enjoying her skin, his hands playing along her spine under the sweater. Borin raises her arms and he lifts the sweater off of her, finally seeing all of her naked. He feels the grin slide across his face.

This time he does say it. "You're beautiful."

She smiles at that, taking the compliment, enjoying it. Her fingers trail over his chest, down to his jeans, they're open, but still on, she teases him, very light brush of fingers over his dick, then she steps in close, nipples rubbing his shirt and she reaches to the top button and begins to slip it through the button hole.

She takes her time, slowly undoing each button, kissing his chest between buttons, sucking his left nipple, and then doing it harder when he hisses, pleased, at it. He wants to toss her on the bed and devour her, he lifts a hand to play with her nipple, but she takes his hand and puts it back on his own hip. She's undressing him right now, and that's just how it's going to be.

So he lets her. Waiting patiently(ish) for her to unwrap him.

She smiles, pleased at him, though she doesn't say anything, but she does step in close, her breasts crushing against his chest, as her hands slip under his jeans, over his hips, around to his ass, and then push the fabric off of him.

A second later, it's a pile of denim on the floor in the corner, because as soon as his pants hit his ankles he kicks them off, not caring at all about where they land.

She steps back, looking him up and down, and licks her lips, then bites the lower one. "I am going to have so much fun with you."

That makes him laugh. "Hope so." He pulls her close again, then backs two steps to the edge of his bed and sinks down, pulling her to straddle him.

And she does, pushing him onto his back, laying over him. Kissing him while his hands wander her body, mapping every curve he can reach. She's straddling his thigh, rubbing up and down his leg, wet and slick, and he's just about crazy with it, wants her so bad, needs to get inside her, because just her hip (which, God, that feels good, too) rubbing against him isn't enough.

He's reaching behind him for the condoms he knows live in his dresser when it hits them that they're at least five years old, if not older, and those little bastards have expired.

He groans, and this time it's not a happy sound.

"Jethro?"

God, he doesn't even know if she likes this, some women don't, but… "You wanna switch around? Sixty-nine?"

She looks very surprised to hear him say that.

"Not if you don't like it… but…" He feels God-awful stupid for this. "Condoms are old. I'm clean and had a vasectomy a million years ago, but…"

She smiles again, sits up, still straddling his thigh, squeezes him in an exceptionally pleasant sort of way, making him hiss and grit his teeth, and then gets up. "I've got some." He watches the sway of her hips as she heads out of his room, enjoying the little dimples on her butt and the way her hair bounces with each step. A minute later, she's back with her purse, and a few seconds after that, she's holding a three strip of condoms.

"Not that I don't like it, because I do, and tomorrow morning, if I don't get a call out, I'll take you up on that offer. But," and she squeezed him again, hand stroking from base to tip in a long, slow, toe curling pull. "I wanna see what you'll do with that."

He smiles, bright, happy, really happy in a way he hasn't been in years. "Trust me, you'll like it."

She smiles. "Good." And put the condoms where they could both reach them easily. "We do this often enough, I'm fine with getting tested again, and then saying goodbye to them if all goes well."

He nods. That's fine by him. She's standing on the side of the bed, and he wraps his hands around her hips, pulling her onto the bed, straddling him again, but this time he nudges her up, so she's over his shoulders.

She smells like sex, tastes like it, is wet and open and soft and again wet. She's all possible meanings of delicious.

Doesn't take long to get revved all the way back up again. Three minutes, four, tops, and he's reaching behind himself again, this time grabbing the condom and getting it torn open behind his head.

She smiles at that, scooting down, kissing the tip of his nose, and then takes it from him, smoothing it over him in one steady motion.

She slips onto him in a slow glide, and there's that hot, snug, glorious of slipping into a woman's body. His jaw clenches and eyes close as a soft breath slips out of him.

She smiles at that, too, enjoying knowing she feels this good to him, enjoying how good it feels to her, and begins a gentle, steady rocking motion.

He loves this position. He can watch. She's riding him which means he can see her breasts sway, her body bounce over him, every ounce of pleasure on her face is visible, and, watching that…

Borin about to climax is amazing.

Her head is back, eyes closed, mouth open, small, panting moans slipping out of her with each fast thrust and firm rub of his thumb over her clit and other fingers on her nipples.

She's flushed and her hair's wild and she's every kind of beautiful a woman can be.

She takes his hand in hers, showing him exactly how to touch her, as she grows tighter on him, he thinks he's got it, because she lets go of his hand, leans back a little, deeper angle, moving faster as he arches up into her.

She reaches behind her, palming his balls, making sure he's not about to get off, and he gets that message, focusing more on her, less on him, there'll be another round, and he'll get off then.

He rubs her nipple more firmly, follows the faster, smoother stroke she showed him for her clit, and rocks his hips faster, wanting to watch her fall apart on him, and she does, brilliantly, deep, sultry moans slipping from her mouth as she pulls in tight, twitching against him.

He almost can't watch it, it's almost enough to push him over. But it's not, and he's glad it didn't because he wanted to see her, wanted to feel and hear, immerse himself in her pleasure at his touch.

She snuggles on him for a moment, her cheek against his shoulder, lips on his throat, one finger stroking his nipple. He pets her hair, enjoying her body pulsing around his. He lets her breathing slow down, lets her body stop quivering, and then rolls on top of her, hooking her leg over his shoulder and starts to thrust, hard, but holding back some. "Fast?"

She grabs his butt and pulls, he figures that's a yes. He kicks his speed up, reveling in it, in fast, hot glide, and the smooth slip of her body along his. He's still a little worried he's going too fast or too hard, holding back just a bit.

"God, Gibbs, fuck me!" She bites his shoulder while that tears out of her mouth, and that breaks any reserve he might have had about doing it too hard.

She's groaning with every breath, and he's not exactly being silent himself, this feels too amazing to be quiet, and he's a little worried about getting off before she does, because he knows those sounds, knows that's her building up to number two, and he doesn't want to leave her hanging, but, God, he's so close and it's been so long and she's pulling on him, scratching him to go faster, deeper.

He's rebuilding the bed in his mind, calmly, serenely applying layer after layer of finish onto the wood. Stroking it smooth and gentle, feeling the brush glide over… Shit that's not working at all. He's turning woodworking into sex in his mind.

She's so tight on him, rising up to meet each thrust, grinding against him, and he feels the tingles start, that gotta-come-now feeling that starts in his balls and spreads like molten gold everywhere. He's begging God that this does it for her, too, 'cause he's got nothing left in his bag of tricks, not that he can pull out this far gone. He's thrusting harder, faster, pulling her up to meet him and she bites down on his shoulder, hard, twitching, and feeling her body spasm on his throws him over the edge, falling into a chasm of searing, wet, pulsing pleasure.

* * *

He hopes he's not too heavy on her, but he's way too comfortable, and happy, to move, yet.

She's gently stroking his hair, and kisses his forehead.

Eventually he feels like his arms and legs are working again, so he lifts up, making sure he's got the edge of the condom, too, and rolls to his side, taking care of the condom and tossing it out before snugging in close to her.

"You're a cuddler?" she asks.

"Been known to happen."

She smiles at that, then kisses him, points to the bathroom door. "Bathroom?"

He nods.

"Back in a second." She grabs her purse and heads in, and in a few minutes is out again. He takes a moment to likewise get ready for bed, and then joins her, this time under the covers.

He yawns, and she giggles a bit at that while he spoons up behind her.

"This okay?" he asks.

She nods. "I'll shove you off if I get too hot."

That strikes him as reasonable.

She rolls over, so she's facing him. "You're not going to tell me it's been five years since you've had sex?"

He looks amused by that. "Am I that rusty?"

She laughs.

"No. Bit more than two. But they were still good when I needed them last." He'd gotten them when things were heating up with Dr. Ryan, and then they fizzled before getting to the point where he needed them, Susan didn't think they needed them, so they kept sitting in that drawer, and now they were on the other side of expired.

He kisses her, soft and tender, and then says, "But I am _so_ grateful you had some."

"Me too." She yawns, kisses him once more, and then rolls back over, so her back is to his chest. His chin comes to rest against her back, and he kisses the nape of her neck.

"'Night."

She kisses his index finger. "'Night."


	72. Valentines: Gibbs

Gibbs feels disoriented when he wakes. It takes him a second to get himself situated in both time and space. There's a warm female body pressed against him, red hair in his face, for a heartbeat he thought he was back with Shannon, but then the rest of his life came back, and he knew he wasn't.

Probably the sixth time that's happened to him. It only lasts for a second or two, and only happens the first time waking up with a new redhead, but… But this is different. He's not with Shannon, but this is the first time he's had that slip, and he's not feeling distressed when he rights himself in time.

He's not disappointed that it isn't her.

Abby's on his usual side of the bed, so he can't see his clock, but he's not feeling any desire to go springing out of bed and get started on the day. Also a first. His usual way of dealing with realizing that the woman lying next to him isn't Shannon is to hop up and do something: make coffee, work on whatever project he had going, go home, _something_. Because if he just lays there, he'd end up dwelling on who he wasn't with.

He stretches a little, inhaling and exhaling deeply, enjoying the way she feels against him, the long, smooth expanse of her back against his front, the way she smells, and even the fact that her hair is tickling his face.

That wears out its welcome pretty fast, so he carefully gathers her hair and tucks it under her neck.

She shifts a bit when he does that, and he's hoping he didn't just wake her up. She stills again, and he settles in to enjoy holding her, counting the freckles on her back and shoulder.

Eventually his bladder lets him know that now would be a really good time to get out of bed, so he does, carefully, making sure not to wake her, and he does get to see the clock, notices it's a bit before six, earlier than he usually wakes up, but he does have a new person in his bed.

He takes care of business, brushes his teeth, and heads back into the bedroom, thinking about morning sixty-nining and waking her up very nicely.

He sneaks back into bed, slow, easy movements, trying to not wake her up. Doesn't work. She's lying on her side, arms curled in front of her, hand under her chin, top knee against the bed, top foot draped over her lower calf. For a second, she looks very, very peaceful, and then one eye goes springing open as soon as his weight hits the mattress in front of her.

There's a split second of _huh?_ on her face, but then she, too orients herself in time and space, remembers why she's in Gibbs' bed and why he's naked, laying in front of her, propped on one elbow.

"'Morning," she says, stretching. He smiles and strokes his hand down her shoulder and side.

"Yep. Sleep well?"

She nods, inhaling, making a little purring sound as she stretches again. "Always sleep well after a good tucking in."

He chuckles at that as she gets up to use the bathroom.

When she's back she smells of toothpaste and morning. She slips back into bed with him, and kisses him properly.

This time is slower. They take longer, exploring each other, mapping out each other's curves and planes with fingers and lips, palms and tongues, finding old scars, and on Borin, one new one. Gibbs wonders, briefly, at the bright red bullet crease on her hip, but he doesn't ask. Now's not the time.

And she does like sixty-nine, and he does too, and God, she's brilliant at it. And he hopes what he's doing to her feels half as good as what she's doing to him, and he figures it does when she goes tight and bites the inside of his thigh, hard.

She ends up with a matching hickie on her thigh. He'd meant to be kissing her, but she did… something… he's not sure what, just that it felt beyond amazing… and he lost it.

They're both drowsing, warm, happy, comfortable. His face resting on her thigh, and he has one hand cupped over her hip. She's using his thigh as a pillow, too, and is gently stroking his now dormant penis. Not trying to turn him on, just touching to touch.

"What's on for the rest of your day?" she asks.

"Mmmm…" he blinks a few times, sliding fully into awake. "Only thing I _have_ to do is Molly's birthday party. Duck reminded me yesterday that I can't miss it. You?"

"Nothing. Phone doesn't ring, and I've got all day free. What's Sunday usually look like for you? Sounds like you've got other things you'd usually be doing."

"Run with Mona. Breakfast at the diner with the kids. Church. Sunday dinner at Breena's parents' house. But we've got the birthday party instead. Jimmy, Tim, and I cut out early for Bootcamp. Ziva meets us there. Tony showed up last week, hopefully he'll come today, too. Then home, dinner… woodworking. Play with Mona. Read sometimes. What's a typical day off look like for you?"

"You've got full Sundays."

He nods. "Empty Mondays through Fridays, but right now I've got full Sundays."

"Sleep in on Sunday. That's usually the start. Breakfast out." She yawns.

He laughs. "So, don't wake you up so early, next time?"

She shrugs. "Sundays I'm on call, it's better to grab me when you've got me. Never know when the phone'll ring."

He nods at that. "Know that story."

"Yep. After breakfast, swimming. Lunch with friends, usually. Call my parents in the afternoon. Maybe hit the range. Then takeout and catching up with all the shows I didn't watch over the week."

"Sounds like a good Sunday."

"I like it."

He kisses her thigh and was about to say, "Wanna get breakfast with me?" when her phone rang.

So much for 'If I don't get a call out."

She sighs, rolls over, reaching around on the floor, and finds her purse. She sits up. "Borin." She rubs her face while listening. He kisses her shoulder and then puts on a pair of shorts and heads downstairs.

It only takes him five minutes to put everything together. He's done this for himself more times than he could count, so doing it for her is just a matter of rote morning routine.

It's not fancy. But it's hot, and it's filling, and it'll keep you going. Big cup of coffee, scrambled eggs sandwiched between two pieces of toast.

He hears the shower going, and knocks. "Come in."

"Breakfast's sitting on the sink. Got a go bag in your car?"

"Yeah."

"I'll grab it and bring it up for you."

She pulls back the shower curtain, and wet, naked, Abby in his bathroom is making him want to whimper for mercy and shoot whichever son-of-a-bitch killed someone and is pulling her out of his home.

She reaches out, grabs the waistband of his boxers, and pulls him close for a long kiss, submerging him, again, in vivid sensations of exactly what he's going to be missing out on by her leaving. As soon as she catches the son-of-a-bitch, he's going to shoot that bastard, twice.

"Thanks," she says when she lets go.

He smiles wryly, at her, at the situation, at the fact that he's half-soaked, and desperately wants to hop in with her. "Keys in your purse?"

"Front pocket."

"Okay. I'll be up with your work clothes in a bit."

He strips out of the wet boxers, tosses on last night's jeans, and remembers that it's February and now is a really bad time to be outside in just a pair of jeans when his feet hit the ice cold front porch. It'll take longer to bundle up than it will to get her stuff. So he gets to her car (fast), finds her bag (fast), and almost sprints back into the house, where Mona's waiting for him, staring up, and wondering why he started their morning run without her.

"In a minute," he says to Mona, taking Borin's bag up, and then heading down to make sure his other lady gets some breakfast, too.

She comes down while he's getting food for Mona. She's carrying the coffee mug and plate (both empty), and wearing last night's jeans, but with a button-down and a jacket. She looks professional. Except for the damp hair.

"It'd be a stretch to think you've got a hairdryer?"

He nods. His hair's a little shaggier than usual, because he's not getting it cut every two weeks, but it's still short enough that a good toweling off and five minutes of air takes care of drying. Though he's thinking that by the end of today, he'll have one, and… maybe a pizza stone to go on his hearth grate, and _definitely_ a new pack of condoms.

She nods, having expected that answer and separates her hair into three hanks, starting to braid it.

"Where you going today?"

"Not sure, yet. Dunton Cove. Think it's somewhere on the Delmarva Peninsula. Got a ghost ships with two bodies on it."

He nods at that. She finishes her hair and shoulders her bag. "I had a really good time."

He smiles. "Wanna show you a lot of good times."

She smiles back at him, pleased by that, as he walks her to his front door. She's about to step out when something hits him.

"Wait."

"Wait?" She looks irked. "I've got to get going."

"You can hold up for two minutes." He kisses her fast and heads into his kitchen. It takes forty seconds to find it. Two seconds later he's kissing her again, pressing a key into her hands. "I know the schedule is insane. I never lock up on my own, but Mona's changed that. Whenever you want company, come on over. If I'm not here, let yourself in. I'll be back sooner or later. Sleep over at Tim and Abby's sometimes, but fire off a text, and I'll come. Don't want anyone else coming by, lock yourself in."

She stares at the key, and for a second looks a bit alarmed, but then what he's actually said hits her. She smiles, realizing he's not asking her to move in after one date. Just making sure that she knows she can just come over whenever, that his open door truly is, for her, and she can have privacy here, if she wants it.

"I lock up, can you get in?"

_Of course_ says the look on his face.

"Okay." She kisses him one last time, body flush against his, fingers twined in his hair, and he holds her close for several seconds after the kiss ends, hands spanning her hips, lips just touching hers, enjoying her body on his.

"Go get 'em."

"Enjoy your birthday party."

And she heads out. Mona stares up at him, _Okay, we're at the door again, we going on our run, now?_

He rubs his eyes. "Yeah, Mona. Let me put some more clothing on."

* * *

Gibbs usually doesn't spend a lot of time looking at himself, especially not when breakfast starts at eight, it's 7:45, he's naked and dripping wet, and he lives seventeen minutes from the diner.

But as he towels off his hair, he does look, seeing the bruises on his skin, three of them. He touches one, little tender, not bad. They'll be gone tomorrow or the next day.

Nothing about him changed between today and yesterday. His body is still the same, but it feels new.

Feels, hopeful, maybe.

Or it might just be that right now, he's wearing her touch on his skin, in real tangible reminders, and he likes that.

Too many women have drifted in and out of his life, never leaving a mark, but this one did. And he's proud to wear it.

* * *

When Gibbs walks into the diner for Sunday breakfast, late, with something that could, just possibly, be called an I-just-got-laid-shit-eating-grin on his face, he sees Jimmy and Tim glance at each other, can feel them both thinking it, and sees both of them break into grins, too.

"Looks like someone had a good night," Jimmy says, smug.

Gibbs nods.

"Gonna tell us about it?" Tim asks.

"Nope."

"Come on!" Abby says. "You can't not tell us about it."

Breena's nodding along with that. "First date in forever, you've got to tell us about it."

Gibbs shakes his head, little smile on his lips.

Elaine heads over, looks at him, pours the coffee, and calls back to her husband, "Add an order of pancakes to Gibbs' plate." Then she looks at him smiling. "You better bring her in to meet me. Twenty years you've been coming in here, and I've never seen that look on your face. I want to meet the lady that's inspiring it."

Gibbs sips his coffee, without comment.

* * *

Church came. Church went. The only interesting part of it was that, while sitting there, it hits Gibbs that he should call or text or something, Borin.

And sooner would be better than later. First time he and Hollis hooked up, he didn't call after, and she was not happy about that.

He didn't call any of the ladies after her either, though he did go out of his way to 'run into them' sometime in the next day or two and see them again.

But he's not going to 'run into' Borin. There's no reason for him to be in Dunton Cove. (Wherever it may be.) And true, he's got nothing planned tomorrow besides calling Senior and learning more about how expensive real estate works, and adding another coat of finish to Shannon, but he's not going to go stalk her job.

He's got enough sense to know that's a bad idea.

Which is why, when he gets into his car to drive over to Jimmy and Breena's, he shifts his phone from call to text. If she's working, if she's busy, a call could just be annoying. But a few quick words…

_Happy Valentine's Day, Abby._ He debates sticking a smiley face on that and decides not to.

Gibbs hits send and pockets his phone, putting the car in reverse, getting into toddler birthday party mode.

* * *

The party was winding down. The guest of honor had been put down for naptime. (Her oldest cousin napping beside her, her little sister, not quite on the same schedule was bright-eyed and enjoying cuddling with her Aunt Ziva.)

The whole family, plus Ed and Jeannie, are here in Jimmy and Breena's kitchen, milling around, chatting, moving in the direction of getting ready to go home.

It is in the midst of this, that Ducky reaches to Penny, and kisses her, on the lips. That's not unheard of. It's not common, either. And this sort of kiss, deep, passionate, maybe not erotic, but very definitely loving, is not the sort of gentle display of affection the rest of the crew has seen over and over again.

Compared to clinking a ring against a glass, this is a much more effective, and direct, way of getting the attention of everyone in the room.

When he pulls back, eyes sparkling, grin on his face, everyone else is staring at them.

He kisses her one more time, quick little peck on the lips.

"You weren't there, darling, when Jimmy and Breena celebrated their wedding, but they asked me to say a few words about marriage. Though, given my lack of experience on the matter, I think it had more to do with having a soothing voice than any sort of wisdom on my part." Jimmy and Breena laugh at that.

"However, I did appear to come up with something relevant, which Edward reminded me of a few months ago." He strokes her face, looking into her eyes. "The point of marriage vows is that they are public. That it's not enough to build a life together, but that you do it in public, that you stand before everyone who has ever mattered to you and proclaim that you will devote your life to that person."

Penny's staring at him, eyes wide, knowing where this has to be going, but looking like she cannot believe he's doing it.

"Penny, the journey has been long, and I have been blessed with a rich and satisfying life, not a day of which I would trade for any other, but this last year, spent with you, has been the sweetest of all of them. We're surrounded by everyone in this world who I love, and I would like to say, in front of all of them, that I will devote all of my remaining days to the love of you."

She's smiling, tears in her eyes, and he kisses her, quickly, one more time.

"There is a symbol that goes with these words, one…" his voice catches, "One I would like to wear. One I would like you to wear."

He pulls the ring box out of his jacket pocket and opens it.

Penny doesn't gasp, but that short, sharp inhale is awfully close. Gibbs wouldn't believe that she could get flustered, but apparently Ducky's managed to do it. He takes the first of the wedding bands out of the box. Gibbs isn't close enough to get a very good look at it, but he can see some sort of reddish metal twined around a cool gray one, and there's a blue stone at the top.

"Red gold for the passion and heat that keeps us together. Steel for strength, for love that will sustain us through the years to come. Star sapphire, because you are the star that lights the twilight of my life. Penelope Langston," he's staring up into her eyes, so much love on his face, "be my wife?"

She's crying and smiling and manages to get out, "Yes" while nodding at him.

Ducky slips the ring onto her finger, and kisses her again.

"May I be your husband?"

"Yes!"

He hands her the other ring. Same mix of gold and steel, but no stone. She slips it onto his ring finger and kisses him, long, and soft, and so happy.

There were hugs, and kisses, and congratulations, and girls cooing over rings, and at one point Ducky did manage to get Jethro alone to say, "I believe it is safe to say that I, _nailed that,_ and there shall be no weeping women complaining at you for keeping secrets."

Gibbs chuckles and shakes his head. "No Duck. Not gonna hear a peep out of them. How far ahead did you have to plan that?"

"Edward did say something that made a lot of sense on Christmas. It took me a day to remember who Timothy's jeweler was and yet another day to track him down. The rings were not done until yesterday, though."

Gibbs smiles at that, watching Breena, Abby, Ziva, Penny, and Jeannie all inspecting Penny's new ring.

"Looks like you did good."

Ducky nods, an _of course_ look on his face. "And now…" he leaves Jethro, detours to the foyer to grab their coats, and returns to Penny's side, checking the clock, while holding open her coat. "And now, my dear, we have a plane to catch."

"We do?"

"Indeed." He's smiling, eyes sparkling, mischief radiating off of him. "One cannot properly celebrate a marriage without a honeymoon!"

"And where is this plane going?" Penny asks as she puts on the coat.

"That, my lady, is a surprise, but I shall promise you will be happy to get there when it lands." He puts on his own coat, adjusts his fedora, wraps his arm around his bride, and waves goodbye to the rest of the crew.

As soon as the door closes, Ed looks around at the rest of the group from his seat at the kitchen table and says, "None of us will ever be that cool." The other guys all nod.

Jeanie ambles over and wraps an arm around him, kissing the top of her head. "But none of us will mind if you _try_."

He grins up at her. "Oh, I've got some plans for you." Then he looks to the rest of the family. "Time for us to be heading off, too. I think."

And with that, Molly's birthday party really did break up.

* * *

Speaking of plans, the girls have _something_ planned for them. It is ultra-top-secret, but involves all three of them.

It also involves the guys being shut out of the Palmer house, though, upon naptime ending, Gibbs has instructions to come in, pick up baby girls, and then transport them to their fathers/uncles where they shall stay until after dinner time.

So, since this is the long afternoon nap, the guys have two hours, which is long enough for a quick Bootcamp sans Ziva.

* * *

They fought. One on one on one on one. It was fun. Played to Tony's strength of being better at understanding a fight, so he wasn't quite so behind Tim and Jimmy's been-training-for-a-year-now speed. Pretty much looked like a brawl. Though none of them were working particularly hard. Gibbs because he's just feeling too good to muster any sort of real killer instinct, and Tim and Jimmy and Tony are all hoping to get _very_ laid tonight and don't want to be sore and achy for that.

So they don't go at it for long before calling time.

They're heading to the locker room, (the three younger guys knowing this is their prime get ready for tonight time) and Tim asks Jimmy, "Did you know Ducky was going to do that?"

Jimmy holds up his hands shaking his head, and then opens his locker, stripping out of his clothing while saying, "About a month ago he swore me to secrecy about the time-off request. I thought a get-away somewhere warm was his Valentine's Day gift, but that was all."

"Gibbs?" Jimmy asks, grabbing his towel.

Jethro's untying his shoe, and shakes his head, he can honestly say, "Not a clue." Because if he had spent hours thinking of it, though he didn't he never would have come up with _that_ for how Ducky would make sure all the girls were happy.

"You know, that's the way to do it." Tony says as he pulls his shirt over his head. "At home, your whole family there, good rings, nice words, and then off to the honeymoon. No flowers, no renting a place, no dithering over cake flavors. You tell her you love her, you offer her the rings, and then party time on the beach. Ziva and I ever renew our vows, that's how we're gonna do it."

"I liked dithering over cake flavors," Tim says as he tucks his shoes into his locker and tosses his shirt in on top of them.

"You would," Tony replies.

"We had great cakes!"

"Okay, yeah, they were, still… What Ducky did, that's a wedding!" Tony sounds very definitive, tossing his shorts and briefs into his locker, wrapping his towel around his waist.

"That was a wedding for a guy," Jimmy says as he pulls out his towel and bag of toiletries. "Covered everything a guy thinks matters. And sure the girls loved it because it was completely out of the blue and the ring was gorgeous and it's Valentines' Day and he's _Ducky_ so he can get away with it. Plus, she's been married before and did the whole white wedding thing once. But if any of us had tried that…" Jimmy's shaking his head.

Tim nods in agreement. "Yeah, that wouldn't have flown for Abby. We renew our vows someday, and that would probably work, and anytime I want to show up with expensive custom jewelry and shower her with love words, she'll be happy, but… I loved our wedding. It was, right, you know?"

Gibbs shrugs, tossing his shirt into his locker, back to them. "That was right for them."

Tim nods. "I think you're right on that. Haven't ever seen her look like that. Just shocked and happy and… It was right for them."

Tony, who had been facing Jimmy and Tim turns, seeing Jethro, who is currently facing his locker, and sees the nail marks down his back. Then Gibbs grabs his towel and turns to face them.

"Whoa, you did not get that from the fight." Tony says, staring at the bite marks on Gibbs chest and thigh. Jimmy and Tim looking over, summoned by the shock in Tony's voice. "That was one _hell_ of a date, wasn't it?"

Gibbs looks down at the two bite marks on his chest, touches one of them lightly, smiles gently, nods, then looks up at Jimmy, Tim, and Tony, smiles, cocky this time, and says, "Duck's not the only one who's got some moves." Then he calmly slings the towel over his shoulder and heads off to the showers, all three of them just staring at him.

* * *

"What are they doing?" Jimmy asks as Gibbs hands Kelly to Tim. They've all gathered at McGee's house, waiting, with instructions to baby wrangle and feed themselves.

He shakes his head. He's got a pretty good guess as to what the girls were doing. He saw Abby and Ziva, who were both made up very pretty and in their bathrobes, so he's guessing they've got a camera somewhere and are taking pictures, but he's not telling. They're going to this much effort, he's not spoiling the surprise.

So he just smiles at them, says, "Trust me, you'll like it," and finishes with, "Got some shopping to do." He waves and heads off, in search of a hairdryer, pizza stone, and, most definitely, condoms.

* * *

When Gibbs gets to his car, his phone buzzes. _Happy Valentines to you, too, Jethro._

_How's it going?_

_Just finished processing the boat and where it landed. ME's got time of death but no cause, yet. Gonna be a long night._

_Know all about that._

_Yeah, I bet you do. Gotta get back to it._

_Okay. Go get 'em._

_Will do._

He's about to let her go, tucking his phone back into his pocket when something hit s him. _Hey, you get to eat yet?_

He can feel the eye roll. _One power bar and six coffees since breakfast. No time. We're just heading back now. Why?_

_J_

* * *

He googles Dunton Cove, VA, and sees that A: It's not on the Delmarva Peninsula, it's much further south and B: 'heading back now' means 'won't hit DC for hours.' So, he heads off to do his shopping, stocking up on groceries and a few other things to make Borin feel more at home in his home.

Unlike with his clothing, where he just shoved the new ones on top of the old ones, he takes the old condoms out and tosses them. He might, eventually, wear the old clothes again, he's not going to be using the old condoms.

He heads down, not feeling like eating, yet. Mona's watching him, looking expectant.

"Fetch?"

She bounds up and runs out the doggie door to the back yard.

He grabs a tennis ball and his jacket and heads out, too.

While he's tossing the ball around, he thinks about Borin, and about this whole… life… thing.

He's not a cop. Not anymore. And right now he's a lot less bothered by that than usual. Which is not to say that it's making him happy, but… it's not a kick in the balls right now, either.

But she is. And right now, he wants to… He's not even entirely sure. It was a really good first date. And he wants more of them, a lot more of them. He wants to hear about what happened with the HR guy (they never got to that) and how today's case went, and if she's on call because they're short men or because it's Sunday and she's being fair, making sure everyone gets a turn at saying goodbye to their off time.

He wants to know how she ended up with the Coast Guard. They talked about the Marines, but not how she got from there to here. She was an officer, so it's not like they would have just booted her out.

He wants to know about the old scars, and the new one.

He doesn't want to scare her off. Doesn't want to go from being so aloof women can't tell if he's really interested to so clingy they need a jackhammer to get rid of him.

The problem with not following old patterns is that he's got no idea how this will work. He can't just imagine it and see how it's going to unfold.

And it might be that she's just looking for some company for her downtime. Or she might, like Tim suggested, be looking for a home.

And right now he's not a cop, and he's not entirely sure he's a good bet for anyone's home, either, and for that matter, he's not entirely sure he's ready to be someone's home... But she is a cop, and if anyone knows how to take care of a cop, it's him. And right now, he wants to do some taking care of.

So he pulls out his phone, and starts to make some calls.

* * *

Two hours later, when Borin got back to her office, she found coffee delivered from Java Jane's sitting next to a bowl of pho. No note, no explanation, no hint of Gibbs around, so she's not sure if he brought it and left it here, or if he had it delivered and paid for it, but however it happened, there's hot food waiting for her on her desk when she sits down, ready to do more work.

She sends one more text. _Thanks._

Gibbs is inside Shannon, sanding the finish yet again, second to last coat for the inside, when he gets it. _Hope you like it._

_Best Valentine's in years, Gibbs._

He smiles at that. _Me too. Shoot for better next year?_

_Sure._


	73. Valentines: McGee

"God, Borin must be so hot! I mean, I knew she had to be, but… Damn!" They're back at Tim's house, lurking in the kitchen as Tim gets dinner ready, and Tony's been… talking is probably a stretch, musing might be better, as to exactly how those bite marks got on Gibbs.

Tim and Jimmy have gotten to the eye-rolling stage, because, while it's true that all three of them just stared at Gibbs as he headed into the showers, more less all thinking the same, _God_ damn _, good for you, Gibbs!_ and it's also true that both of them are interested in gossiping about this, they don't want to gossip with _Tony_ about it, they want to tell their _wives._

And it may be that Tony wants to talk to Ziva, but she's not here, and they are, so he's chattering away, sitting on the floor, stacking blocks for Kelly, while Jimmy finishes feeding Anna her bottle, and Molly plays with her new birthday toys.

"It's a good thing you muffed asking her out, McGee. She would have _killed_ you."

"That was her!" Jimmy says, eyes wide. Tony more or less sprinted down to Autopsy to produce a verbatim re-do of Tim asking out Borin as soon as he got a shot, and Jimmy laughed so hard he almost wet his pants. (Ducky had to take his glasses off to wipe the tears of laughter from his eyes.)

Tim gives both of them the stink-eye. "I needed a way to get tickets for something fun to take Abby, my Abby, to without it looking like a date. So, I had you buy tickets, did the worst job I _possibly_ could asking Borin out, oh, and by the way, later that night, when you and Ziva were playing darts, she still said 'Yes,' which meant I had to explain how I hadn't actually intended for her to be even remotely interested in saying yes, so she wished me luck, which is why Borin knew about Abby and I before you did, Tony.

"So, while you full-on chickened out, I asked Borin and Abby out in one day and both of them said yes. And, Tony, just because I haven't had any the last two weeks, so you haven't seen them, it's not like Jimmy and Gibbs have never seen me in the locker room sporting hickies." He taps his wrist cuff. "I started wearing this to cover some bruises I really enjoyed getting." Jimmy doesn't look even remotely surprised by that.

Tony squints a bit at that, then shrugs and comes back with, "I didn't chicken out!"

"Sure," Tim says, sarcasm high. "You were going to 'let me have her.'" He nods, scathing doubt on his face.

Tony rolls his eyes. Jimmy flashes a curious look to Tony. "You left that part out."

"When you know you're in love with someone else, you don't ask out a woman who might expect more than a quick fu—good time." Molly's looking up at him with very big eyes, listening intently. This conversation probably doesn't make much sense to her, but he's fairly sure that she'll pick up on that word and start repeating it if she hears it. And he does not want to have a conversation with Breena about how her two-year-old learned _that_ word. No, he's more than happy to have that be on Dad or Uncle Tim. "Those days all I was doing was picking girls up at bars. Wasn't looking for anyone who might expect me to spend the night. And someone I'd work with…" Tony shakes his head vigorously. "No… Let alone the female version of Gibbs. That'd be a disaster all around. Still, don't think I've ever seen him that relaxed."

Jimmy nods, and Tim has to agree with that. Hell, Gibbs was borderline mellow today. That's unheard of. "When we lived on base housing, there was this one guy, three houses over, old, been in the Navy forever, he'd call it 'getting' your ashes hauled.'" Tim's also aware of the two-year-old listening to this conversation while she plays with her birthday toys. "Yeah, Gibbs got his ashes _hauled_."

"Bet she's pretty damn relaxed, too," Tony says with a smirk.

"Think she's on a case? Maybe… I don't know, being nice, and smiling, and driving her co-workers crazy because they can't figure out what the hell happened to the Borin they know?" Tim asks with a chuckle.

"No!" Tony shakes his head definitively. "You remember Gibbs on a case with Hollis? She's biting everyone's heads off trying to get the job done faster so she can go bite on Gibbs some more."

Jimmy and Tim laugh at that.

Molly pipes up. "No biting!"

"You're right, Molly, no biting." Jimmy stares at Tony _did you have to mention biting_ on his face. Tony looks back at him _you were laughing, too_ on his. "You don't bite the people at day care or your sister. Uncle Jethro's friend was being very naughty."

"Very, very naughty. She was being a very bad girl." Tony says eyes wide, face serious, nodding in agreement with Jimmy at Molly. Then he looks up at Tim and Jimmy and smirks. Tim and Jimmy try not to laugh.

Molly nods, pleased that she's correctly remembering the rules, and then returns to whacking the little dolls that pop up on her game.

"Wouldn't have pegged her for a… _kisser_ ," Tony says, watching Molly play.

Jimmy shrugs. "Basic anatomy Tony, orgasm causes muscle spasms. More intense the orgasm the more muscles spasm. Jaw's a muscle. There's a reason why simultaneous orgasms and sixty-nining isn't a great plan."

Tim and Tony just stare at him, and Jimmy looks back at them, smug, and says to Tim, "What, you think you're the only one who's ever made a girl black out? Gibbs was just lucky she had his thigh in her mouth. 'Course, that tension/release response works both ways, bet she's got some interesting marks, too."

Tony winces. "Palmer, that was one sentence further than you needed to go. I don't need images of Gibbs getting off in my head."

Jimmy shrugs. Good for the goose, good for the gander, right? Not like he edits Gibbs out of the mental pictures that go along with this conversation. Apparently, though, Tony does. "Okay, here's a better image. What do you think _our_ girls are doing?" He's patting Anna's back, trying to get a burp out of her as he asks.

"What makes you think we know any more than you do?" Tim asks, as the timer on the oven bings. He pulls dinner for the four of them that eat solid food out of the oven. (Baked salmon, roasted onions, zucchini, and eggplant.)

Jimmy flashes Tim his _I can't believe you just asked me that_ look. "Gosh, I don't know? Somehow I got this weird idea that you two were like, _cops,_ and that Tony never met a mystery he could leave be, and you peek at you presents ahead of time, so, like, maybe you two would have snooped or something?"

Tony opens his mouth to say something along the lines of how, as a now veteran husband, he's learned that if Ziva says leave it alone, he's going to leave it alone. But he's cut short when all three of their cells buzz in quick succession.

Tim's had a text from Abby. _Check your email._

He flashes back. _Checking._

It takes his security program a few seconds to burn through the encryption on her email, but finally it does, and he sees there are ten photos and a video linked to it.

As soon as he opens the first photo, memories of Afghanistan and the day he got home from Afghanistan flood through him. Same cobalt blue teddy with white lace trim, same matching panties, but this one isn't a selfie, Breena or Ziva must have snapped it.

She's kneeling on the bed, nibbling her bottom lip, nipples hard, hands clasped behind her back, sweet, innocent, but not really expression on her face, her makeup soft and natural looking. The sheets and pillows are mussed, her hair is wild, and she looks like she's just hopped up from bed to greet him and invite him to join her.

He closes his eyes and bites his lip. _Fuck!_

He can hear Tony chuckling, and Jimmy's not making any noise at all.

He knows not to look at the other nine pictures. They're all going to be variations on this theme and he can see from the thumbnails they're going to get sexier and sexier.

"Killing us, Jimmy, that's what they're doing," he says as he sees the little icon for a movie.

Jimmy nods slowly, not looking away from whatever's on his phone.

Tim can't make himself not click on the video. His brain is reminding him he's standing in the kitchen, Jimmy and Tony four feet away, Molly and Kelly on the floor, and there's absolutely no shot at all that he can watch anything that'll be on there and not get hard, but his finger still taps the screen and it starts to play.

He hears a quick giggle and hits mute, fast. He does not want Tony or Jimmy to hear whatever it is that's coming up.

It's a striptease. Oh God, she's got on that coat he got her for Christmas, covered from throat to toes, and she's slowly peeling it off, slipping each button from its hole, moving to the beat of music he can't hear. It hits the floor, and she's in black stockings, black satin corset, black satin thong, and long black gloves.

Tim whimpers. He can't make that sound not rip from his mouth.

She's slowly pulling off the first glove, rocking to the music, teasing him with little glimpses of breast and ass, and every single ounce of blood in Tim's body is racing toward his dick as fast as it can possibly go.

He hears Jimmy choke next to him and realizes he must be seeing something awfully similar.

"What?" Tony asks. He's starting to circle around to see, and Tim rapidly tucks his phone into his pocket. Tony takes a step toward Jimmy, and Tim has enough presence of mind to grab him and stop him, because from the look on Jimmy's face he's completely unaware of the fact that he's in Tim's kitchen with two other guys.

Finally, Tim pulls enough brain cells together to say, "You just get an email from Ziva?"

"Yeah." Tony grins.

"Good stuff in there?"

"Promise of good stuff later."

Tim takes a deep breath. Abby knows how to encrypt an email. So what he got was encrypted. He doubts Ziva does, and she'd be aware enough of the risk, so she wouldn't send something like that without encryption, and Breena just wouldn't care.

"It's _really_ good stuff. Jimmy and I just got ours."

"How good?" Tony glances at Jimmy, seeing him completely absorbed by whatever he's watching, absently patting Anna.

Jimmy's still staring at his phone. Tim watches him, sees the tension in his face and shoulders, and he's got a good idea of what exactly it is Jimmy's seeing.

"It's _really_ , **_really_** good," he says.

"Like, dirty pictures?" Tony says with a wide grin on his face.

"Yeah, like that."

And Tony, understanding the guy code of you don't look at another man's wife, especially if she might be naked, takes a step back, so there's no shot of seeing the screen on Jimmy's phone, and says, "So, you two got emails of really, really good stuff, and I got an email telling me there would be good stuff later."

"Apparently."

Jimmy finally blinks, puts his phone into his pocket, hand shaking, carefully gives Anna to Tim, and walks out of the kitchen without saying anything.

Tony watches him do it. "I really don't want to know what he's about to do, do I?"

"Probably not." Tim shakes his head. "Let's put it this way, Breena, Abby, and Ziva don't seem to get that there's a point where teasing stops being fun and crosses the line into torture. And in that Anna's a little over two months old, my guess is that tonight is supposed to be their first night back at it…"

"Oh!" Tony suddenly gets exactly (okay, not _exactly_ , but he's got a much better idea of why Jimmy's acting like a fourteen-year-old) what's going on with Jimmy.

"Yeah. Can I have your cell?"

Tony looks confused. "Why do you want mine?"

"Because if I take mine out of my pocket, I'll see the end of what Abby sent me, and… now's not the time."

"The end? Wait… video?"

Tim swallows. "Yeah."

A really dirty smirk spreads across Tony's face. "Happy Valentines to us, then?"

Tim shakes his head. "Yeah, and I need to send her a text and if I pull my phone out, I'll just watch, and end up in pretty close to the same state Jimmy is."

Tony laughs and hands over his phone. Tim sends a quick text to Abby and Breena.

_Tim here. You are_ _ EVIL! _ _Jimmy's brain_ _ melted _ _. That was not nice!_

A minute later he feels his phone buzz, so he takes it out, sees the video has ended and finds _Yours didn't?_ from Abby.

_I stopped watching! I'm in the kitchen with two other guys and three babies. That was not cool at all._

He can feel her grin from here. _It was kind of cool. ;)_

_No! Got babies to watch, Tony to entertain, and dinner to eat, and all I can think about is what's on this email._

_That's the idea._

_EVIL_

_Come on, you know you like it_ _J_

_Not saying I don't. (Really, not saying that at all!) But your timing_ _**sucks** _ _. You do not send something like that to three guys when we're_ _**together** _ _. Seriously, Jimmy's either icing himself down or jerking off in our bathroom, and I'm sure as hell not getting close enough to figure out which._

_LOL_

_Breena here: He's what?_

_He's got his phone on him, go text him._

_Okay_

_Abby again: What's Tony doing?_

_Grinning like a smug moron. Ziva just told him good stuff would be coming later. He didn't end up seeing anything too revealing because she seems to get how this works._

_Okay, sorry. Next time we decide to make some smut for you guys, we'll make sure you're alone before sending it off._

_Thank you. That's all I'm asking for. Wait… Again?_

_Well, we had fun doing it. Sounds like timing aside, you're enjoying it._

_Oh fucking God_ _**YES!** _ _(sound of me whimpering for mercy and begging for more)_

He can imagine how satisfied she's looking when she reads that. A second later he gets. _J_ _So, yeah, there'll be a next time._

_When are you coming home?_

_Ziva's doing her makeup for the last shot, Breena's getting the stage set, and I'm wrapping up the Photoshopping on the one's we've already done, so… call it another hour and a half?_

_Okay, see you then._

_Good._

_You're getting fucked through the wall when you get here. Putting Kelly to bed early, waiting for you naked and eager, and as soon as you're in the door I'm wrapping your legs around my waist, backing you into a wall and showing you exactly how hard that video made me._

_Good. Wanna feel you in me as soon as I get home._

He groans when he reads that, sees Tony staring at him, curious, and says, "Gibbs isn't the only one getting his ashes _hauled_."

Tony laughs at that.

* * *

An hour later, as he's feeding Kelly, after the guys left, Tim decides to look at the pictures and watch the video.

It's not like he's unfamiliar with sexual arousal or desire.

And it's not like he and Abby never play games or she never dresses up for him.

But it has been a while.

And this…

They're pin ups. No full nudity. Nothing that'd get more than a PG-13. But each costume has been picked to hit his buttons and her hair and makeup is carefully done for each of them. He can tell that in some of them she has to be wearing Breena or Ziva's stuff, because it's nothing like what she owns and it's a little too small on her, but that's oh so good, too.

Some of them are a little translucent so he gets glimpses of shadows of tattoos and nipples. And there's one where she's lying on the bed, on her stomach, propped on her elbows, wearing a red satin slip, reading one of his books, and her legs are spread _almost_ far enough apart for him to get a glimpse of pussy, but just not quite far enough apart for it, and the slip is just tight enough and sheer enough that he can see the line between her buttocks, and _fuck_ these shots are just killing him.

Kelly's complaining because he's not being properly attentive to getting the food into her mouth. So he shuts down the phone and tries to focus on baby wrangling.

Dinner for Kelly, bath time, because at seven months old she needs to be hosed down after all non-nursing meal, and then Goodnight Moon, lullabies, and sleep time.

Which puts him at twenty minutes until Abby's due home.

So he opens the video, and God, it hits him just as hard, if not harder, because he's not in the kitchen with two other guys, and this time there's sound.

She's dancing and peeling off each piece of clothing. And the music, it takes him a second to remember where he knows it from, but it was playing the last time they had sex at a club. Hard, steady beat his brain already has associated with sex, as she slips each stocking down her leg, flashing him as she crosses and uncrosses them, teasing him with a bump and grind wearing just a tiny, little black thong. She finishes naked, straddling a chair, rocking against it, skin flushed, back arched, looking post-orgasmic and delicious.

It takes a minute before he has enough control over his hands to turn the video off and hit the text screen.

_On your way home?_

A minute later he gets back. _Yeah, at the stoplight at Tuner._

_Just watched the video. Play a game with me tonight?_

_Always. What kind of game?_

_Gonna ravish you._ His hands are shaking as he texts that, so he has to back up and delete a few times to get it right.

_Ooooo!_

_Oh yeah. You wearing panties?_

_No._

_Skirt?_

_Of course._

_Find a place, stop, put some on. Gonna cut them off you._

_I like the sound of this._

_I really hope so. You wet?_

_I thought you said you saw the video. Of course I'm wet!_

He groans at that. It wasn't just a show, she liked doing it, really liked it. _Even better. Park so your door is next to the Highlander, say three feet away._

_Okay. Mysterious._

_This is what the step past gonna fuck you through the wall looks like._

_Light's green. Home in 15._

* * *

Fifteen minutes. Either this is a really good plan, or it's a really bad one, but Janice did say that it helped if you were already leaning in that direction, and right now, he really is.

He heads up to his room, and finds the little tester bottle of... somehow he hadn't managed to notice the name before, but he does now, Satyr.

Why not?

He opens it up, and God, it _reeks_. Dirty goats. Dirty goats cats have peed on. Blech. And it's black. The color of old tar. He's hoping, as he puts the tiniest little drop of it he can manage on just one wrist (it leaves a mucky brown stain) that this works out.

He heads to his closet, looking for a belt. He wants everything about tonight to broadcast exactly how turned on he is, wants her to feel the power of it, and slowly stripping off a belt will help with that.

If he had button fly jeans, he'd put them on, too. The image of popping each button, hand moving slowly down the fly, the feel of his dick hard, pressing against the denim, straining to get free, strong in his mind.

He slips his belt through the loops on his jeans, feeling very turned on, very... cocky. And not so much in a can take on any challenge that comes his way sort of way, but in a literal, balls in charge, much more focused on his dick than he usually is, feeling like he's a walking hard-on sort of way.

He's also not smelling like dirty goats or cat pee. No, not those, just very male. Very, very male. He's feeling urgent, and insistent, forceful. He heads back to the vial and adds a bit more, upping the amount to what he usually puts on.

Yeah, very much not dirty goats. Horny as a goat. Randy goats looking to fuck anything that will let him. Wild-goat man with a huge, raging, throbbing erection, grabbing a barely dressed woman, dancing around a bonfire, wearing translucent wisps of fabric that flutter around her as she moves, carrying her off to ravish her under the full moon in some sort of ancient fertility ritual as she screams and begs in ecstasy, ripping her nails down his back as her legs wrap tight around his hips and her pussy quivers and clenches around him in shuddering orgasm after shuddering orgasm, as he plunges into her over and over and over… Yeah, that's _definitely_ going on.

His pants are way too damn tight as he tucks his knife into his pocket, very much looking forward to cutting Abby's panties off and burying himself in her over and over and over as he squeezes his dick through his jeans… and if he doesn't stop that this is going to be done before she shows up.

So he stops, grabs the baby monitor, (Kelly usually sleeps right through, but he'll plug it into the wall socket, so they can hear if she wakes.) and heads outside to wait.

* * *

Abby does as directed. There's a gas station on the corner of Patterson and Grove, so she stops there, grabs the bag she had taken to Breena's, and changes into some panties. The idea of having them cut off again, because it's been a long time since they played that game, sending some very happy tingles all through her.

Getting home, she sees the porch light is off, and so are all the house lights. Which means once she turns her headlights off, their front yard, and more importantly the place she parks as per Tim's directions, is awfully dark. Moon's out, so it's not pitch black, but it's not well-lit, either. Probably a good plan, the neighbors don't need to see what's about to happen out here.

_Perfect._

If it wasn't staged, it would set her danger sense off. As it is, there's this sense of heightened anticipation. She knows he's going to jump out from somewhere, but not when, not where, and not what (exactly) he's going to do when he does.

She doesn't see him as she pulls in. But it's dark, so she doesn't expect to. She knows that she won't see him until he wants her to.

She's expecting it, or something like it, yet it still takes her by surprise when less than a heartbeat after closing the door to her car he's materialized from somewhere, twists her to face him, and pushes her back against the door of the SUV.

His hands pin hers to the car, holding her wrists flush against cold metal. His legs are between hers, grinding his pelvis, cock, into her.

"Feel it? Feel how hard that video made me?" he says, voice low, hard, almost dangerous, each word feeling like a slow, wet lick over her clit.

"Yes."

He arches into her, grinding what feels like a just on the verge of coming hard-on against her, and she moans.

He lifts her hands over her head, pinning both of them in his right hand, just above her head, and reaches with his left into his pocket.

"Watch." She does, eyes wide, nodding, as he flicks open the blade, puts the knife on the hood of the car, yanks her skirt up, picks the knife up again, and very carefully slips the blade between her hip and the waistband once, twice, slitting it fast on both sides, tossing the knife aside, and pulling what was left of her panties off of her.

She watches him do it and breathes, "Fuck, Tim."

He's staring at her, eyes scalding hot. " _Exactly._ Keep watching."

He doesn't usually wear belts on the weekend, but he is now. He's taken just enough of a step back so she can watch him undo it.

Her hands pinned, cold winter air on her naked skin, his voice, and the sight of his left hand deliberately yanking off his belt, working the button on his fly, her eyes start to close as another moan slips through her lips.

"Keep your fucking eyes open! I want you to see it." He shoves his pants down around his thighs, pulling his cock out. She can feel it hot and hard against her hip for a second before he guides it into her in one fast, hard, balls-deep thrust that has both of them moaning.

"Fuck, Abby, feel that? Feel how hard it is?" He's grinding into her, rubbing his pelvis into her clit.

"God, yes!" He lets go of her wrists and pulls her up a few inches, wrapping her legs around his hips, thrusting into her relentlessly and making the car shake. "Tim, fuck!"

"Yes. Gonna fuck you so hard you tremble for a week." She's back against the car. He's using it and his weight to keep her up, as his hand settles into her hair, tightening into a fist at the base of her skull, keeping her looking into his eyes. "Gonna pump into you over and over, fill you up with me, and lick it off your quivering thighs when I get done." His other hand clenches on her hip, and she's straining against him, trying to get just a little more friction on her clit because she's so close and this is almost enough but not quite there.

"Gonna lay you out, naked, here where everyone can see. Gonna bury my face in that delicious pussy, and lick you all over." His thrusting is getting erratic, losing its rhythm and she knows he's almost ready to come. "Gonna make you come so hard the neighbors complain about the noise." His words slur into a long groan as his body tightens and spasms, finishing off the first round in hard, wet pulses.

After a minute, he's still breathing fast, but let her put her legs down, and pulls back. Then he kisses her, soft and gentle, smiles, and says, "Good start?"

"Fuck yes!"

"Good." He drops to his knees, pulling her skirt off, doesn't want to deal with it, draping her right thigh over his shoulder.

"Tim!" She'd been so close before, and the deep, wet, sucking kisses he's laying all over her pussy are burning through her, making her ache as he kisses closer and closer without actually touching her where she _needs_ him.

She's whimpering, loudly, as he gently nibbles along each of her labia. "God, baby, please!"

One of his fingers slips between her lips, getting very wet, but it's just a tease, soft, gliding friction, but no real stretch. Then he slips it further back, gently circling over her anus with it as his tongue finds her clit.

Her hands clench and her head falls back as he circles his tongue and finger together. Same time, same speed, incredible pleasure making every muscle in her body quiver.

"Tim!" She's so close. She can feel it, a massive, shaking, crying orgasm, just inches away, just outside of her reach. She's pulling on his hair, trying to make him go faster, harder, but he won't. He's keeping her hovering on the edge, drawing it out.

And then he wasn't. In one coordinated move he sucks her clit, hard, while slipping that finger into her and pleasure and burn all hit at once in a tidal wave of sensation that has her moaning his name and soaring, higher on his touch than any drug has ever taken her.

She comes down slowly, eventually aware of the fact that they're in their driveway, and that it's cold out, and that kneeling on the gravel driveway probably isn't very comfortable for him.

She pets his hair, and kisses his forehead. He lays a gentle kiss on her mound and looks up at her, as she starts standing on her own again.

"I got your face all wet."

He smiles at that, wiping his mouth. "I like to think of it as I got you all wet."

She laughs. He stands up, kissing her lazily, both of them leaning against the car. Then he pulls up his pants, buttons them, and picks her up, Rhett-Butler-carrying-Scarlet-style. She giggles, delighted at that, purring contentedly in his arms.

He planned it ahead of time, left the door a centimeter open, but she didn't know that and makes an appropriately impressed sound when he kicks it open and carries her to their bed.

He places her on their bed, kisses her again, and says, "Back in a minute. Need to go find your clothing. Don't want Heather getting here tomorrow and wondering when she finds your panties cut to bits in the driveway."

Abby laughs at that, stretching lazy and pleased. "Good plan."

He's back a few minutes later, finding her naked in their bed, waiting for him. He strips and joins her, grabbing a small box that was sitting on his dresser. He hands it to her. "Happy Valentine's Day."

"Oooo…" Abby always likes presents.

She's unknotting the ribbon on it as he says, "It's not as impressive as sexy pictures…"

"Always next year." She grins up at him before going back to opening the box.

He shakes his head. He doesn't think he's got ten outfits that would qualify as sexy, and can't even imagine getting dressed up in them and having Jimmy or Tony take pictures of him, let alone film a strip tease. Noooo! Mountains and mountains of impossible-to-climb NO on that one.

"Oh! Tim!" She's staring at it. It's a ring, designed for her right index finger, black metal (he's not sure what. He saw it online and hit order without really reading up) with a small black opal on it, sparking gold and green, from the base of the opal a chain crosses to a wrist cuff, also black metal, there's a larger (about the size of a quarter), oval black opal on the chain, that will rest on the back of her hand when she wears it. One last black opal, this one about the size of a dime, covers where the wrist cuff snaps together.

He puts it on for her, twisting the cuff and ring so the chain stretches diagonally across her hand.

"Oh, that's beautiful."

"Thanks." He kisses her. Then he lifts her palm and kisses it. "So's what's under it."

She kisses him again.


	74. Senior

To call or not to call.

Sigh.

Gibbs stares at his computer. Telling it to go find him run-of-the-mill family vacation homes on the water had been more difficult than he'd wanted. But, still, a whole lot of options popped up, he found some he liked, and he didn't have to talk to a Realtor.

But he's not just looking for a home now, he's looking for an estate. And judging by what he's coming up with… This isn't going to work.

He can find properties, top of the line, in spiffy shape, all shiny and pretty and in move in condition. And it's not like that's a bad thing, but… either they're smaller than he wants, or they're further away from the water. He wants land, space, and water access. Granite countertops, Jacuzzi tubs, and stainless steel appliances don't matter all that much to him.

And beat up places… He's not seeing them at all.

Which he supposes makes a certain amount of sense. If you've got a place that big, you're probably keeping it up.

He feels like there's some sort of rich person club. They've got people to do stuff like this for them, but he's not hooked into the club.

So, keep scouring the internet hoping to just trip into something, or call Senior (who is hooked into the club) and see if he knows someone?

* * *

It's not like he loathes Senior or anything. It's just… he knows a fuck-up when he sees one, and Senior's a fuck-up. Granted, he's a fuck-up who's getting to be less of one, but it shouldn't take a man seventy-five years to decide to be a better person. Let alone an additional seven years to go from fuck-up to okay. (At the rate he's going, Senior's going to have to make it to ninety before he gets to Gibbs' idea of a stand up guy.)

And, it's probably a lot of his own background coming into play, because on the cosmic scale of fuck-ups Gibbs has seen vastly worse. And, hell when it comes to marriages, he may even be a worse fuck-up. To hear Tony tell it Senior gets all caught up in the romance and ends up with a new wife every few years because he's just in the moment, not using them as human anti-depressants… But…

But if Kelly had lived… He doesn't know what he would have done. Active-duty Marine isn't a good match for a man who's the sole support for a child. Maybe moved back up north and helped his dad with the store. That would have been a good, stable life, for both of them. He does know boarding school and pretending she didn't exist would have been nowhere on the plan. He would have _been there_ for her every single day.

But Senior didn't do that for Tony. He fucked-up. He raised a decent boy into a fuck-up and left Gibbs with twelve years of trying to get that decent man out from under the fuck-up.

Gibbs feels a dull sadness with that. He assumes that it's a combination of the traditional sadness he always feels when he tries to imagine any sort of life with Kelly, mixed with the sorrow that hits him when he thinks of the chance Senior wasted.

He starts to do his usual pushing it away, moving onto the next challenge, (calling Senior) but it won't fade into the background, so he lets himself feel it, lets himself figure out what this is.

It takes a minute, spent thinking about family patterns, before it hits him. His father was a widower with a teen. Senior, a widower with a child. Himself, lost both of them.

Something about that pattern jumps up, wanting him to pay attention.

And when he gets it, it feels like a punch. He closes his eyes, exhales, and says, "Oh, Dad."

Senior ran away. Jack stayed. Gibbs was fourteen, and he was angry, and he hated his Dad and everyone else, and he didn't know what to do with that angry, so he pissed Jack off every day, every way he could.

And Jack stayed. And he took it. And he kept him close and looked out for him and protected him, and he was just as lost as Senior was, probably just as lost as Jethro, but he _stayed_. And more nights passed with Jack halfway in the bottle than Gibbs could count, but every morning he got back up, ran the store, took Leroy's shit (He was still Leroy then. Didn't start introducing himself as Jethro for another two years, because his dad called him Leroy, so he needed to be different. And his mom called him Leroy, and he couldn't take that constant reminder of the family he didn't have anymore.) and muddled on through, keeping them together because that was his job.

Jack was a dad, and it was his job to raise his son, not palm him off on strangers because it was convenient. Not banish the living reminder of the home he no longer had away from his sight so he could pretend it never happened.

"You'll understand when you're older." How many times did Jack say that to him? More than he could count. He looks up, wishing he could give his dad a call and say, 'I'm sorry. I get it now.' But he can't. Ten months too late for that.

He says it out-loud anyway. "I'm sorry, Dad." And it helps, a little. Unlike Mike, he's never really felt the presence of Jack, and he doesn't, not now. "I miss you." That helps a bit, too, but it doesn't bring him back.

He sighs, pets Mona, who's staring at him, trying to figure out why he's talking, and goes back to googling, not really feeling like talking to Senior right now.

* * *

In the end though, he just doesn't know. He's not finding what he wants because he's not hooked into the people who do this sort of thing, and he can either hire a stranger or give Senior a call.

So he calls.

"Jethro?"

"Hey, you got some time?"

For a second Senior doesn't breathe, then he says, "Whatever it is, you can tell me right now, I can take it." Senior's voice is quavering, and Gibbs can feel the wave of fear coming from him. He probably should have expected that. The only reason he would call, normally, would be to say something very bad had happened to Tony or Ziva.

"Nothing bad. They're both fine. I wanted to talk real estate."

A palpable wave of relief washes over the phone lines. Senior swallows hard, and says, "Okay. That I can do. What do you want to know?"

"I need help finding a place. Feel like getting some coffee with me?"

"Sure, Jethro."

* * *

It's just… coincidence, really, that he set their meeting at Java Jane's. The cookies and coffee were, good, really, that's it.

She's probably still working, hard. Because that's how cases, even easy cases, tend to go. They're almost never done in one day.

But, he really wouldn't mind if she ran into him.

He checks his phone. Been less than twenty-four hours since the last text. That's not the end of the world. Just… feels like a long time when you're not running around like crazy between texts.

Senior comes in, waves, and sits in front of Gibbs, pulling his mind away from Borin.

"Little out of your way?" Senior asks as he sits down.

"Coffee's good." Gibbs pushes a cup of coffee toward him, and Senior nods, accepting it, taking a sip.

"It is. So, what can I help with? You looking to scale down?"

Gibbs shakes his head. "Not looking for me. This is… It's a surprise, for the kids, so they can't hear about this from you."

Senior looks shocked that Gibbs might take him into his confidence, and then very proud. Gibbs isn't exactly laying odds on Senior keeping quiet about this, but it's also not the end of the world if he tells Tony and Ziva, he's sure they'll keep quiet about it if Senior leaks.

"Ducky and Penny are looking to get a place for us. Mallard Manor or something like that. Family estate. We're not all at the Navy Yard all the time, so they want to make a home for us."

Senior's eyes light up. "Big place, on the water. It's got to have room for your boat, and room for all the kids and…"

Gibbs nods, kind of surprised at how rapidly Senior's getting this. Of course, for all he knows his family may have had one of these once upon a time. "Exactly. At least seven bedrooms. On the Potomac or Chesapeake. It can't be so far away that getting there on the weekends is an issue. I'm retired, so I'm on finding it duty, and I'm not seeing it."

Senior nods. "What's your price ceiling?"

"Two point seven million. It can be, and probably should be, beat all to hell up. If you can find me ten bedrooms with roof damage and broken windows, that'd be perfect."

Senior thinks about that for a moment. At that price range, you can afford not beat up. "Why beat up?"

"Get more house for the money? Better location for fewer dollars? Kids can put in labor so it doesn't feel entirely like a gift. So it's as much their home as Ducky and Penny's."

Senior pulls out his phone and starts flipping through names. "This isn't the kind of deal I normally work… But…" He flips some more. "Yeah." He's nodding, taps the phone a few times, and then Gibbs' phone beeps. "Just sent you the name of a friend of a friend. She specializes in settling estates. Might not be fast, but when someone dies with a lot of money and land, she comes in and takes care of everything so the kids don't have to. If anyone will have a line on the kind of place you're looking for, Jenny will."

"Thank you."

He taps his phone a few more times, and Gibbs phone beeps again. "Name of a lawyer who's good at structuring wills and trusts. Buying property with a woman you're not married to is a pain in the ass for everyone down stream of you. Among other things, at your price range, you're looking to get hit hard by the inheritance taxes, so you want this protected so you don't have to sell it in five years to pay the taxes on it. Bob's good at what he does. Knows his way around a will inside and out, never met an estate he couldn't tame."

Gibbs nods at that, then smiles.

Senior sees that smile and his eyes narrow. "Or is Ducky not buying property with a woman he's not married to?"

"Surprise wedding at Jimmy and Breena's yesterday. Off honeymooning now. Not even sure where they are."

"Good for him! You love a woman, you should marry her, none of this just living together fooling around."

Gibbs raises an eyebrow.

Senior shrugs. "Just because I'm not good at the follow through doesn't mean I don't get the basic idea."

Gibbs shrugs at that, too. "How's wedding planning going?"

"Great. Delphine's having a blast. She's only done this once before, and last time her mom was in charge. So she's really enjoying getting to plan the wedding that she wants. Nothing makes a woman happy the way planning a wedding does, and… I love that. Love how excited they get. Love how the details make them happy. Love that I can say, make it the way you want it, however you want it, and then they go do it."

"Thought you eloped six times."

Senior thinks about that. "Four. Junior never quite remembers how many times I've been married. And he boycotted two of the weddings when he was a teen/early twenties."

"How many times have you been married?"

"Lucky nine is coming up."

"Lucky?"

"Hope so. Maybe this time I've learned enough to make one work."

"Here's hoping." They both drink their coffees. "How's looking for a place for Tony and Ziva going?"

Senior shrugs. "Haven't found anything I love yet, and if I'm not loving it, I'm not passing it on to them."

Gibbs squints at that.

"Not, love in the sense of 'this is a perfect neighborhood' or 'ohhh granite counter tops' none of the deals have been good enough yet. Too beat up, for the price. I'm not touching anything we'd have to bulldoze and build anew from the ground up. Some of the one's I'm watching haven't been on the market long enough. We're not touching anything that hasn't been on the market for a year, and eighteen months is even better. And if it's had a bid placed on it in the last six months, we're not going for it. I'm going to lowball the first offer, hard, at least thirty percent under the list price. They're going to come back with a higher number, but if they've been trying to sell for a long time, that higher number will be lower than the list price. I'll give them 10% below that price, but offer to settle fast. Cash in hand in two weeks or so. They'll bite. But that deal doesn't work with the wrong place or the wrong buyer. Do this right, you'll get more house, and a better location, for a better price, than you can from a foreclosure sale."

That makes a certain amount of sense to Jethro, though it's not the way he'd ever look at buying a house.

Senior stares at his cup for a moment, serious. "Take a piece of advice from me, Jethro? Something I have learned. Pass it on to Ducky and Penny."

Gibbs inclines his head, somewhat curious as to what sort of advice Senior has to offer.

"I know you don't think of me as a font of good advice, but I've been down this block, a lot. The kids are adults, so they'll be fine. They're all set as themselves and a big gift like this isn't going to change that, but keep an eye out for the little ones. Tony's the only one of our kids, my family's kids, that's worth a damn. He's also the only one we cut off. The only one we made sink or swim. Lots of money is not a blessing, especially for children. You've got some very sweet girls, and, just… keep an eye on it.

"I was talking to Ed… I know he hopes his girls do better than he did, that they hit real wealth, but…" Senior shakes his head. "Ed's as rich as you can be and still safely raise kids. Much past that, and… it's just too easy to buy everything. You work hard, you save up, you invest well, and then you want to play when you're not working. You buy the toys you always wanted, the toys you worked hard for. And your kids see you do that, and they don't get the work that went into it, because they're not seeing you working, or don't understand it if they did, they just see the toys. To them it looks like you get to have whatever you want whenever you want it.

"They end up with expensive taste, because they're being raised in an expensive home, but they're kids and the paper route isn't ever going to buy them one of the Ferraris you just got yourself. It makes them envious if you try to stick with the you've got to work for your money line, makes them feel like work is useless because there's nothing they can do to get the kind of toys they want to play with. It makes them resent you, because you've got the toys, and they don't, and they don't have any context for why you do and they don't. It makes you feel like an ass, so you buy the toys for them. Why not? You've got the money. What's the point of money if you can't make people happy with it?

"But money doesn't make people happy. You end up breeding monsters and constantly feeding them. You can have money, have piles of it, but if you use it for all the _things_ , they end up unhappy, wasted adults." Senior shakes his head. "Make it a home, fill it with people and memories, use that money to buy time together, but besides big and well-located, keep it simple."

Gibbs nods at that. "That's the plan."

"Good. It's good plan."

They both drink again. Senior's here. And Gibbs doesn't know. Tony's mentioned that it happened, and Gibbs filled in his own blanks, teasing him about it, poking him around Kate, but…

But he doesn't actually know why Tony got cut off. And Senior's here, and has mentioned it…

"Why'd you cut Tony off?"

Senior sighs. "He hated books, didn't like to study, didn't want to be a doctor or lawyer or anything like that, which wasn't a problem. I'm not a lawyer, neither was his granddad, we all made our money without a college degree. Except he also didn't like to work, either. He wasn't interested in making deals. He didn't want to build things. He just wanted to play sports. And he was good at them, but not pro-good. He was seventeen, best center at his school, best of any of the schools they played, but his boarding school wasn't exactly swarming with college scouts, let alone NBA scouts. So I said, no. We'd pay for school if he wanted to learn something. Phys-ed major wasn't going to cut it. If he wanted to work one of the crews, learn a trade, that was fine, we'd support him through that. If he wanted to start shadowing me, learning how to find deals and work them, he was welcome to join in.

"He wanted to shoot hoops. I told him we wouldn't support him through that.

"He got the basketball scholarship to Ohio State. Which was great, but it wasn't a first rung school. He did well, but being the league scorer in a second rate league in a second rate school didn't get the NBA calling. And by the time he was ready to graduate he'd decided on being a cop, and was too damn proud to ask to come back.

"By that point I'd noticed he was the only one doing anything useful with his life. His cousins are professional dilettantes, useless, and trust me, I know useless. His cousins are the kind of guys I charm into paying for me when money's scarce. People who are so lonely they're willing to pay for entertaining company." Senior waves dismissively. "When Junior graduated, I didn't offer to start bankrolling him again. Might be the only good decision I ever made for him."

Gibbs nods at that. Agreeing.

They sit there quietly, not having a whole lot else to say to each other, and Gibbs isn't exactly the poster boy for meaningless chit-chat. It's not precisely awkward, but not comfortable either.

Finally he finishes his coffee and says, "Thanks."

Senior nods. "Glad to be of help."

Gibbs is gathering up his stuff, getting ready to go when Senior says, "Just about had a heart attack when I saw your name come up on my caller ID. I do a pretty good job of not thinking about how dangerous Junior's job is, but every now and again I can't ignore it."

Gibbs nods. "Didn't think about that until you picked up." He shakes his head. "If… If a call like that ever needs to be made, it'll be in person. As long as you're anywhere even close to nearby, one of us will come in person. We don't drop that kind of news over the phone."

"Okay." Senior nods. "That's… comforting. I guess. Just, don't ever show up at my door without calling first. Don't want to feel that again."

Gibbs smiles. "Not a problem."

"Thanks." He finishes off his coffee as well. "Okay, got to get moving."

Gibbs nods again. "Enjoy!"

"Thanks. Got an angle on a drug company that I want some more information about."

One last nod from Gibbs, and Senior heads off.

Gibbs lingers, sitting at his table. He calls Jenny, getting her machine and leaves a message, explaining who had referred her and what he was looking for. After twenty more minutes, he gets up and leaves. Borin wandering in was a long shot, anyway.


	75. Big Brother

"McGee," Tim's not really paying attention as he answers his phone. He's staring at his computer, scanning the code in front of him, hoping to get everything done in time so he can snag lunch with Jimmy and Abby.

"Tim?" That's not a Minion. His attention shifts away from the screen to the voice in his ear.

"Hey Sarah, what's up?"

"Glen asked me to marry him!"

He feels the smile spread across his face. "Congratulations. Date picked?"

"It's been two days."

"No then. Sounds like you had an extra-special Valentine's?"

"Yep!" She sounds really excited. His email beeps, and he brings it up on his computer, seeing a shot of her left hand and the diamond solitaire sitting on her ring finger. Kind of plain by his tastes, but it's very simple and elegant, so he can see Sarah loving it.

"Looks like Glenn did good."

"Oh yeah."

He knows that tone of voice. The ultra-satisfied timbre of someone who's gotten exactly what she wanted. "You sound happy, are you?"

"Yeah, I am."

"Good." He nods, pleased. Then a thought hits. He is a big brother. A big brother who is soon to also be a brother-in-law, and he's feeling like he may have some duty toward his sister and her soon-to-be husband, so he says, "Come to Sunday breakfast with us?"

Not like Sarah just met him, she feels the change in how he's thinking about this, so she sounds a little wary when she says, "Why?"

Tim grins, but she can't see it. "Show of clan strength. I'm not doing my job as a big brother if I don't scare the snot out of him at least once."

"Really?" He can feel the eye roll aimed in his direction.

"Yep. It's in the big brother handbook. I'm required by law to take him out and make sure he knows that I and all of my friends will beat him within an inch of his life if he hurts you."

He hears an exasperated sigh. "Isn't that Dad's job?"

Tim snorts. "Like he'd do it."

He can feel her roll her eyes, again. "Fine." Sigh, palpable _I'm humoring your_ vibes radiate off of Sarah. "When's Sunday breakfast?"

"Same as with the christening. Eight."

"You and all your friends?"

"Just me and the guys."

"How progressive of you," she says dryly.

He shakes his head. "No… You don't want us bringing the girls in! We want to scare him into behaving well. We bring in Abby and Ziva, and he'll wet his pants and run for the hills. He'll change his name, and you'll never see him again. We're just going to make sure he knows the rules."

"You're going to have way too much fun with this, aren't you?"

He's grinning. "That's entirely likely. So, you'll come?"

"Sure. Penny'll be there, right? I've called three times, but haven't been able to get a hold of her."

"Uh…" He doesn't actually know if she'll be there. "They're… somewhere. I'll ask Jimmy how long he's got Autopsy on his own."

"What do you mean _somewhere_?"

"Errr…" The flaw in Ducky's brilliant whirlwind romance wedding was suddenly staring him in the face, well, talking in his ear.

"Tim?"

"They um…" he says the next bit very fast, "kind of got married on Sunday, and are on their honeymoon."

"What?!"

"It was a surprise."

"How do you have a surprise wedding? It's a wedding, the one thing you can't do as a surprise. You've got forms to fill out and paperwork and…"

"I don't think they bothered with that. It was Molly's birthday party. She was down for her nap. Party was breaking up. He kissed her, said some really romantic things, whipped out the rings, asked to be her husband, asked her to be his wife, gave us just enough time to hug everyone and drink a toast, and then they were off on their honeymoon. Fifteen minutes, tops."

"If they didn't bother with the paperwork, it's not a wedding."

Tim shrugs. You ask him, they're married. The paperwork strikes him as extraneous. But that's a moot point right now. "I just… don't know when they'll be back. Don't know where they went. Jimmy thinks it's somewhere warm, but… For all we know they could be touring the fjords. But I can find out when they'll be back. Jimmy'll know."

"Fine. Let me know."

"Okay. So… Sunday? Putting the fear of big brother into Glenn?"

She sighs. "Sure."

"Good!"

He feels her roll her eyes one last time, and then she says, "Bye, " and hangs up.

* * *

He did get lunch with Jimmy and Abby (though it's takeout. They're in Autopsy, which isn't Tim's favorite place to eat, but Jimmy's on solo, so he has to be around if anyone needs him.)

"This is really clean?" Tim asks. They're sitting around one of the stainless steel autopsy tables, food still in its containers, but Tim's still a bit squeamish.

"Hosed off, washed down with alcohol, hosed off again, and tested three times a week for bacteria content, but if you'd like I can grab one of the sterile drapes we use for the bodies," Jimmy says as he opens his chicken curry.

Tim sighs, opening his carton of beef and green beans, making sure his chopsticks don't touch the table. Abby gently pokes him but he feels he's within his rights to have irrational hang-ups about eating on the autopsy tables.

Jimmy shakes his head. "Your desk is a bubbling cauldron of raging bacterial sex compared to this table."

"I know." Tim holds up his hands. "I don't want to think about it."

Jimmy smirks. Then takes a bite of his curry. "So, anything interesting today?"

"Oh." Tim looks to Abby, who's digging into her organic tofu-veggie stir fry. "You were right. I got the call today. Glenn proposed on Valentine's. They're coming for Sunday breakfast, so we're on put the fear of Big Brother into Glenn duty."

Abby's grinning at that. "Ohhh… That'll be fun."

Jimmy looks at her with wide eyes, and Tim shakes his head. "No. Me, Jimmy, Gibbs, Tony if he shows. If I let you put the fear of Abby into him, he'll run screaming for the hills." She's somewhere between pouting and pleased at that. She wants in on the fun, but enjoys having her superiority at this recognized.

"Breena told me Amy's bummed. No ring for her," Jimmy says.

"She and Collin have only been together for what… a year?" Abby asks. She and Breena (and over the course of a few Sundays, Amy, too) have talked about this.

Jimmy nods. "Something like that. Apparently he moved in last week, but Ed doesn't know, yet."

Tim cringes. "Oh, that's going to be a mess."

"Yeah, Breena's thinking she was hoping to present it as, 'We're getting married! Oh, and Colin's all moved in.'"

"He gonna flip out about them living together?" Tim asks.

"Well, he almost bit my head off for having sex with his daughter _after_ we got married, so I can't imagine he'll be cool with Colin doing it _before._ "

Tim shakes his head. "You know, I'm going to enjoy not being in the middle of that."

Jimmy and Abby both nod in agreement.

Abby takes a sip of her water, eating another bite of her lunch. Jimmy watches her. She's been eating really healthy lately. She even skipped birthday cake at Molly's party. (Hell, even he had a bite of that cake, because like her mama, Breena can really bake when she puts her mind to it.)

"Okay, what's with the ultra-healthy food. Are you trying to lose weight?"

"What?" She looks up at him, really startled and unhappy. "Do you think I need to lose weight?"

(Tim is very glad to not be in the middle of this, either. He pulls a few inches further back from the table and gets ready to duck if need be.)

"No! You look great. That's why I'm worried you might be trying to. You're drinking water, haven't seen a Pepsi, let alone a Caf-Pow in weeks, or any other sugar for that matter, and you've got, what, whole grain rice in your vegetarian stir-fry? What's going on?"

She looks at Tim, eyes slightly narrowed.

"I didn't say anything. We eat together all the time; he was bound to notice."

She sighs. "Since… the miscarriage… I've been trying to eat better. Don't want it to happen again." Her eyes narrow at Tim again. "He thinks it's silly."

"It's not silly, but… I don't think it'll do much, that's all. It can't hurt, but…" He shrugs. "It feels like a placebo to me, so if it tricks your body into doing what you want it to do, that's great, but I don't think it's science."

He looks at Jimmy who's got the _I shouldn't have opened this can of worms_ look on his face. "You're the doctor, how much does it matter if the tofu's organic or not?"

"Uh…" He's frantically thinking of a way to get out of this. "Do I look like your OB? 'Cause that's who you need to talk to."

They both give him their _That's a bullshit answer_ look.

"Fine. I don't know. I don't think it matters much, but if this job teaches you anything it's the everyone is different and just because something works, or doesn't, for 99% of the population doesn't mean it'll work, or not, for you. And the placebo thing is real, and it works. They've got cases of people who didn't get their chemo drugs, they were given sterile solution by accident, and still got better. No one's suggesting that's a good plan for Joe Average, but if you can swing it… And like Tim says, it can't hurt."

"But you don't think it really helps, do you?" Abby asks.

"I'm not an OB. I'm not a nutritionist. I know I've got a very delicately balanced system and all organic or not didn't make any difference I could tell. Upping veggies, that made me feel better. Saying goodbye to most carbs, same result. More good fats, more meat, and more eggs to replace those carbs, my body seemed to like that a lot. But one of the steps I tried, back when I was first diagnosed, was to do natural sugars instead of processed one, and I never saw any difference by subbing out white sugar for honey or maple syrup. Getting rid of high fructose corn syrup didn't help. So, sure eat the veggies, get lots of them. And protein is your friend, enjoy it," he points to his own curry, "real meat, nuts, and there's cream in the sauce, higher fat content means I won't get hungry again as soon as I do when I do all veg. I'd recommend that for anyone trying to eat better. No one ever ended up in worse health because they stopped sucking down piles of caffeinated sugar, so saying goodbye to the Caf-Pows and sleeping more isn't a bad plan. But I've got no idea if it'll affect your fertility at all."

Then he looks at Tim and back to Abby. "Neither of you drink much, but cold turkey, for both of you, is something that's got actual science behind it, proving that it helps… Sort of. For guys it helps with sperm count."

"Likely not a problem," Abby says.

Tim shrugs, unless they've been insanely lucky, she's right.

"For women not drinking while you're trying to get pregnant and the first few months helps avoid miscarriage, but… the information on that's kind of sketchy. In this country at least, the kind of woman who admits to drinking while pregnant isn't the kind of woman who's just having a glass of wine with dinner once a week. They know binge drinking causes problems. They know alcoholism causes problems. They know not drinking at all avoids them. They know that women who have fewer than two drinks a day are fine, but that's an average, and your mileage may vary, and you can't really prove something is safe, so the rule of thumb is no alcohol at all."

"So what you're saying is that best anyone knows we're already drinking less than the amount that would make a difference?" Tim asks.

"Probably. Not drinking won't hurt. None of this will hurt. But since you aren't binge drinking, it may not help, either. Just, I wouldn't stress out about it. Oh, speaking of things you can do that there's some science behind, stressing out about it does make fertility rates drop."

"You wouldn't stress out about it because you're not in spitting distance of the end of your fertility," Abby says to Jimmy. "Forty-two is next month. I'm getting to the end of my store of eggs and I don't want to waste any of them, so anything that may help just got added to the to-do list."

Jimmy nods. "Want me to do some research? Or give you my Physician's log in for PubMed? That'll get you full access to any of the articles you want."

Tim thinks that's a good way to diffuse the situation. And Abby nods. "Yes. Thanks."

* * *

Tim's been back at his desk for a few minutes when Jimmy texts him.

_Come back down?_

_Okay._

He tells Soth he'll be in Autopsy, and if anyone needs him to head over and grab him, and then goes.

"Jimmy?"

"Here." He backs out of the storage closet. "Just getting more forms. When's that paperwork software going live?"

Tim crosses his fingers. "Week from tomorrow beta testing starts. You know you'll have to fill your stuff out by hand and do it with the computer while testing, right?"

"Yeah, if it doesn't work, yada yada yada. I got it the first time."

"Good. What's up?"

"How's she doing, really?"

Tim sighs. "Okay. Really. You know how much she loves not being in control, and she can't control this, but she can control what she eats, so the food's gotten really healthy. And you know we do morning yoga, or at least as much as we can."

Jimmy nods, he's familiar with how small people put a crimp in any sort of morning plans you might have.

"She's added some fertility poses and is centering the meditation that way. And like with the food, it doesn't hurt, but I don't think it actually helps, either. So, she's kind of frustrated with me because I'm not all gung ho on this."

"Frustrated?" Tim can tell Jimmy's asking if he's 'editing' the situation.

Tim shakes his head, frustrated isn't code for angry. "Yeah. Not angry. I'm not being a jerk about it. But she'd like me to be a better cheerleader on it, and I'm trying. I'm buying the organic veggies and making the food she likes when I'm on dinner duty, but my enthusiasm levels are leaving something to be desired."

"You're charting, right?"

"Of course, but… no egg to even shoot for, yet. Hoping we'd have gotten another chance by now, but…"

"But she's nursing and almost forty-two and every month isn't realistic right now."

"Right. From what we can tell, if there's an egg around we've gotten pregnant. Just... And that's only happened once so…"

"You okay, Tim?"

Tim shrugs. "Yeah. I'd love more kids but, right now at least, I could be happy with just Kelly."

Jimmy doesn't ask out loud, but Tim can see the look, the way he's watching to see if that's real or not.

Tim shrugs again, it's real enough. "I don't need it the way she does." Jimmy nods, that's definitely real. "So we're both trying to stay cool, because we both do know that massive, stressed-out, hissy fit isn't going to help. I'm working on being supportive. I mean, I'm eating the veggies, too, and doing the yoga, and I can not drink. Not like that's a problem, at all. But there's really only so much I can do for this and none of it seems really useful, you know?"

"See your OB?"

"If we get to six months post-nursing without her getting pregnant, that's the plan."

"Stop nursing sooner?"

"Maybe. We talked about it when Kelly was new, planned to nurse for a year, but if she wants to cut out earlier and buy more time, I'll support that."

"It sounds-"

"Really reasonable?"

"Yeah."

"It is. Apparently 'reasonable' is cold comfort when you're jonesing for another baby."

Jimmy nods, he knows all about that. "Yeah."

Tim's phone beeps and he looks at it. "Gotta run."

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah. You know how the job system works?"

"Sure."

"I'm the available tech with the highest specialty rating for the case that just came in. I gotta move."

"Go move!"

* * *

Glenn Holland actually is a good guy. He's warm, funny, smart, and Tim understands why his sister loves him. As potential husbands go, he approves.

This does not, however, get him a pass from being dragged to the side by the various males of clan Gibbs as Sunday breakfast comes to a close.

Glenn half smiles at him as he notices he's being pulled further and further back from the rest of the crowd, who are getting in cars and heading toward church. He holds his hands up, "Look, your Dad already did the hurt my little girl and I'll kill you in ways that hurt so bad just imagining them will make you break out in a cold sweat."

Tim nods at that. Bit surprised that the Admiral would make the effort, but he was always good at scaring the shit out of people by threatening them.

"This isn't the hurt my sister and die speech. Unlike my Dad, I actually know something about being a good husband." He points to Jimmy, Ducky, and Gibbs who are all surrounding Glenn. "They do, too. Any husband who's been around for more than a year will do something that hurts his wife sooner or later. Even if you're trying, it'll happen. That's just being alive and being a human being in close proximity to another human being every day for the rest of your life."

He can feel Jimmy thinking _toothpaste_ even though he doesn't say it.

"This isn't even the marry her and you will stay married for the rest of your life, speech. We all know that can be a recipe for misery, and I don't want that for her, or you for that matter."

"So what is this?" Glenn looks legitimately curious. This is very much not the conversation he had with Admiral McGee.

"The rules. They're simple, and there aren't a lot of them. One: as long as you are a firefighter, you will have life insurance. You will have about five times more life insurance than you think you need. You stop being a firefighter, you can go back to the basic just get the job done level, but as long as you're out there risking your life running into burning buildings, you are going to make sure that she and your kids are covered.

"Two: If it doesn't work out, and you guys decide to split, you will pay child support and you will be a dad. I want it in your mind that there are men who will literally hunt you to the end of the earth and will fuck you over so badly on so many different levels you'll wish your parents had never met if you try to skip out on your kids."

Glenn nods with that, seems to agree, but he's looking a little disturbed at the language. He's never seen Tim be anything other than mild-mannered computer guy, the cursing is unsettling.

Tim takes that nod as his due, and also as a sign of Glenn being a basically decent guy. Then he doubles down. "If you think my Dad was scary, I want you to remember something, I learned everything he ever had to offer and then I spent the next fifteen years of my life putting away killers. I've got a library of twisted shit so vast and so varied that it'd make him blanch if he ever had to come face to face with it."

Glenn starts to look very disturbed.

"Three: If you ever find yourself contemplating something stupid, something where the words, 'I never meant to hurt you' translate into 'I never meant for you to find out,' _don't do it_." Glenn quickly nods along to that. "Honestly, you ever get in trouble, any kind, where you really are thinking, 'I never meant for you to find out,' come to us, we're amazingly resourceful at solving problems and helping each other cope with wanting things that are bad for you."

Jimmy's nodding along with that. "Anytime. Really. We're good at this and our wedding present to you is that if you need it, help is always on offer."

Tim hadn't expect this to go that far, but he figures Jimmy's doing well, so he rolls with it.

"Look, you hurt her accidentally, that's just being alive. You hurt her intentionally. You do something where you know that if she finds out about it, it will make her cry, then I will make you cry. Make her cry badly enough, and next thing you know every FBI agent on Earth will be in your home pulling more kiddie porn than you ever knew could exist off of your hard drive. And then you'll get transferred to whatever holding cell has the guys who were the victims of pedophiles in it." Tim smiles blandly. "That's assuming they," he looks at Jimmy, Ducky, and Gibbs, "don't get you first." Glenn's eyes are very wide right now. He's thinking having the Admiral beat the shit out of him is vastly preferable to what McGee the younger will do.

Tim clasps a hand over Glenn's shoulder. "There is exactly one acceptable reason for my sister to be crying on me about something you did intentionally, and that's because you got hurt or died saving someone else. We good?"

Glenn nods slowly. "We're good."

"Wonderful."

Tim watches Glenn head back Sarah's car, he sees the somewhat stunned look on his face and enjoys it. He says something to Sarah, but he can't lip read well enough to know what.

But Gibbs laughs and says, "He just told your sister, 'Your family is fucking terrifying.'" Gibbs put his arm around Tim's shoulder and nods slowly. "Good job."

Tim grins at him. "Thanks, I was well-trained."

* * *

He gets out of church and turns his phone back on. (He may be a heathen atheist, but he's a heathen atheist with manners; he turns his phone off in church. The Minions know that's a black out time for him, and where he is so if it's urgent enough they can go and get him.) There's a very irate text from his sister on there that says, _KIDDIE PORN?_

He laughs.

_To any sane man, that's the scariest threat in my arsenal._

_TIM! What the fuck?_

_Love you, too, Sis. And it looks like he does, too, so this'll never be any sort of issue._

_You don't do that to people, don't say that… Just… Tim!_

_Honestly, is he bothered? Did_ he _think I was out of line?_

There's a pause. Abby's getting Kelly buckled into her car seat. "Trouble?"

"I don't think so. She's less than perfectly happy with my Fear of Big Brother technique."

Abby nods.

_No. He's taking notes for when his little sister gets engaged._

_Good man!_

_Ugh. Men!_

_:)_

* * *

It's after Sunday dinner, after Bootcamp, and just like Glenn didn't have any trouble figuring out he was being weeded out of the herd for a private conversation, Tim's not having any issues with figuring it out, either.

Jimmy and Gibbs look... concerned.

"What?" he finally asks.

Jimmy looks to Gibbs. Gibbs looks back. They both look at Tim. Tim gets the sense they didn't plan this out, just came to the conclusion, at the same time, that it had to happen.

"Wedding coming up," Gibbs says.

"And your mom and dad'll probably be there, right?"

Tim had indeed already come to that conclusion, talked with Abby about it a bit. "Yeah. Probably."

"You going to go?" Jimmy asks.

Tim shrugs. "I don't know. I want to see her get married. I want to be there for her, and support her, and celebrate with her, but I could easily go the rest of my life without ever seeing either of them again." He shrugs again. "How about this, I'll burn that bridge when I come to it? When she gets a date and everything set, when we know for a fact The Admiral is actually attending, because if she picks a time when he's on duty, he won't. He didn't get out of a shift for her birth, I can't imagine he'll take time off for her wedding. When we know that… We'll figure it out from there."

Gibbs nods at that, and Jimmy seems to think that's an okay place to be.


	76. Tenderness

He hears a car pull up, a door open and close, and Mona woof in greeting, so obviously someone was coming.

"In the driveway," Gibbs calls out. They're having some amazingly nice weather for the last week of February, so he's taking advantage of it by getting outside and finishing the outside of Shannon.

"What's her name?" Borin asks, walking up behind him as he's stroking another layer of waterproofing onto Shannon's hull.

Gibbs looks over his shoulder at her, opens his mouth to answer, but nothing comes out.

"Gibbs…" She's looking at him curiously. The name of his ship shouldn't send him into what, on someone else, she'd call a panic. On Gibbs, she'll label it as disconcerted.

He shrugs and kisses her quickly. "Hi."

"Hi?" She's squinting at him and then looks at the sailboat. She's, whatever her name is, beautiful. Long sleek lines. She'll just ease through the water, skimming the waves, carried by wind.

Gibbs can see she's not perfectly thrilled with his lack of answer, but... Everything Jimmy said to him about not being able to name this boat Shannon if he wanted to move forward is crashing into him all at once, and he's stuck. He sighs and decides to try honesty. Hopefully it won't scare her too bad. (Granted he was hoping to get a bit further into this than three very successful dates before having this conversation, but… now's the time.) "I've… I started building her back in fall of '12 and… she had a name and there was a plan for what I was going to do with her, and… And everything changed."

"So, she doesn't have a name, or you still think of her by the old name, but you're not sure you're keeping it?"

He nods.

Borin looks her over, walking around her slowly. "What was the plan?"

"Wake up from the retirement party hangover, dry swallow enough aspirin so I could move, get in, and head off to sea. Just me and her for as long as it took to get the job out of my head. New beach every week. Send Abby the occasional post card so she wouldn't worry."

She nods. "And that's not the plan anymore?"

He shakes his head. "Got some girls to teach how to sail. New plan. New life, really, but I never thought of a new name for her."

She nods, gently touching a dry part of the hull. "So this is Shannon?"

He nods. "Yeah. Jimmy tells me I've got to rename her, and…" Gibbs shakes his head. "He's not wrong…"

"But you've been thinking of her as Shannon for four years and you've got nothing else?"

He nods again, looking at her, feeling like he's standing on the edge of a cliff. "I don't know what to do with this." He exhales long and slow. "I've been looking at the pictures of us on the mantle, too. Not sure what to do. We were married twelve years, had a beautiful daughter, and I loved both of them more than anything else. I… didn't use to talk about them. Just pretended it didn't happen. Never mentioned them at all to most of my wives or girlfriends. I don't want to pretend my life began in 1992. But I don't want you to feel unwelcome. I don't want you…" he rubs his face, trying to think of words for this. "I don't want a ghost constantly hovering in your peripheral view. Don't want you uncomfortable. And I don't know what to do."

She smiles gently at that, takes a few steps closer to him, and cups his cheek. "That's a start. I don't want you pretending that life began in 1992, either, and you don't have to take pictures of your family down."

"Okay. And…" He nods at the boat.

She shrugs. "I don't know. You see me on her one day?"

"I really hope so…" He stares at her, stares at Shannon. "I'm not… in love with her anymore. That was taking off the ring, I think. But, it doesn't go away, you know? It eases up, and you finally get what 'they would have wanted you to move on' means, but there's still…" he touches his chest, over his heart, because he'd be at this for years trying to find the right words. "But it's not all that's there." He feels like that's a pretty lame explanation, but he doesn't have better in him.

"Yeah, I know." She sounds wistful at that.

"Do you know? When I mentioned them the first time, you started to say 'I know,' but didn't. Do you know?"

She swallows and nods. "Yeah. That's a long story. Not for out here."

"Okay. Not gonna press. You tell me when or if you want to."

She nods, still looking at Shannon. "How about this. I'll get us some dinner. You wrap up out here, get cleaned up, and then we'll talk and eat."

"Sounds good. Got about half an hour left on this."

"Okay." She kisses him. Still willing to kiss him, real kiss, not just a peck on the cheek, so that's good. "Hungry?"

He nods.

"Craving fried chicken all day."

Gibbs doesn't have to think about that. "Sounds really good."

"Back in a bit."

* * *

She's walking into the house as he's stripping off in the laundry room. He doesn't mind the way the finish smells, but he doesn't necessarily want his whole house smelling like it. So whenever he does jobs like that, his clothing goes from his skin to the washing machine without taking any unnecessary detours.

She smiles at him, bags of insanely yummy smelling chicken in hand, looks him up and down (he's in his boxers and one sock) and says, "Thought we were eating first."

He smiles, eyes warm, takes the bag of chicken from her, putting it on top of the dryer, and pulls her to him for a long, hot kiss. "You want to eat first?" he asks against her lips.

"No," she says back, lips still touching his, and steps back from him. "But I should. Haven't eaten since breakfast. I'm going to start feeling light-headed soon."

"Then we eat. Let me head up and grab some pants. Little chilly for just my skivvies." Yes, it's been a very nice day, _for February_ , but he doesn't keep his house warm enough for comfortable dinner in his underwear in the winter.

She chuckles at that. "Fire?"

He nods. Toasty fire sounds great right about now.

* * *

He comes down a few minutes later in sweats and NCIS t-shirt. She's in front of the fireplace, fire burning, chicken laid out on plates on the floor with thick slabs of corn bread, green beans, and cold, open beer.

"That a pizza stone?" she asks, looking at the eighteen inch by eighteen inch ceramic square leaning against his hearth. It had been there the last time she came over, too, but they hadn't spent any time in front of the fire that night.

He nods.

"You get it for me?"

He nods again. "I like pizza. I like fire. Never thought about trying the two together. But if you like them, too…"

She smiles at that. "I do, but it's not going to work on your fireplace. Your oven, sure. But heat's got to hit it from all sides, fast, or you end up with the underside burned to cinders and raw cheese on top."

"Hmmm… Doesn't sound good."

"It's not."

He sits next to her and kisses her shoulder. "Speaking from experience?"

"I might be," she says with a smile. "Let's put it this way, there's a reason why you have to light the fire, let it burn, for a while, then push the coals into the back of the oven, then put the pizza into the oven, and if you attempt to skip any of those steps you end up with some rather irate looking tourists who really wanted pizza."

He laughs at that. "How old were you?"

"Fourteen. We didn't usually have tourists in the summer, but they wanted to hike, and we had a place, so there they were. Been out all day, starving. Don't remember why my mom wasn't doing it. Probably some sort of cow emergency. She handled most of the veterinary stuff, unless it was really bad.

"Ended up feeding them ham sandwiches."

Gibbs chuckles, taking a bite of the chicken. Long day of working on the boat, it tastes damn good. She stands up and looks at the picture of Gibbs, Shannon, and Kelly on his mantle.

"You have more pictures?"

He nods.

"Show me your life before 1992; while we eat?"

He nods at that, too. Standing up, grabbing the photo albums that are just general family shots. He finds another one, taken from his father's house. There are some pretty big gaps in there, but it's a more complete picture than anyone's seen since Shannon.

He moves to the sofa, easier to juggle food and pictures and drinks if they can put everything down on the coffee table.

He opens the first one, while she's eating a chicken wing, and she looks down, swallows quickly and says, "Is that really you?"

He nods. "Probably three-ish."

"You were so cute!"

"Thanks."

The shot's black and white, so she asks, "Were you really blond?"

He shrugs. His hair looks light in the shot, but as long as he can remember it's been very dark brown or black.

He flips through shots, the majority of which were from when his mom was alive, so first day of kindergarten, birthday parties, little league, Fourth of July picnics. Not a lot of pictures, not by the standards of today when everyone takes shots of everything, but about ten or so a year. He's slowly growing up across the pages and then he hits thirteen and the pictures stop. The one after that is one he didn't know his Dad had until he went through this album when he took it home from his father's house.

His grandfather had taken the shot. It's him, in his Marine uniform, graduation from Lejeune.

She smiles warmly at that. "Oh, look at you. What'd you do, enlist at fourteen?" she jokes.

"Ha ha ha. I'm eighteen. And I bet there's a shot of you just like this."

She nods. "You ever get to my parents' house and you can see about fifty of them. And I look just as young, green, and proud."

"You think I'm going to be visiting your parents?" He's intrigued and kind of scared of that. Visiting a girlfriend's parents has been on the to-do list for a very long time.

"It's not impossible." She stares at him for a moment. "Are you scared?"

He shrugs.

She pokes him gently then she flips back a page. Gibbs, thirteen, playing first baseman. Next page, Gibbs, eighteen, Marine Graduation.

"Lose some pictures?"

He shakes his head. "Lost the photographer. My mom died when I was fourteen. Breast cancer went bad and spread all over."

"I'm sorry."

He shrugs, never sure what to say to that.

"Your dad…?"

"Be a year ago in April. He was lucky, a fast stroke and done. Ducky's mom, she died slowly, over the course of years, and that was torture for everyone. He went fast and it didn't hurt. Good, long life behind him. I miss him, but, I don't regret how he went."

"I get that." She also gets the parallel he's not saying, that his mom died slow, too, and it was torture for him and his dad, her, too probably.

He flips the page, smiles, those shots were taken by all three of them. He remembers that day, home on leave, decided to introduce Shannon to Jack. They went to Lake Conneaut to swim.

There's shots of him lounging with Shannon. Shots of him splashing with Jack. (The shots Shannon took were significantly better than the ones he or Jack took.)

One shot of Jack standing next to Shannon, arm around her, grinning at the camera.

That had been a really good day.

"That's Shannon?" Borin asks, looking at her intensely.

"'Bout a year after we met. Think we're nineteen in that shot." He shakes his head at the dopy grins in some of the shots. It had been a picnic. Sandwiches, cup-cakes, cold corn on the cob, beer. "We're all a bit drunk, too."

"Your dad let you both drink?"

"Now you're making me feel old. Drinking age was 18 then."

She laughs at that, looking at the shots of what would eventually be a family playing. "Never let it be said you don't have a type."

He smiles, sheepish, and then kisses her hair. "Always was a sucker for a pretty redhead."

She smiles, too, and ruffles his hair. "Like 'em high and tight. Not like you can't get a date with me if you aren't a Marine, but, it really helps."

He nods, getting that.

Her voice turns serious. "I was engaged once, long time ago." He can tell by the look in her eyes that it didn't end well. "He was KIA, and I was there when it happened. One second he was there, and the future was there, and life was there, everything that mattered was there, and then boom, it was gone."

He nods, squeezing her hand. "Know all about boom."

"Yeah." She looks at the picture in front of her, Gibbs and Shannon on the beach near a lake. One minute it was there, and the next it wasn't. "Once I healed up, I couldn't go back."

"When I healed up, they wouldn't let me go back. Don't think I would have wanted to if it had been an option," he shrugs, "but it wasn't."

She nods. "I lost him. I lost my whole team. Just dumb, stupid luck I got off the raft first. Without them… the job wasn't worth it anymore. And… " she shakes her head, seeing whatever her personal 'and' was.

He nods. "Know all about 'and,' too."

"That's how you ended up here?"

"Yeah. Spent a lot of years on 'and' as an NCIS agent. 'Back in… '05, might have been '06, while ago now, I got hurt again, and most of the years between '91 and waking up went missing. When I got them back, I had to deal with it, all over again. Been slowly getting a life together since, last couple years really getting it together."

"Are you back together?"

He shrugs. "About as close as I get, I think. I don't know. You back together?"

"Maybe." She shrugs, takes a bite of her cornbread. "If anyone is. Of course, in the middle of it, you can't really tell."

He nods. "I can see how the past didn't work, but I couldn't see it when I was in it."

"Yeah. So, sure. I'm back together. I'm not walking wounded, not anymore. More nights than not I sleep, and I don't even need to drink to do it anymore. More nights then not, if I'm not sleeping it's a case right now, not the past, keeping me up."

"We're cops. I think that's as close to together as we get can hope for."

She nods at that, taking a sip of her beer. "Show me more pictures?"

"Sure."

* * *

When Rachel asked him about what he missed about a relationship, what he wanted, Gibbs had had some fairly tame and specific ideas.

He hadn't realized, when he told her about having someone to just talk to, someone to share the quiet with, that what he was looking for was tenderness.

And it wasn't like past wives and girlfriend didn't want to offer it to him. It wasn't like they didn't try. Even Diane, who isn't exactly the poster child for soft and fluffy interactions, _tried._ But he couldn't take it from them.

He couldn't allow himself to have it. Couldn't let himself properly rest with another woman, because that wall had to always be there, keeping them away from things they couldn't possibly understand.

But he's talking with Borin, his stories interspersed with hers, and there's this moment, where she's talking about how she went from being home with her parents after the explosion that ripped her world apart to the Coast Guard, that he recognizes the difference here, feels it, feels why this time it works, why he can rest. It's like that moment where Tim went from McGee to Tim.

This is shared history for them. Borin gets it. She knows what he lost. For her, one day everything was fine, and before the sun set, her world stopped turning.

She's talking, and right now, he's finished dinner, and is sitting next to her on the sofa, arms wrapped around her. She's got her head resting against his shoulder, nursing a beer between bits of her story, and right this second he's just so content he doesn't know what to do with it. He doesn't know how to express it, but it's real.

So when the story wraps he takes the bottle from her (empty now), setting it on the floor, and kisses her soft and gentle, taking his time, savoring her skin, letting the heat ramp up between them slowly.

There's no rush here (Except for that moment where he more or less leapt up to grab her purse and find a condom; he was moving _awfully_ fast then.) just slow, easy, gentle movements. Trying to feel this with more than just skin, trying to make love in addition to have sex.

And it doesn't feel like it did with Shannon. But he's also not the same man he was back then.

And different it might be, but it's still good. It feels right. More right than any sex has felt in a very long time.

It's not like he's new to sleeping on his sofa. Not like this is, by any stretch of the imagination, the first time he's spent a night there.

But it was the first time he did it with someone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So, slow few days there on the update front. Probably a slow few days to come. However (big grin) on this side the writing is coming fast and furious. 30,000 words (100 pages with the way I've got my word processor set) over the last four days of stuff I'm really looking forward to sharing with you in the not wildly distant future!


	77. Preparations

The sound of one foot stepping onto his front porch stairs begins to draw Gibbs from asleep to awake. The second foot, stepping from stairs to the porch proper, pulls him a little closer to all awake. One more step gets him thinking that there might be something he should be doing, but really he's too sleepy and warm and comfortable and naked and wrapped around a beautiful woman to want to do anything other than snuggle in and go back to sleep.

The sound of his doorknob turning, a body slamming into the door, Fornell cursing loudly, and Mona leaping up to bark wildly at him, however, kills what was left of warm and happy and sleepy, and wakes both him and Borin all the way up.

He sits up, carefully, she's mostly lying on him, and takes a moment to untangle himself, leaving her the blanket.

"I'm coming." He yells to the door, along with, "Mona, quiet!" while he looks around for his pants. (They've got to be around here somewhere.)

Meanwhile, Borin wraps herself up in the blanket, grabs her clothes, purse, and scurries up the stairs to get a shower.

* * *

Fornell's in a pretty good mood. It's a lovely Tuesday morning, crocuses are starting to poke up, he doesn't need to be in the office until after noon, and today, he and Gibbs are heading off in search of his wedding tux.

He hops up the step, humming a little, puts his hand on the doorknob, (Relevant fact: Gibbs did indeed get a lock for his door. A deadbolt. The doorknob is still sans-lock and turns freely if you grasp it and apply some torque.) turns the doorknob, and crashes shoulder first into the door when the damn thing doesn't open.

Two seconds later, there's some sort of large, black, barking thing having what sounds like a mental breakdown on the other side of the door. Gibbs had mentioned he had gotten a dog, so why Fornell's surprised he got an attack dog isn't clear, (after all it's not like Gibbs was going to get a toy poodle or something small and cute like that) but he is feeling mildly surprised. (Though given how Mona is spazzing out about him on the other side of the door, he's awfully glad he didn't just walk in.)

Then, two more seconds later, he hears Gibbs making noise from the area of the living room. Why Gibbs spent many full days' worth of hours making a bed to not sleep in it boggles Fornell's mind, but Gibbs is weird like that. Followed by _holy shit_ a woman, redhead, wrapped in the blanket that lives on Gibbs' sofa, and likely very naked under said blanket, streaking up the steps.

Suddenly he's feeling a whole lot less boggled.

Then, and only then, once she was fully up the stairs and out of sight, did Gibbs, in a pair of sweats and nothing else, with a firm grip on Mona's collar, open the door.

"Looks like you forgot our date," Fornell says, with a laugh, rubbing his shoulder, as he breezes in. "This is the dog, huh?"

Gibbs looks at Fornell, eyes narrowed, but Fornell's just beaming at him, very pleased with himself and the universe right now, so Gibbs says, "Mona, Tobias. Tobias's welcome here, too, so you be nice to him."

She barks one more time and spends a moment just looking at him.

Fornell holds out a hand to be sniffed, and Mona deigns to take an interest in him. One last woof, and she heads up the stairs to see what Borin's up to.

"So, looks like you've got more than one new friend," Fornell says with a huge grin.

Gibbs grunts in his direction, not sure what the hell to do right now.

Fornell waves a hand at the stairs. "Go. I can get myself coffee. She like hers god-awful black, too?"

Gibbs nods. "Weren't you supposed to be here an hour from now?"

"Thought you might want pancakes. Didn't realize you had something better than pancakes at home."

Gibbs glares at him slightly about the 'better than pancakes' line and then shrugs, because breakfast does sound good, though Fornell wasn't precisely who he was hoping to have it with.

"Go."

* * *

"Take it you had plans this morning?" Borin asks as he steps into the shower behind her, she's wet and naked and facing him, and he's not having any trouble at all getting used to having someone to shower with.

He gives her his _well, sorta, I'd rather be here with you_ look.

"I've got to get to work, anyway. Might as well do whatever you were going to do."

"Tuxes. That's Fornell." He's not sure if she knows who Fornell is. He doesn't think he's mentioned him. He knows he hasn't mentioned to shared ex-wife saga. "He's getting married in October. Today we're getting tuxes."

"We're?" That's got her interest.

"I'm the best man."

Her eyebrows shoot up, and she bites her lip trying not to laugh.

"Why is that funny?"

"Are you going to give a speech?" And she does laugh at that.

He glares gently at her and turns them so the water's at his back. "Give me the shampoo."

She does, he squirts some in his hand, and begins rubbing it through her hair. And then he starts rubbing her neck, and shoulders, and then breasts as he presses up against her and the water cascades down them.

"That's not my hair."

He rubs against her deliberately. Morning wood deflated a bit with Fornell crashing into his door, but naked woman in his arms is perking it back up. "You mind?"

She kisses him, melting against him and he groans at the feel of that. "Your friend is downstairs, and I don't like being quiet."

He's gonna shoot Fornell. He pouts a little, sighs, but respects it, returning to rubbing the shampoo through her hair.

She sighs at that, leaning against him. "You doing anything tonight?"

"Not supposed to be."

"You've seen me all dressed up. I don't think I've ever seen you in a suit. My house. Seven. Wear the tux."

His eyebrows shoot up; that could be very interesting. He nods, approving.

"Don't know where you live."

"I'll text you the address."

"Okay. I'll bring the bourbon and dessert?"

She smiles at that.

* * *

He lingers in the bathroom, watching her get ready. (Didn't take him long to brush his teeth and hair and pull on his I'm-retired-uniform of cargo pants, t-shirt, and flannel shirt. He'll shave closer to date time.) She didn't mention the hairdryer when she found it, but she did look at him and smile. That made him feel good.

And when it comes down to it, he likes watching a woman get ready. Likes watching her take her clothing off (oh, yes, very, very good!) but putting it back on again is good, too.

Eventually he gets the sense that she's a bit uncomfortable with him just staring at her while she does her hair, so he heads back down to see if Fornell did indeed make some coffee.

He did, and whipped up some eggs.

"You're out of bread," Fornell says to him as he heads into the kitchen, grabbing his coffee and sucking some of it down.

"Thought we were going out for breakfast."

"We are. She's got work right?"

Gibbs nods and heads to his freezer. "Bagels." He pulls one out and tosses it in the microwave to thaw.

"You've got bagels in your freezer? For her?" Fornell shakes his head. "Must be love. Can't wait to meet this one."

"Ever work a case with CGIS?"

Fornell thinks for a moment and then his eyes go wide. "Borin? Is that Abigail Borin up there?"

Gibbs grins.

"How do you even know her?"

"Navy and the Coast Guard. Usually had a case or two a year with them. Worked 'em with her until she got promoted. You?"

"She ripped two of my guys new assholes when they fumbled a case and didn't call her team in. Poor bastards limped for a week when she got done with them."

"Only a week. I'm getting soft," Borin says as she heads into the kitchen. She looks at him, thinks for a moment, and says, "FBI?" Fornell nods. "One of them had the nerve to call me 'Hon' when he finally got around to returning my call."

Fornell winces, he knows that Agent well enough to know that he is that stupid. Though that didn't end up in the report. "He knows not to do that, now. Tobias Fornell," he offers his hand.

"Abby Borin," she shakes his hand, and looks at him pulling the bagel out of the microwave, slipping it into the toaster. "I get him making me breakfast…"

"I'm the better cook. He turns eggs into rubber."

Gibbs sips his coffee, inclining his head, Fornell is right about the better cook part, maybe not about the eggs to rubber part. (Fornell likes his soft and kind of squishy.)

"You two eat together a lot?" she asks, looking from the one to the other. Gibbs can tell she's amused at the idea of him having a buddy.

"He got a fiancée a while back, so less now."

"Usually take out, anyway. But maybe two times a month I pop over and make him a real meal."

"Steaks on the fire are a real meal."

"Penne with sausage and peppers is a real meal. You make... snacks."

"Half pound steak is a snack?"

"Big snacks."

"You make penne with sausage and peppers? With the sauce?" Abby asks.

"Of course! Nona made sure we could all cook. Don't like to this time of year because the tomatoes taste like paste, but come summertime…"

She looks impressed. The toaster pops, and Fornell grabs the bagel, slipping the eggs (which he has cooked into a nicely holding together circle) between them, and handing them over.

"Make him bring you to dinner at our place and you can find out all about it," he says with a smile.

Borin smiles at that, looking vastly amused by the idea of a date with Gibbs' friends. "Thanks." She takes a bite of her breakfast and smiles at Fornell. "For the food and the invite." Her eyes skim across the kitchen to the clock on the microwave. "And I've got to get moving."

Gibbs walks her to the door, kissing her goodbye.

"Tonight?"

He smiles and nods, eyes warm and wicked.

That gets a grin out of her, and another warm, close kiss. "Oh, yeah, definitely tonight."

* * *

He and Fornell are at the diner when Fornell says, "So, you've got a girlfriend? When were you going to tell me?"

Gibbs doesn't say anything.

"You didn't mention it at the retirement party, and we poured so much alcohol into you you were singing and dancing, so it had to be after that."

Gibbs glares, that is _not_ how he remembers that party.

"Don't give me that look. Pride got you up there, and I've got video of it. So, how long?"

Unfortunately, Gibbs thinks that might have actually happened, 'cause that's the kind of thing Pride's good at, but he's not entirely sure, so he glares at that, too. "Two weeks."

Fornell takes a bite of his banana pancakes. "God, this woman know me. Elaine, these are perfect!" Elaine waves at him. "You like her?"

"Try not to date women I don't like."

"You know what I mean. Date for the wedding, eight months from now, like her or just clearing out the pipes, like her?"

He shrugs. "Hope so."

Fornell speaks Gibbs well enough, and can read his face well enough that he's answering 'hope so' to the first half of that question, not the last. "Wow." Fornell eats another bite of his pancakes while Gibbs drinks some of his coffee. "She looks a lot like our ex-wife."

Gibbs shrugs, a _it happens_ look on his face.

"No, Jethro, it doesn't just happen. It's not like every third woman in this city is a tall, strong red-head with a sassy tongue. We move to Ireland, and you want to give me that look, fine, but not here."

"She is who she is."

"Yeah, I know. And you are who you are, so question is, you doing something stupid, chasing after someone bad for you?"

Gibbs shrugs. "Hope not. Trying not to. Doing things different this time."

Fornell nods. "Good." He thinks about it for a few minutes. "Different, how?"

"Told her about Shannon and Kelly."

Fornell nods at that, too. "Decent start."

"Told her why I haven't been on a date for two years."

"Better."

"Haven't been on a date for two years."

"Good point."

"Sat my ass down and listened to her stories, and not just as a way to avoid telling mine."

Fornell smiles at that. "So, come on, tell me about her? She's a Fed, what else…"

* * *

Tuxes. Lots and lots of tuxes. _Sigh._

While it is true that Diane will talk anyone-who-gets-too-near's ear off about how Fornell is 'cheap' that is not entirely true or accurate.

Fornell is frugal, this is true. He grew up with people who lived in Italy in the aftermath of both World Wars, so the home he grew up in was _extremely_ frugal and used every usable portion of everything. So, it's not so much that he's pinching pennies when he adds a tablespoon of water to the tomato paste can and swishes it around to get every last bit out, it's because that's how he was raised, and Nona will do cartwheels in his grave if he wastes food. (This is also true for any clothing that is still wearable. He comes from a world that _mends_ things.)

Likewise, if it's something that doesn't matter to him, he is downright cheap in addition to frugal. (Which is why in one rather fierce fight with Diane when Emily was young and money was tight, Diane had bought a, what he thought was freakishly expensive, moisturizer, and then threw it out when it was less than a quarter used, because it made her skin break out, she started calling him cheap, and well, it just never got much better than that.)

But in that he is no longer a middle-aged FBI Agent providing the only source of income for a family with a small child, he is significantly less stressed out about money these days. And given that Wendy, who is, second only to Emily, the light of his life, has told him he has to look good for this thing, he is determined to find a good tux, cost be damned.

So, they are at as upscale of a place as you can go, and still rent tuxes. Assuming you are going to lay down money to rent a tux, this is where Tony would send you. (Though he'd try to convince you to buy one because, look, what do most guys wear rental tuxes to? Weddings and proms. Do you really want to think about what fluids got spilled all over and in that tux before you had it? No. Just the idea of a rental tux makes Tony cringe and want to break out the alcohol wipes.)

Early morning, work day, besides the sales man, the place is empty. So he waits less than three seconds before swooping down on them to offer assistance. (It's also extremely obvious to the sales associate that these are two guys who do not regularly do formal wear of any sort.)

The salesman gets them measured, Fornell first, while asking what Fornell was looking for in a tux. (Black. Fornell's looking for black. What Fornell knows about tuxes could fill an especially small thimble. He's worn one precisely twice in his life.)

Gibbs does feel pretty satisfied to see the waist measure has dropped from a (snug) 39 inches (Tony and Ziva's wedding tux) to 34 (33 ½ really.) He's more satisfied to see Fornell staring at him about it. Though getting measured now is making him wonder if this stupid thing is going to fit in October.

"Isn't the wedding eight months from now? You're not moving it up, are you?"

"Still set for October," Fornell answers, looking at different black vests.

"So why are we doing this now?"

Fornell sighs. "Got some sort of formal thing in May we're going to."

That triggers a memory for Gibbs, so he fires off a text to Tony. _Your dad's wedding going to be formal?_

A minute later he gets. _Black tie._

_Am I invited?"_

_Last I heard, this was going to be a close, intimate gathering of Dad, Delphine and every other person on Earth they've ever met. Yeah, you're gonna be invited. Why?_

_Looking at tuxes with Fornell for his wedding, wanted to know if I'll need one for more than two days._

_Two days? You getting married again without telling us?_

Gibbs laughs. _Back to work, DiNozzo._

_Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want all the details later._

Fornell's reading over his shoulder. "That's a good question, why do you need one for more than two days?"

Gibbs grins. "Hot date tonight."

Fornell punches him in the shoulder and laughs. "You son of a bitch."

An hour later they left, Gibbs with a tux in a bag over his shoulder (plus his receipts for rentals in May and October. The sales associate promised him that if he wanted to re-measure closer to time and change the size that wasn't a problem.) Fornell with the paperwork for both the wedding in October and his 'formal thing' in May.

* * *

The tux place is near a mall. The mall has food. So, as they're heading out, Fornell says, "Lunch?"

"Sure."

They find an Indian place that looks promising and settle in for curry and naan.

"So… you, size 34… that just that Bootcamp thing you're doing with the boys?"

Gibbs shakes his head. "Running a lot. Jimmy got me doing some stuff when my knee was hurting, that helps, too."

"What kind of stuff?"

Gibbs looks up and shakes his head. "You'd never believe it."

"Like what? You a vegetarian now?"

Gibbs takes a deliberate bite of his lamb vindaloo curry. "Not that unbelievable. It might be yoga."

"Might be?" Fornell asks with a smile.

"He wanted me to actually do it, so he couldn't just call it that, could he? But I know he and Tim do it and there's stretching stuff, so…"

Fornell laughs. "Stealth yoga."

Gibbs shrugs. "It helps. It's hard. I could do it when my knee wouldn't hold me. Being more flexible is kind of nice. Got better over-all strength which is good. Got back to running, didn't hurt as bad as I thought it was going to."

"You've got a girlfriend who's twenty years younger, you better keep working out. And get your heart checked. Otherwise you're going out with a smile on your face."

Gibbs smirks. "Good for that, too."

Fornell's eyes narrow. "Good how? Heart good?"

"Probably good for that, too."

"Younger girlfriend good. So… good how?"

"Everything moves easier good. Low back doesn't complain if I'm on top. Haven't tried yet, but if my knee'll hold, my back will, too, for standing up."

Fornell thinks about that, after all he's got a honeymoon coming up. "Huh. Palmer taught you this?"

"He's a doctor."

"Well, yeah, but…Palmer? Goofy one with the glasses, right?" (Fornell has DiNozzo and McGee firmly in his mind. Palmer is, especially in regards to any sort of image of a physical body, a somewhat fuzzier proposition.)

Gibbs sighs. He doesn't like to admit he notices stuff like this, but... "Remember those naked pretty-boys Emily's got on her phone?" (The reason Gibbs knows about them is because Fornell found them, and once he started breathing again, he called Gibbs to have a complete and utter meltdown of epic proportions.)

Fornell nods, slowly, malice in his gaze. " _Had_ on her phone." Those guys were _very_ naked and doing _indecent_ things to each other. Stuff he didn't know about until he was in his thirties. Finding them on his seventeen-year-old daughter's phone had been horrifying.

Gibbs gives Fornell his _yeah right_ look. The chance those boys weren't back on there the second she got her phone back, just better hidden, is non-existent. "Jimmy's built like them."

"What?" Fornell's coffee stops midway to his mouth as he just stares at Gibbs.

"Yeah." Gibbs nods.

"Really?" Fornell puts the coffee down, looking really perplexed.

"Yeah. Kid's ripped. I wasn't that toned when I was a Marine. I wasn't that toned when I was an eighteen-year-old Marine, let alone thirty-eight."

Fornell's eyebrows are high. "I didn't know real people could look like that."

Gibbs spreads his hands wide and shakes his head.

Fornell thinks some more about this and purses his lips. "Think he'd be willing to talk to me about it?"

"Offer to buy him lunch, and he might. He made me show him what kind of exercises I had been doing, and then he spent the whole time wincing at me and groaning about how no wonder my knee ripped to shreds, I'd been killing them for years. And then he showed me how to actually do the damn things and suddenly even a pull up was a hundred times harder."

"How can a pull-up be harder?"

"You're supposed to do them slow."

"What?"

"Yeah. Then fast, then just sort of hover half way, then bounce some, slow, then all the way up and all the way down, slow again. Then, if you're showing off, you do 'em one handed. First time we did Bootcamp he punched me, staggered me, and I was already braced for it. Didn't know how he had that much force. Then I saw him do pull-ups. Mystery solved."

Fornell laughs at that then shakes his head. "Palmer."

Gibbs nods.

* * *

On the way back to his truck, Gibbs texts Abby. _What's the name of the bakery that did your wedding cakes?_

He's in the ABC store to pick up some bourbon when he gets the answer back along with: _And you need a baker why? Would this have anything to do with the tux? Seriously, you getting married again?_

_It's my night to bring dessert. No. I'm not getting married again. Tell DiNozzo more working and less gossiping._

_Slow day, Gibbs, gossip keeps us going._

_Paperwork?_

_You know it. Tim's beta version goes live tomorrow, but right now we're filling out forms. Dessert, huh? Sounds like fun. When you gonna bring her to Shabbos?_

_Back to work, Abbs._

_Hey, am I Abbs and her Abby? That's going to be confusing, isn't it? I mean, you're not still calling her Borin, right? That'd just be wrong._

_Paperwork's not doing itself, McGee._

_J_ _Oooo! I like that. 'Course you do that, and Tim'll be just as likely to answer as I am._

_Getting in the car now._

_Fine, I'll quit bugging you._

Gibbs is buckling his seatbelt when his phone buzzes again.

_I lied. That bakery, they make the most amazing chocolate-covered strawberries. The berries are huge, and they soak them in brandy, then fill them with whipped cream, and then dip them in chocolate. If Abby likes strawberries, you've_ got _to get some for her._

_Thanks Abbs._

_Ziva says when they went out for drinks, she got a strawberry margarita._

_I'll keep that in mind._

_She also says you better bring Abby to Shabbos soon._

_Are you all just sitting around the lab gossiping?_

_We're in Autopsy. Tony still wants to know why you need a tux, and Jimmy wants to know why he just got a call from Fornell._

Gibbs sighs, looks up at the ceiling of his truck, supposes having people in his business is part of this whole family-loving-you-thing, but sometimes it's a pain in the ass.

_Fornell wants to get in better shape, and the tux is private._

_Cool! Chocolate covered strawberries and tux! Oh yeah! Lucky Abby! Suggest that to Tim at some point. You got one with a vest right? Cummerbunds look kind of dumb. Not that you'd look dumb in any sort of tux, but vests are better. And you're just about to shoot your phone, so I'll shut up. Have fun on your date._

_Thanks._ He turns off his phone and stuffs it in the glove compartment. And then a few seconds later he pulls it back out and turns on Google Maps so he can find the bakery.

* * *

Tux, check. Dessert, check. Bourbon, check. He feels like there should be something else… An idea springs to mind. Honey dust… Not check. That would be fun. He pulls out his phone and then immediately decides there is no way in Hell he's texting Tony to find out where he got the stuff in the first place.

(When the box with no card and the honey dust showed up for Christmas of '02, he thought it had been a present from Elizabeth. She certainly enjoyed it, and he did, too. But she didn't know where it came from and suggested he needed to do a better job keeping track of his girlfriends if he didn't know who was sending him sex toys. When Christmas turned to New Years, and New Years to Valentines, and no bottle of bourbon showed up, he figured out how he ended up with the Honey Dust. Getting a chance to tease Tony with it later was just icing on the cake. Honestly, it's the best Christmas present he's ever gotten from Tony. Certainly the one he had the most fun with.)

So he googles where to find it instead.

Four places sell it in DC, and one of them is in a decent, expensive neighborhood, so hopefully it won't be too sleazy.

He shakes his head and snorts a little, another Adventure, though this time without Molly.

* * *

Having been married four times, and having dated a lot between those marriages, and dated some more after them, Gibbs is pretty confident in the idea that he knows his way around a woman and is well-versed in the art of sex.

That, on a purely technical level, he knows what he's doing.

And he's a cop, so he's seen a lot of… weird… stuff over the years.

So, it's not like he's some sort of nervous virgin as he's walking into this place, but, best he can remember, he's never been in a sex shop as a customer. It's a small store, but, _Holy God,_ there's a shit ton of sex stuff in here. (And he read the reviews saying this place didn't have an amazing selection.) There is way, way, way more stuff involved in sex than he'd ever dreamed of or… His eyes land on… he's not sure what that _thing_ is, but he's certain he doesn't want to know.

Okay. He wants honey dust. It's got to be in here somewhere. He roams around, looking for the stuff, and finds the lubes and… He knows they come in different flavors. That was true even back when Shannon was still alive. But, they've got… fifty brands, different versions of each brand. Who can possibly know, that specifically, what kind of slippery stuff they like? (He ends up grabbing three kinds. When it comes down to it, he wouldn't _mind_ knowing that specifically what sort he likes.)

Condoms are near the lube, he guesses that makes sense. When he'd grabbed some after their first date he hadn't really spent much time perusing the selection. Just grabbed what looked like the thinnest sort they had, and went with that. But he's in a sex shop for God's sake, and he's got four hours before he needs to be anywhere else, so he might as well look.

So he looks. And like everything else, this has changed since he did it last. (He can't really imagine how what's basically technology from the dark ages has managed to change this much in five years, but… It has.)

He picks up a "more sensation" pack, which he's in favor of, sees the shape is kind of different than what he's used to, and thinks about it for a minute. He's about to just put them in the little basket with everything else, try 'em out and see, but he notices the price and decides maybe he doesn't want to spend that much if he can't tell the difference.

He gets his phone out. And then, shaking his head, he puts it back in his pocket and puts them back on the shelf. He's good with what he's already got.

Okay, honey dust has to be somewhere. (And no, he's not about to ask where.) Fortunately it's in the next aisle over, and shit, it comes in like seven flavors now, too. (Coffee and bourbon not among them.)

There's a four pack so he grabs that, can taste them when he gets home, and pick there.

He heads toward the register, back through the condom aisle, and stares at the boxes again.

This time his phone comes out and he actually texts. _You alone, or is the gab fest still going on in Autopsy?_

Tim sends back. _I have no idea what they're doing in Autopsy. I'm in my office overseeing the installation of the paperwork software for my guys. So I'm not alone, but no one's reading over my shoulder, either._

_Got a minute?_

_Yeah, a few. This is the boring part. Ten minutes we'll start finding new and interesting ways to break it._

Gibbs stares at his phone, and stares at the package, and back at his phone. Fuck it, he's gonna ask. _Extra sensitive condoms, ones that're shaped weird, they actually feel different?_

Tim has to read that three times to make himself believe it's actually on his phone.

Gibbs is staring at his phone and the utter lack of response on it, imagining (pretty accurately) the look on Tim's face right now.

Finally he gets back. _I can't really feel a difference. Jimmy think's I'm insane and likes them better._

_Do I want to know why you know that about Jimmy?_

_Stocking Tony's honeymoon box. Turns out we didn't agree on what the best kind were. Which is why Tony got a few kinds. So he's probably got an opinion, too, I just don't know what it is._

Gibbs shakes his head.

_Do I want to know why you're asking?_

_Wondering if it's worth the extra money._

_Jimmy's got them if you wanted to snag one to just try them._

_No._ Gibbs literally cannot imagine the conversation that would be involved with doing that. He can feel Tim laughing at the idea of it, though.

There's another pause where nothing comes up, and Gibbs decides what the hell, they don't cost _that_ much, and they sell three packs so… He puts it in his basket.

_You know about putting a little extra lube inside them, right?_ Pops up as he's about to step closer to the register.

That seems like it'd be counter-productive. _Don't want it to slip off._

_Not that much. Drop in/on the tip, keep it off the shaft, it won't slip off. That, I can feel the difference on._

Gibbs stares at the phone, and all the lubes in his basket. Might be worth trying.

_System's live, got to go._ Pops up on his phone.

_Hope it works._

_Thanks._

* * *

It's a very black tux.

Wendy's got her heart set on a black and white wedding, so a black and white wedding they're having, and this is the blackest suit Gibbs has ever seen. This isn't so much a color that absorbs all light as a color that scares it off.

It's really black.

And there is a vest. (Fornell tried on the cummerbund. They looked at it, and put it back about two seconds later.) It's black with a charcoal pin stripe. Gibbs honestly isn't sure if it's two colors or if it's just a slightly different texture that reflects the light differently.

Shirt's white. Little black studs for buttons. Black cuff-links. Black tie (also with the charcoal pinstripe.)

It's very black. He looks at it, sitting on his bed, and decides he needs to shine his dress shoes. If he's going to be this sharp looking he can't have dull shoes. So he does.

Slipping into the tux feels a little weird. Not bad say, just… yeah, weird. It's one thing if say he's getting ready to give away a bride or get married himself (both of the times he's worn a tux previously) he's got that firmly entrenched in stuff that goes along with weddings in his mind.

He's gotten dressed up for a nice date out, but, they aren't going out… This is just because she wants to see him in a tux. And as reasons for getting dressed up go, doing it because she enjoys it seems just fine, it still feels a little weird.

He's looking in the mirror, tying the tie when why this is weird really hits him.

It's weird because it's him going out of his way to be _physically_ attractive to a woman. If Gibbs can be said to have any sort of dating game, it's all personality based. Which is not to say he's unaware of the fact that he is (and was, definitely was) an attractive looking guy, but it's not anything he's ever done anything about, either. (For example, at no point when he's purchased clothing has the thought 'Do I look good in this?' ever occurred to him. 'Does it fit? Is it comfortable? Will it last? How much does it cost?' He's thought of all of those things, but 'Does this color make my eyes look good?' let alone, 'Does this show off my butt nicely?' are collections of words that have never appeared together in his mind.)

Until now. Because right now he's doing this so she can enjoy _looking at him._ He knows in an abstract sort of way that women must like looking. He knows that when he was younger he'd sometimes catch them doing it.

All the pictures Shannon took of him certainly indicated she liked looking at him.

But it's still a novel sensation to realize that he's getting dressed up so a woman can _look_ at him, and then take his clothing off.

And it's certainly not like he _minds_ the idea. And it's definitely not like he hasn't put clothing on hoping it was going to come off soon, but this feels different.

He looks at himself again, very black tux looking crisp and formal, straightens the tie a hair, checks his cuff-links, and decides he looks good. He's sort of vaguely thinking that if this is something he's going to do more than once, maybe he should talk to Tony, because if anyone he knows understands how this attempting to look good thing works, he does.

Enough of that. He grabs the bag with the dessert, bourbon, and honey dust in it, tugs on his coat, makes sure Mona's got lots of food and water, and then heads off.


	78. Tonight

Borin's house is a brick row house in DC proper. Small, but she lives alone and is rarely home. Good neighborhood. Gibbs' truck is probably about two standard deviations less expensive than most of the cars he sees lining the road, and it takes him a while to find parking.

He likes neighborhoods like this. Sidewalk. Old trees over-arching the street. Row houses with front stoops a few steps up from the sidewalk. In the spring and summer there are probably people who spend time on them, chatting with the neighbors. Each house has a tiny, fenced-in backyard. Big enough for a patio with a grill and maybe a baby pool. (Though, there probably aren't too many people with kids in this neighborhood.)

A few of the neighbors give him a curious look as he's heading toward her door. Since the tux isn't visible under his coat, he's assuming that means that these people have a good enough feel for who lives here that they recognize him as an outsider.

It's winter (ish, got up to 45 today), so he can't really tell, but there are tidy, wrought iron flower boxes on the first floor windows, and what looks like a planter right next to the front door, so come spring time, he's thinking Borin's got some plants in front of her house.

He knocks, and hears, "Come on it." Which is promising, though he'd kind of prefer she open the door for him. Still, he's got no idea what she's up to, so in he goes.

"Hello," he calls out, closing and locking the door behind him. He doesn't see her. He's in a tiny foyer area, steps leading right up, long hall heading all the way back to the… whatever's in the back. There's a coat rack against the wall, and shelves under the stairs with keys, mail, and her phone charger on it.

"Down in a minute. Come on in."

He puts his bag on the bottom step and hangs his coat up, looking around. Hardwood floors. The long wall is cream-colored, he thinks it might be original plaster and lathe. The wall against the stairs is raw brick, and there's what he's guessing is oak (very dark stain, matches the floors) trim.

"Okay." He looks at the shelves. Besides her shelf for random stuff, there are books, fiction and history, DVDs, mostly action flicks, though he notices some things he might call fluffy romances, interspersed with pictures of what he assumes is Montana and pictures of people who are probably her parents, sister, and sister's family.

He looks closely at a picture of her with her parents and comes to a somewhat distressing conclusion, they can't be more than ten years older than he is, and five is even more likely.

He heads down the hall, first door on the left leads into a small living room. It's mostly light blue and white, with dark blue furniture and the dark brown floor. It's bright and airy, but he couldn't have guessed if the person living here was male or female based on it.

He's thinking about checking out the next room when he hears, "Lord, you clean up good!"

He turns to face her, and… God, he's not the only one who cleaned up good today.

And sure, it's true he's not entirely used to being the one getting looked at, but he certainly appreciates the way her eyes are trailing over him, and he really doesn't mind the fact that this is old hat to her, and she is very definitely dressed to be looked at.

Lord, she's worth looking at. "Wow," he says and swallows, hard. He completely understands why she didn't get the door. She's in… He doesn't know what it's called. It's black and silky and starts at one shoulder and falls all the way to the floor and it's cut hip high on her left leg and there's scarlet lace edging where the dress (Maybe. Nightgown? Negligee? That'll cover it.) cuts away over her leg. His mouth opens to say a few things, but keeps shutting without words coming out.

She closes to him and kisses him, arms wrapping around his neck. "I take it you approve."

He nods slowly and then pulls her in tight for more kisses. Yes, he approves of this. If he approved of this any more, there'd be so little blood left in his brain he'd pass out.

"You're gorgeous," comes out of his mouth, and she smiles at him, stepping back, looking him over again.

"Likewise."

He laughs at that and rolls his eyes a bit. Speaking of words that have never entered his mind in relation to his idea of his own body…

She lays her index finger on his lips, shakes her head, and says, "You are not allowed to disagree with or mock my opinion on this."

That gets an amused smile out of him. "Am I allowed to suggest that you may need glasses?"

"No."

He kisses the tip of her finger, nibbling it gently, and, as she pulls her finger away, asks, "Is that an order?" Technically, since she was an officer and he was a non-com, she outranked him. Though he had more years in and was a higher pay grade.

"Damn right, Gunny."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Her fingers trace over his lapels, coming to rest on his hips as she looks him up and down again. "I really like this."

He smiles, lightly brushes his hand over her bare shoulder. Part of him (especially one very insistent part that has been patiently waiting since morning and is currently feeling rather constrained by the presence of trousers) wants to step in close and kiss her senseless and then put that sofa to good use. Part of him (this would be his brain) thinks that checking in and seeing if she had any plans besides immediate sex in the living room is a good idea.

His brain won. (Sort of.) He kisses her ear, throat, and shoulder, inhaling against her neck, enjoying her scent and the smoothness of her bare skin against his lips, and then says, "Your play tonight, what are we doing?"

"Come upstairs."

He nods, smiling widely at that. He's all in favor of upstairs. "Lead on."

She smiles, taking his hands, and pulling him toward her staircase. "You bring dessert?"

He nods again.

"Good." She sees the brown paper bag sitting on her bottom step. She's on the bottom stair, and he's right behind her, but still on the first floor. She stops, turning toward him, and pulls him close, stroking his face before kissing him, wet and slow. She breaks it when his hands tighten on her rear. "Question for you, are you the sort of man who likes to eat dessert first?"

"I am tonight."

"Fabulous." One more lingering kiss, and as she pulls back he sucks her bottom lip, trying to keep her near for another second. "Grab that bag and follow me."

Gibbs does as told, grabbing the bag and following her up the stairs, very much enjoying the view of her climbing the steps right in front of him. He makes it four whole steps before the hand that isn't carrying the desserts cups over her ass, stroking the full, soft curve that draws his eyes as she walks ahead of him.

She looks down at him, over her shoulder. "Like that?"

He nods, fingers lightly skimming over the negligee, hooking into the hip-high slit, pulling it back and up so he's got her bare skin in sight, and lays a soft, gentle kiss on her curve of her butt, followed by a quick, sharp nip. "Oh yeah. Love that."

She wiggles a little for him, and then heads up the rest of the stairs, fast. He follows, eager.

He was expecting upstairs to be like downstairs, long hall, small rooms (he assumes, only saw the one, but this isn't the first row house he's been in) but it's not. It's her house. She lives alone. So she made it the way she liked it. She ripped out everything but the studs for the supporting wall (which had a fireplace in it and she wanted to keep that, anyway) and turned her upstairs into one big bedroom.

So, it's a long, open space, fireplace flanked by pillars (all some sort of dark green thing, he's too far away to tell what exactly they are, and honestly, doesn't care all that much, either) in the middle, separating what appears to be a living space on the one side, from the sleeping space (and likely bathroom further on) on the other.

There's the same dark, hardwood floors, from downstairs, same exposed brick wall on the one side, the other three walls are light green, the ceiling, what bits of it that are ceiling, she's got a long row of sky lights, is white. If the sun hadn't set an hour ago, this would be a very bright space.

She pauses in front of the fireplace. On one side of it, at her feet, he can see what looks like a comfy, soft rug, and several pillows, on the other side, beyond it, is her bed.

"How crumbly is dessert?"

"Not very. Wanna see?"

"Yes." She grins as he pulls the small box out of the bag and hands it to her.

She opens the box, not seeming to notice, or not caring that the bakery tape had been slit already and looks in. He enjoys the pleasure on her face at seeing one plump, ripe strawberry, covered in chocolate, small mound of whipped cream at its top.

"Only one?" She looks up from the chocolate-covered strawberry in the box. (He'd bought two, but once he got the honey dust, he also got an idea in mind, and he liked that idea, so… He ate his at home. Abby… Abbs was right; it was awesome.)

He grins. "That's your dessert."

"Mine? What are you having?"

He sets the bag on the floor and pulls out the small tin of honey dust (decided on honeysuckle flavor) and the little feather duster that went with it. He spends a long minute looking her up and down, making sure she can feel his eyes all over her skin, then he grins and says, "You."

She smiles, delighted at that. And he laughs, enjoying how happy she is right now.

She reaches for his hands, and says, "Bed. Dessert's in bed."

He nods. Gibbs approves of dessert in bed.

King-sized bed, black metal of some sort, more light green for the sheets, dark green for the quilt and pillows. He's paying just enough attention to the bed to notice that she's already turned down the blankets, and then he's paying attention to her on the bed, which is vastly more interesting to him.

She's sitting in the middle of the bed, legs folded under her, the naked one visible, as she lifts the strawberry out of the box. He quickly goes to sit next to her, kicking off he shoes as he does. He takes the jacket off, hanging it on one of the bedposts, and she smiles, approving of that.

"You look good in vests."

He just sort of looks at it. "Don't usually wear them."

"Nope. Didn't think you did."

She lifts the strawberry to her lips and begins to eat it, making a very pleased sound as she does so.

Gibbs has noticed that sometimes Tim gets a kind of stupid look on his face when he watches his Abby eat strawberries, and right now, Gibbs is fully, utterly, completely understanding that look because he's awfully sure it's all over his face, too.

It's big enough that it's a several bite strawberry, but she hasn't bitten it, yet. No, she's carefully licking every tiny little bit of whipped cream that oozed out of it off, and doing that melted the chocolate some, so she sucks the chocolate off her fingers, and then sucks more of the chocolate from the tip of the strawberry and he's never, ever going to be able to watch her eat one of these damn things without getting a hard-on again.

He's biting his lip, watching her eat that damn thing, feeling each lick and suck as if it's happening to him.

She's grinning at him as her tongue flicks over the tip of the strawberry. He groans quietly, pulling her into his lap and grinding into her. She smiles, takes a tiny nibble from the fruit and then kisses him, sharing the sharp/sweet/cream/sour/boozy/chocolate rush of flavors with him.

He sucks it off her tongue, and then sucks her just for the sake of doing it, just for the flavor of her and the feel of her skin on his.

"You like it?" he asks, kissing her jaw as she takes another bite.

"Oh yeah. Good choice." She kisses his lips again, again sharing the dessert, again he takes his time kissing all traces of it off of her.

Third bite and done. She carefully licks and sucks each finger clean, and again, just the visual of that is enough to make him want to tip her off his lap, pull himself out of his pants and watch her wrap her lips around him. (God, there's a visual, him in this suit all put together and proper, standing up, her on the bed, hands and knees, sucking him off. That makes him bit his lip, too.)

Once her fingers are clean, all traces of sugar gone, she carefully takes his tie in hand, loosening it, which is a good thing because if he has to spend another minute in this suit he's going to explode. He's firmly convinced that right this second he should be naked, she should really be naked, and every part of him that can feel should be touching her.

His tie hits the floor, and he's already got the vest unbuttoned, so that goes next. He gets the cufflinks while she undoes his shirt and he's about to peel it off, but she takes his hands in hers, stops him, and spends a moment just looking, again.

She wants to look. She gets to look. He carefully scoots her so she's not in his lap anymore and stands up. White tux shirt, unbuttoned, black belt, dress slacks, very visible erection tenting them, black socks. Her eyes trail up and down him as he pushes the shirt off, and slowly strips off the belt.

She licks her lips as he does that, eyes on his dick through his pants, and he's deciding he's really liking this getting looked at thing. He gives himself a firm squeeze and her eyes light up at that, too. Then he unbuttons and unzips the pants, letting them hit the floor.

Getting out of them and the socks off probably wasn't the most graceful or erotic move ever, but it didn't take long, and then he's standing in front of her, naked save for boxers.

She'd been sitting on the bed, but once he's standing there (at parade rest, though he's not aware of that) she shifts to kneeling, and both of her hands come to rest on his chest, fingers twining in his chest hair, and then slipping down, stroking him through his boxers, (He groans quietly at that.) before slipping up to the waistband and pulling them off of him.

She looks him over again, eyes to toes, her gaze travelling all over him, lingering on face, shoulders, chest, cock, hips. She bends down, gently kissing the tip of his dick, giving it a very soft little lick, and as much as he wants her to keep doing that, he had some other plans for tonight that are going to be a hell of a lot less fun if he lets her get him off before he does them.

He pulls her face to face, and kisses her again. "Do I get to taste my dessert?"

"Oh yeah." He begins tugging at the negligee, looking to lift it over her head, but she's got to shift a bit, get it out from under her knees first. Then he pulls it up and over, tossing it behind him.

He growls gently at her, looking his fill at her naked and kneeling in front of him. One more kiss, one long, deep, tongue thrusting, in and out, rubbing against her, reveling in her skin against his, kiss, before tearing away. "On the bed, on your stomach."

She does as told, lying diagonally across the bed, turning so she can watch him.

He carefully unscrews the lid on the tin, sweeps the little cluster of feathers into it, and gently, lightly sprinkles the honey dust over her back. She tenses as it lands, but he knows it's too fine to really feel. It smells like honey and honeysuckle, sweet and summery, as he showers another puff of it across her low back, and one more along her legs.

Time to play.

She's laying on her stomach, hair wild, one hand clenched in the sheets, the other one pillowed under her cheek, squirming gorgeously as he strokes the little cluster of feathers over her spine, delicately swirling it across her shoulders, taking a second to dip it back into the powder, and lightly sprinkle more of it amid the freckles across her low back, then stroking again, gently, across the dimples on her butt cheeks.

And if the squirming she was doing when he was stroking the feathers across her skin was gorgeous, the way she's moving, arching into him and cursing quietly as he retraces, backwards, the path of the feathers with his tongue is astounding in its beauty.

He could very happily stay right here, nibbling the crest of her hip, mapping every freckle on her body with his tongue, but there's teasing, and then there's drawing things out too long, and he doesn't yet know exactly where that line is, so he begins to kiss his way down her body, trailing nipping kisses down the back of her thigh, leaving small, pink suck marks on the insides of her knees. When he gets to her ankle he says, "Flip over."

She does, and he sighs, very happy, very turned on. Nothing like a begging woman laid out wet and naked in front of him.

He starts at the tops of her feet, brushing the honey dust over them, watching her toes twitch and curl as he hits tickly spots. He nibbles there, licking the path of the feathers, holding her ankle when she tries to jerk it away.

He switches from licks to firm sucks, and instead of jerking away, ticklish, she relaxes, moaning.

"Better?"

"Ya think?" she answers perfectly mimicking his usual inflection. "Could be even better if you slide on up here."

"Oh, I'll get there." His eyes sparkle as he says that, dipping the feathers back into the honey dust, trailing them up along the inside of her leg. He stops about mid-thigh, not that he doesn't want to play there, too, but that's one spot of a woman he wants to smell and taste like woman.

One more dip into the honey dust, this time spreading it along her stomach, over the tips of her breasts, and down the inside of one arm. (Okay, that was just to watch her squirm. He's fairly sure he's never going to get tired of that.)

He goes to her wrist, kissing intently, licking the honey dust off of her, trailing his lips and tongue over her arm, to her collarbone. He nibbles along it, focusing on her breath, the soft gasping sounds she's making as each, wet, sucking kiss falls to her skin.

Eventually he gets to her breasts, gently licking them, making sure to suck lightly on them. Abby's arching into him, whimpering, begging him for more, and by that point, as much as he wants to linger, kiss and suck each inch of her, he wants more, too.

He wants her on his tongue. He wants to feast on her, so he slides down her body, laying between her legs, and kisses her, soft, gentle, exploring to begin with. He slides her one leg to the side so she's wide open and begins licking in earnest.

Wet, hot woman. Nothing else on earth tastes like this, and he loves it.

Her hips rock in time with his tongue, as her breathing speeds up and she moans along with each stroke of his tongue.

He gets his fingers into the game, alternating between thrusting into her, and then stroking himself. Tasting her, feeling his cock slick with her juices feels fucking amazing. Then back to thrusting because there's this sound she makes as he hits that little spot, a sort of quick, gasped, "Fuck!" and he wants to hear her make that sound a lot.

Her legs are starting to go tight, and that gasped "Fuck!" has gotten higher pitched. He thinks that means she's getting close, and he wants to watch her come, wants to kiss her while she hits her crest, so he pulls back to slide up.

She groans when he pulls back, tugging his hair, in a very commanding, _get back down there and finish that_ , sort of way.

Gibbs pulls her hand free from his hair and puts it firmly, _that stays there, or I tie you down next time_ clear in the pressure on her wrist, back on the mattress. He shifts so he's on his side, next to her, his body over that one arm, his left arm under her neck, his right leg draped over her left leg, keeping her pinned in place.

His thumb finds her clit and his first two fingers slip inside her again, setting a fast, firm rubbing thrust. His lips fall to her nipple, sucking, wet and hard and it doesn't take long before she's squirming and moaning and going tight against him again.

He can feel the tension in her thigh, feel the tightness on her fingers, she's close. He pulls away from her breast, so he can watch her face, expression tight, mouth open, panting moans filling the room, sweeter than any music he's ever heard. He kisses her lips, tastes her moans.

She's thrashing against him, wild, demanding more and faster, and then her hips jerk, hard and again, and once more, again, softer that time. He gentles his touch, eventually settling for just touching, no movement, but doesn't stop kissing.

Her breathing slows, interspersed with very content sounding purrs/sighs, and slow, sated, lazy kisses.

Her free hand, which had been clenching onto the headboard, finds the back of his head and gently strokes his hair. "You almost got shot when you stopped going down on me."

He pulls back and grins. "Wanted to watch. Can't do that from down there. Figured you'd forgive me if I made it worth your while."

She kisses him. "You did. But I'm not sure about forgiveness." She rolls him over so he's on his back and she's straddling his stomach, pinning his wrists to the mattress. "Do I need to cuff you to get you to stay down?"

He really likes the sound of what's going to happen next.

"You got 'em right here?"

"Downstairs."

He grins. "Next time. I can hold still for now."

She grins back. "You better. Or I'll leave you hanging and take at least three minutes to go find them."

He licks his lips. "Yes, Ma'am."

"Good. Your hands come off the headboard, everything stops."

He nods again, really, really liking where he's thinking this is going to go.

She stares at him, reading his face. "You really good with this? Not going to flip out after?"

He nods. Sure, he hasn't played this half of the game since 1990. _This_ is a level of intimacy/release/whatever he hasn't been willing to allow himself since he was with Shannon. _This_ is something that hasn't felt right in a very long time. Sure, like he told Jen, he doesn't always have to be on top, but being in control is something he did need, always needed, because if he wasn't in control… But right now, he doesn't need it.

And that feels really good. That feels light and happy and just, all over, _good_.

His fingers curl into the slats of the headboard. "I'm _very_ good with this."

She lifts up and brushes her pubic hair against his dick. He twitches, jaw clenching at the wet, tickly feel of that, a low ragged breath ripping out of him.

"Like that, too?"

"Fuck, yes."

She does it again, letting her body get even closer, so he can feel not just wet hair, but her heat. His dick's straining, trying to get to and in her, begging for real contact, but she stays, teasingly, just barely out of reach.

"You really had a vasectomy?"

He nods. Swallowing hard as she reaches for him, shifts his angle a bit, and then sinks down onto him in a slow, hot, wet, vibrant rush of red-gold pleasure.

He stops breathing as she does it, hands clenching on the headboard, hips surging up into her, wanting to slam into hot, wet paradise over and over, but she gets settled on him, presses her hands into his hips, and says, "Still."

He bites his bottom lip, but holds still, lets her set the pace.

She's going to kill him. Long, slow strokes up and down, little squeezes along the length and when just the tip of him is inside her. Between her naked skin on his, and waiting all day, and already having gone down on her so he can still taste and smell her on his lips, he's dying from wanting.

He's trying to be still, trying to keep holding onto the headboard and not grab her hips and pull her down hard on him.

Maybe she feels his tension, maybe she just wants to go faster herself, but she starts to speed up, which makes it easier for him to not move.

"Look at me, Jethro."

He didn't realize his eyes were closed, but they must have been. He gets them open, and she leans back a little, her whole body on display, riding him, and she starts touching herself, and he can see his dick sinking into her, see her skin flush and her nipples hard, see her finger flying over her clit, feel the little brushes of her finger tips against him as she goes back to that crying slow pace, inching up and down him, taking him to the root as her fingers move faster and her body grows tighter on him.

He's whimpering. There's no dignified version of the sound ripping out of him as she keeps taking him all the way from tip to root, and when she comes, when twitching, rippling, hot, wet, snug, tight, and again so wet and so slick, and so fucking good is slipping over and over on him, whimpering stops and is replaced with full-on cursing.

His arms are so tight he can feel them shaking, but he's not letting go of that headboard. She slips off of him and if the cursing from before was an expression of _this feels amazing, keep doing it_ , the cursing going on now is significantly less happy.

And then she sucks him down in one long draw and the deep and sincere "FUCK!" that jerks out of him is very, very happy with this.

This time she's going fast. Firm suction, keeping her hand going with her mouth, and it's not going to take much of this to tip him over, maybe another minute, probably less.

His balls are pulling in tight, his legs are tensing, his toes are starting to curl, just a few more strokes of her brilliant, glorious, fabulous all good things that have ever been good mouth and he'll be gone and then she pulls all the way off and just stops.

Completely let go of him.

That gets some less than happy cursing, too. Then his eyes open, and he finds her kneeling next to him, looking very amused.

"I did not do this to you," he says when he gets the ability to talk back.

"I figure you'll forgive me if I make it worth your while."

"You better."

She grins, and then leans over and kisses his lips. "Promise." For a full minute she only touches his lips. A long, hot, hard, deep kiss, keeping him focused on what's to come without actually getting the rest of his body into it.

"Sit up," she tells him as she breaks the kiss. He tries to figure out how to do that without letting go of the headboard and she shakes her head. So he lets go, and sits up. She props some of the pillows against the headboard and he gets comfortable. Pillows between him and the headboard, so he can't keep hold of it now, so his hands curl into fists at his sides.

Borin turns so she's facing away from him. "Remember something about you liking this view."

"Fuck yeah, " he says through clenched teeth. He likes any view of her about to fuck him. But yes, her ass from five inches away, as she's sinking, "Fuck!" (that's something of a whimper, too) slowly down on him, yeah, that's a winner in his book.

He's even more sensitive now, because she stopped, because she made him wait, and every move sparks hot pleasure all through him. This time, after that first stroke, she doesn't go slow. This time there's nothing soft or gentle or tentative about this. She's absolutely fucking him, slamming up and down onto him and every stroke has him panting and begging for more.

He's cresting fast, everything tight and hard, God, so hard, so, so, so hard, feels like it's never been this hard as she rocks back and forth, hands and knees, breakneck pace, his heart pounding as he yells when the first pulse hits along with a scalding wave of pleasure.

Rush after rush of it, hot, tingling spurts of pleasure, and when it stops, she's resting, back against his chest, and his hands are still on the bed.

He exhales, long and hard, uncurls his fingers (they're sore from having been so tightly held), and then kisses her shoulder. He sits there, wiped out, for a few moments before saying, "You're forgiven."

She laughs at that, reaches for the tissues, cleans them up, and snuggles into him.

* * *

He wakes up with a jerk when he feels her move out of bed. For a moment he lays there, blinking, seeing her finding her robe and pulling it on.

He rubs his eyes, propping up on one elbow. "What's up?"

"Hungry. You want some dinner?"

He blinks again, feeling pretty muzzy. Going back to sleep sounds good, but his stomach rumbles, so apparently it has opinions about that.

"I'll take that as a yes. You take a few minutes and wake up, then come on down."

He does, laying on her bed, drowsing a bit, enjoying being this relaxed and happy and feeling this _good_ all over. Then he rolls over, yawns, and realizes that the only clothing he has over here is a tux. The tux he's not precisely feeling motivated to get back into right now.

He's really hoping this won't bug her as he grabs the blanket from the back of her over-stuffed recliner and wraps it toga-style around himself. (Stephanie, for example, did not like his naked body touching any of her stuff, especially his post-sex, not-yet-showered naked body, and would have chewed him out for not putting on boxers, too.)

He pads down the stairs, peeking into what appears to be a powder room, and dining room, not seeing her in either of them, finally locating her in the kitchen at the end of the hallway. Like the rest of the rooms downstairs it's fairly small. This one has exposed brick walls on both sides. Though the rest of the room is cream colored. There's a stainless-steel counter along most of the back wall. (The fridge/freezer combo is on one side and the door to the outside is on the other.) Sink, dishwasher, and oven are all along the right wall. Six shelves covered in pantry goods are at his back.

In the center is an island (oak, stainless steel top), where she's laying out little trays of take-out sushi from the fridge.

"Wasn't sure when we'd eat, wanted something that would get over-cooked or go bad or…"

"I like sushi." He recognizes the sticker on the pack. "And I like Shiro's sushi a whole lot."

"This is dinner at least once a week."

He nods as she opens the second tray, and he pulls out one of the stools from under the island. "Eating in here?"

"Thinking that."

He pulls out a stool for her, too. There's a rack over his head with pots and pans on it. "You like to cook?"

She nods, grabbing chopsticks for them. "Don't get to do it a whole lot, but yeah, I do. In the summer those little boxes in the front have basil and cilantro and garlic chives growing in them."

"Yum." (Though he doesn't actually know what garlic chives are, but he likes garlic and he likes onions and that sounds like it'd be in there somewhere.)

"Yeah." She lays the chopsticks down, takes three steps to her shelves, and pulls down the soy sauce. "Drinks?"

The bourbon he brought along is upstairs and he's not feeling like getting it. Plus it's not a natural match for sushi. "Water? Beer? What do you have?"

"Green tea?"

"I drink tea." He watches her pour water in a kettle and set it to heat. A second later she pulls out two mugs and puts teabags in them, then sits on the stool next to him.

They eat quietly for a few moments. Just tasting and enjoying each other's presence. Her kettle whistles, lot faster than Gibbs was expecting, but she's got a gas range, so probably higher heat than he gets on his electric. She pours the water over the tea bags, and dinner is complete.

Two more bites, she's watching him chew, and he can feel she's wondering about something, so he looks at her expectantly.

"Why did you have a vasectomy? I mean, I know the main reason, but… You like kids, right?"

He realizes that she's… thirty-eight, thirty-nine, and if she wants kids she can't afford to spend a few years messing around with him. Not with what he knows about himself.

He rubs his mouth, and exhales, putting down his chopsticks, hoping this doesn't kill them.

"I like kids. I like them a lot. I love my girls. And I'll love any little brothers or sisters they'll end up with. I love being with them. I love being a granddad. But… That's my bridge too far. I'm done with kids of my own. I know they can… fix things back, but… Not for me. I'm done. My kids are grown. I've got grandbabies-" He's kind of rambling on, piling words on top of each other, feeling just so wrecked at the idea that this is it, that it takes a second for him to notice she's got her hand on his wrist and is trying to get him to stop.

"Jethro, I'm not tossing you out because you don't want children."

He inhales, feeling better, but… It's a big deal, really big deal, and he's not sure he trusts it. "Sure? You change your mind two years from now, this is still going to be my deal breaker."

She nods. "I strike you as someone who changes her mind a lot?"

"No."

"When I was engaged we talked about it some, but, even then… Kids aren't really my thing. I don't see myself as a mom."

He swallows, looks up at the ceiling, and wipes his mouth. "Fornell and I have the same ex-wife."

That seems like something of a non-sequitor to her, but she waits for him to say more.

"I'd already had the vasectomy, and I told her I didn't want children, but not that I'd had one."

"A child or a vasectomy?"

"Both." She winces at that. "It was a bad marriage. She told me she didn't want kids, too."

Borin can feel where this is going and winces again. "Oh."

"Yeah. Looks like we were both liars. We got divorced when she was pregnant. She and Fornell got married about ten minutes after the ink was dry on our papers. Then they got divorced two years later."

"You're still friends?"

"1999 when we divorced. Caught a case with him in '02, and… yeah. We're still friends. Still friendly with her, too. Emily, the little girl, calls me Uncle Gibbs. Water under a lot of bridges there, but…" He gestures to let her know it's her turn.

"When I think about being a mom, I see myself being a mom, not… juggling it with being a cop. I'd want to be there, and I can't do that, not with this job. I don't even have time for a pet with this job. And I love the job."

He nods along to that.

"I don't see that ever changing. But if it does, I'll sure as hell talk to you about it first, not just… I don't know, jump DiNozzo or something."

He snorts a little at that, and she half-smirks.

"You had it done while you were married, the first time?"

"Yeah."

"I was thinking that. Just didn't think you'd be a one and done sort of guy."

"Oh." _Why did you have it done?_ Makes more sense now. "I wasn't; neither of us were. I was away when Shannon found out she was pregnant, got back for two months, away again for two months, and when I got back she was thirty weeks along. Thought we had lots of time.

"Her mom kept coming down, we were in Lejeune then, but it was a week she wasn't there, and Shannon felt like crap. Felt like crap isn't exactly rare at 32 weeks pregnant. Resting didn't help, and it was more than just the irritable everything hurts feeling like crap. Luckily the next door neighbor was on kid number three and she was talking to Shannon and just didn't like how it looked. I got home from my shift and she grabbed me and told me to take Shannon to the doctor's. So I did. Felt a bit stupid about it, and she did too, because it was just an all-over sort of wrong and she had an appointment in like three days, but we went.

"You know what preeclampsia is?"

She nods.

"So, it was a good thing we went. They gave her meds to get her blood pressure down. And a list of instructions about a mile long, and then sent us home. Shannon was supposed to be on bed rest until Kelly came, which at that point was still looking eight weeks off.

"And I'm a big, dumb jarhead, so what the hell do I know about this stuff? So I call her mom, and she comes down, and I move the TV so it's in our bedroom and get every library book she's ever wanted, take over as much home stuff as I could, but even lying around doing nothing but going to daily doctor's appointments, it wasn't getting better.

He sighs again. "Week thirty-four she moved into the hospital. Forty weeks pregnant is average. Thirty-six weeks is considered cooked all the way. But anything before thirty-eight makes everyone nervous, and back then it wasn't like they could just ultrasound her to check and see how Kelly's lungs were doing. So, it's a balancing act, every day they could keep Kelly inside dropped the morbidity rates," Borin can feel from the way he says that that someone said it to him, exactly like that, and his mind never touched it, never shifted it into his own language, "but every day she was in there Shannon's blood pressure kept going higher. They wanted to get to thirty-six weeks. That was the goal."

He closes his eyes, and rubs his forehead, sighing again. "I got done from a shift and headed to the hospital, she was napping, so I didn't wake her up. Just took of my boots and gently snuggled onto the bed, spooning her. She slept for maybe ten more minutes and then she shrieked, and jerked, grabbing at her head… And really bad sudden headache was on the 'holy shit, panic' list, so I got yelling for any and every person who even remotely looked like a doctor. It hurt bad; she was crying. And I was trying to keep her calm, trying to not completely lose my shit, but I wasn't doing too well on it, and then she told the Doc she couldn't see, and…

He bites his lip. "And by that point Kelly was coming out, now. They had time for lidocaine. And I had to help hold her down because I was strong and I was there. And when your blood pressure is that high, it… It was bloody, really bloody, and she was crying because lidocaine just gets the skin, and her head, and…

There are tears in his eyes as he says, "It was bad." He sniffs and wipes them away, swallowing hard a few times. "And… uh… that was it." He shakes his head and licks his lips. "I just… I couldn't do that again. Vasectomy was done before they got home from the hospital." He smiles at Borin, very sad. "I can't… I can't have another child. I can adopt 'em as grown-ups, and I can be Pop, but… No. Can't do that again."

She squeezes his hand. "It's okay."


	79. Dr. Palmer

So far, a week into testing the new paperwork software, it's going, very, very well. Yes, they do have to do all the standard paperwork, on the off chance something in the software doesn't work properly, but for right now it does appear that all of the paperwork that was printing, all filled out, from their computers was coming out perfectly fine.

Or so Ducky thought.

He's looking at his case notes, filling in the form, when he notices a discrepancy. According to his notes there are fractures at both the C1 and C2 vertebrae, along with a complete severing of the spinal cord at C3 (the cause of death.)

According to the form the computer spit out there were fractures at C1 and C2, complete severing of the spinal cord at C3, and hairline fractures of the occipital crest.

"Dratted computer." Now he has to double check. Though, as he thinks about it, that seems to be a very unlikely sort of mistake for the computer to just pull out of thin air. He's suspicious as to how that information got into the computer.

Ducky sorted through the x-rays, found the correct ones, and put them up on the light board. He stares at them intensely for a moment, wipes off his glasses, stares longer, takes a step closer, and… "Buggeration. Mr. Palmer!"

"Excuse me, Dr. Mallard?" They are at work and working, so the formality that marks this as a space apart from home continues between him and Jimmy.

"Mr. Palmer, do you, perhaps recall what I have said to you in regards to maintaining correct and complete notes on all of our cases?"

"It's entirely likely, Dr. Mallard, but in that you've said many things, and I do not know why you're scowling at that x-ray, I'm at a loss for coming up with what specific thing you are looking for."

Ducky points to the x-ray. "That is a collection of hairline fractures along the occipital ridge."

Jimmy heads over, and looks, and knows exactly what is going on. "Yes, Dr. Mallard is it."

"And did I not tell you that if you see something and I do not, that you are to inform me of it?"

"Yes, Dr. Mallard, you did."

"I see you noted that collection of fractures in the case notes, so your lack of verbal explanation would be…"

Jimmy smiles, sad. He's caught and there's no getting out of this. "It's the third time in a month, and for the last year you've been saying that if you miss three in a month it's time to go."

Ducky sees the smile, knows what Jimmy's been doing, and nods, "Indeed it is, Dr. Palmer, indeed it is." Then he squeezes Jimmy's hand. "All things end, Jimmy, even good ones. We enjoy them while we have them, and then we lay them to rest and search for new good things."

Jimmy blinks a few times, and says, "Okay, Ducky."

* * *

Actually, it was the seventh thing. They're all little misses. Nothing big. Nothing that would affect cause of death or change their understanding of a case. (Example: broken wrist. Dr. Mallard would catch three of four fractured carpals. It doesn't change how anyone understands what happened, and even in an emergency room that sort of miss would be common.) And Jimmy does catch them, and he makes sure the notes are complete, but with doing them on the computer and by hand, he hasn't been able to hide them, as well.

The few ones that have been big, or big enough to matter, he had told Ducky about, and the look on his face after... It feels like he's stabbing his grandfather.

He knows it's time. By Ducky's three misses a month line it's been time for four months now, but…

The brain is active and strong and willing and knows more about everything than any brain has any right to know, but the eyes won't do the job anymore. Jimmy knows it isn't a matter of better glasses, Ducky would already have them if they could solve the problem. It's just a matter of old eyes.

* * *

He watches Ducky settle in at his computer and begin to write up his letter of resignation.

It's not a matter of Jimmy not feeling ready. He looks around Autopsy. This is his job, and he's ready to do it. He's spent almost fifteen years with a man who's taught him every trick from every book. He can, and will, do this.

But this space, this job, is also so Dr. Mallard's (and he's very much Dr. Mallard while he's doing this job.) This is his home and his life, and Jimmy feels almost like an imposter trying to take it over.

A mere mortal trying to stand in the place of a giant.

But, Ducky's a mortal, too. They all are. And he's hit the print key, waiting for the letter to print out, intending to take it directly to Leon.

As of 10:38 on March 3rd 2016, Dr. Jimmy Palmer is now the Medical Examiner at NCIS.

* * *

They didn't celebrate Tony becoming Team Leader. Mostly because celebrating him moving up meant celebrating Gibbs moving out. The same is true for Jimmy moving up.

There's also the fact that Jimmy doesn't want to celebrate. Not this. He thinks that was true for Tony, too.

He knows it's time. He knows he's ready. He'll admit that being the guy in charge is a kick. And once he finally noticed that Ducky was doing it (probably the third time it happened) he appreciated and was deeply touched by the "Dr. Palmer" bit.

But it still feels like cheering for a funeral.

* * *

And so, at eighty-one years old, thirty-six years after joining NCIS, Dr. Donald Mallard handed in his resignation. Effective immediately he is no longer the Medical Examiner at NCIS. He also gave a month's notice, figuring that staying on for a month as Jimmy's Assistant (he's not precisely sure how that will work, but if Jimmy's the one catching the mistakes, he's the one doing the job, and all Ducky's doing is assisting) would allow enough time to transition smoothly to a new Assistant Medical Examiner.

Thus, April 4th, a month hence, would be his last day at NCIS.

Which means Jimmy's first job (beyond his usual daily work) as a Medical Examiner is hiring a new Assistant Medical Examiner.

And for this first job, Jimmy is happy to have the aid of an extremely talented Assistant.

Human Resources put the job up on the web. They narrowed down the applicants and sent him a stack of resumes. Jimmy had felt confident weeding that stack down to the three he wanted to interview.

The help he wants is in seeing who those three applicants really are.

Ducky and Gibbs might be able to read a man just by looking at him. Jimmy can't, and he knows he can't. Unlike the rest of the team, he hasn't spent the last decade honing any sort of 'gut' that's good at reading people. (Live ones anyway. He's got a great 'gut' for dead ones, and he can read a crime scene like nobody's business, now.) So he proposes one last job for Ducky… as they sit around the autopsy table looking at resumes.

"What I'd like to do is something of a ruse. I'd like them to interview with you, see how they respond to you, and see how they respond to me, thinking that I'm another applicant. I want to see how they'll treat me if they don't think I've got any say in them getting hired, and what they'll say about you behind your back."

Ducky smiles at that. "And should I appear to be an especially doddering old fool?"

Jimmy shakes his head. "Just be you. I want to see if they can tell you aren't a fool or if they'll be lulled by the accent and tendency to chatter."

"Tendency to chatter?"

Jimmy smirks at him. "You aren't my boss anymore, so I feel like I can say this. I worked with you for almost fifteen years and in that time you _never_ shut up. It's honestly unnerving to work with a man who can talk for ten straight hours, day after day after day, and never go over the same thing. Don't get me wrong, the sheer amount of stuff you know is staggering, and I feel like I got three or four PhDs worth of education listening to you, but, hour after hour, sometimes you just have to tune it out."

Ducky smirks back at him. "When do we meet the first one, Dr. Palmer?"

"Tomorrow at ten."

* * *

Dr. Samuel Allan, MD from University of Chicago, specialty in infectious diseases, is Jimmy's first choice. He's curious about how a man goes from what is mostly lab work, studying pathogens and bacteria in petri dishes, to wanting to be an Assistant Medical Examiner.

Beyond that curious fact, it's a good resume. Top marks. Worked for the University of Chicago for two years, worked for CDC for another year, and now he's applying here.

Reference are good. Apparently Dr. Allan is quiet, conscientious, and everyone he's worked for would hire him again. In that Jimmy got this job while he was still in medical school, Dr. Allan is also _vastly_ over qualified for this job.

Jimmy's waiting outside of Autopsy, in a nice suit (He'd wear it for an interview if he had one.) calmly reading on his phone, when the elevator opens and Dr. Allan (he presumes) heads in.

Allan stares around, sees him waiting, (not like he's hard to miss) and asks, "Dr. Mallard?"

"Nope. Jimmy Palmer. You interviewing with him today, too?"

"Yeah."

"Good luck then."

"Uh…" Allan turns red, disconcerted by this other, older, significantly calmer person here. "Thanks." He then shuts up. He's young. Twenty-six maybe. He's short, with kind of floppy blond hair, (Puts Jimmy in mind a bit of the pretty-boy character from House, whose name he doesn't remember. Breena'd know.) no wedding ring, his suit is conservative charcoal gray, but the tie is flashy, cobalt blue with some sort of pink thing on it. After another second he visibly jerks, blushes again, and says in a rush, "Good luck to you, too. Sorry, I'm a little bit nervous."

"Trust me, I understand." Jimmy smiles at him, tucking his phone into his pocket, offering his hand. Allan shakes, and yes, his palm is a bit sweaty, but the grip is good and he's making proper eye contact. "You fresh out of med school?"

"Not quite. Fresh out of the CDC."

"Cool! What were you doing there?"

"Tracing pandemics, working on figuring out where they'll hit next." Jimmy looks properly impressed. "How about you?"

"Assistant ME for Baltimore. Wife's family is down here. Decided we'd like to live somewhere a bit safer."

Allan nods.

"Bit of a smaller job here, too, but it'd be nice to see my kids every day."

Allan nods at that, too.

"So, why leave the CDC, this isn't… you know…"

"Even remotely the same field?"

"Yeah."

"A friend was murdered last year, I was there for the trial, and the ME cracked it. Found the cause of death, found what they needed to put the…" He's clearly editing himself.

"We called 'em assholes in Baltimore."

Allan inclines his head, but doesn't repeat the word. "To put him away. It was so real. And it made a difference. Made a difference to real people in a way those models I was building never would."

Jimmy nods, very pleased with that answer. "It does. It really does." His hands are in his pocket, along with his cell phone. He taps the button that lets Ducky know it's time to appear.

* * *

"Ah, gentlemen!" Ducky says as the elevator doors open. "So sorry we had to reschedule Mr. Palmer. Dr. Allan, I did not intend to run concurrent interviews, however, we had a lively day yesterday, and as I am on my own, I could not juggle fieldwork with interviewing. Please, come in. Let's start with a tour!"

Ducky shows them around, nattering away about the history of Medical Examination, periodically asking them questions about their own backgrounds. Thus they learned that Dr. Allan hadn't been near an actual human patient of any variety since his residency.

Jimmy can see that Allan's a bit flustered to have Jimmy here, which he supposes makes sense. He wants to look good, and like he can do the job, but there's this other guy who has been doing this for "ten years" answering the questions and looking really at ease and competent next to him.

"Mr. Palmer, Dr. Allan, time for the practical exam. There is a written section on my desk, Mr. Palmer, have at it. Dr. Allan, come with me to the light board, let us go over some x-rays."

Jimmy's "practical exam" is filling out more paperwork. They did have a lively day yesterday, and he's wrapping up his hand-written copy of the work. (One more week, and if no one manages to break the damn paperwork software, he'll be able to stop doing everything twice. Tim's not really hopeful about the not breaking thing. But so far, it's doing the job. Of course, so far the only people using it is Cybercrime and Autopsy. He's fairly certain that as soon as he takes it office wide it'll be crashing every nine seconds.)

Of course, in that he's done this ninety million times, Jimmy doesn't need to pay much attention to what he's doing, so he gets to listen to Drs. Allan and Mallard discussing the X-rays on the light board.

Allan has good skills. His anatomy is on point. He's catching the breaks and nicks and issues on the x-rays.

Acid test comes next.

"Mr. Palmer, have you finished the written exam?"

"Yes, Dr. Mallard." He flips his pages over, leaving the actual written exam, for Allan, on top.

"Ah, splendid, come around." Ducky motions to Allan as well, drawing them near, opening the second drawer. "Here we have Lt. James Kenneworth." Ducky gestures to the body and then looks to the table. "You've transferred bodies before, correct, Mr. Palmer?"

Jimmy smiles. "About four times a day. Usually not when I'm in my good interview suit, though."

"Ah. Quite, right. Could you walk us through the procedure then?"

"Of course, Dr. Mallard. Usually we begin with paperwork, note who is being removed and why, then over to the nearest gurney," Jimmy heads to the nearest gurney, "flip the breaks up on the wheels," he nudges the latches up on each wheel with his toes, "roll the gurney to the body." He does that as well, narrating each move as he does it. "Put the breaks down. I usually end up getting the feet." Jimmy heads to Lt. Kennworth's feet, but does not touch him. (Feet is the harder half of the lifting, because you have to lift from next to the body, instead of from in front of it.) "Someone else grabs the shoulders, count of three move body to the table." He pantomimes the grip and motion used to lift a body off the slab. "Slide the drawer back, lock it up. Unlock the wheels on the gurney, and move the body to the table, repeat locking everything down, repeat moving the body, unlock the wheels, put the gurney back, flip on the lights, and off we go."

"Very precise, Mr. Palmer."

The whole time Jimmy's been reciting, Allan's been staring at the Lt. "What happened to him, Dr. Mallard?"

Lt. Kennworth is covered by a drape, so the large gunshot wound to his chest is currently not visible. Ducky folds back the drape. "Would you care to venture a guess, Mr. Palmer?"

Jimmy looks the body over, of course he's seen this before. "Without flipping him over, I'd guess it's a gunshot wound, but without flipping him over, I couldn't be sure."

Allan swallows, hard, staring at the destroyed chest.

"A bullet does that?"

"Large caliber ones do. Mr. Palmer, is correct, this is the mark of a .45 from a short range. Can you glean any extra information from this body Dr. Allan?"

Allan blinks a few times. Jimmy can see him making himself be clinical. "Anterior discoloration and swelling means he fell forward."

"Indeed. Other observations?"

"No signs of decomposition, wherever he was lying was cool or he wasn't there long."

"Correct."

Allan looks even closer. "No signs of anything chewing on the Lt. Once again he either wasn't down long or he was inside or wrapped up or protected somehow."

"Good."

Allan looks up. "Do you know what happened to him?"

"Yes. This made for a lively day, but only one lively day. Our guest had something of an untenable gambling habit, and cheated, and got caught cheating, at the wrong game."

"Aces over eights, Dr. Mallard?"

Ducky smiles at that, as Allan stares at them blankly. "The Dead Man's Hand, Dr. Allan, supposedly held by notorious gunman Wild Bill Hickok when he was shot in the back at a poker game."

"Ah," says Allan.

"Come, Mr. Palmer, time for the X-ray. Dr. Allan, to the written exam."

* * *

He and Ducky confer quietly at the X-rays while Allan fills out a series of basic anatomy, physiology, and pathology questions. He should smoke the exam. If Jimmy could pull it off as a first year in medical school, this should be no problem for Allan.

"How's he doing?" Jimmy quietly asks Ducky as they 'confer' on the X-ray.

"I am pleased so far. He certainly has the skills for the job, though I'm less sure about him having the constitution for it."

Jimmy nods at that. "Want someone hard enough to do this, but not so jaded they stop seeing them as people."

Ducky nods along. "Precisely. Did you find out why he's hoping to do this job?"

"Yeah. Friend was killed. He was at the trial. One where the ME cracked it."

"Justice served. A powerful motivator."

"Yeah."

They glance over and see Allan staring at his exam, looking awfully finished.

Ducky shakes Jimmy's hand. "Thank you for coming in, Mr. Palmer."

"Thank you, Dr. Mallard. I hope to hear from you soon."

Ducky nods at that, and Jimmy heads off to Abby's lab. In that it's below Autopsy, there's no shot of Allan accidentally wandering into him on the way out. Plus he can tell Abby about how the first interview went.

* * *

"All done, Dr. Allan?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Any questions about the job?"

"One."

Ducky looks at him expectantly.

"How many don't get solved?"

Ducky likes that question.

"Not many, Dr. Allan. In thirty-one years, I've sent all but twenty-six of them to rest. We don't always get the conviction. And we don't always find who did whatever it was. That's just part of this job. We do what we can with what we have, and what we have is a collection of great minds who almost always figure out what happened."

Ducky smiles gently. "Anything else?"

"What happened to your last assistant? Anything I can take away from that?"

"He has moved onto bigger and better things. And yes, over the years to come, I hope you do learn from my experiences with him."

Allan nods at that, thinking it's a bit cryptic, but possibly a sign that he's done well on the interview. "Thank you for the interview."

"You're welcome. Do you know the way out?"

"I can find my way."

"Good. I hope you have a pleasant rest of your day."

"Thank you. You, too, Dr. Mallard."

* * *

The second candidate crashed and burned before he even got in the door. Amos Potter actually was the Assistant ME for the city of Baltimore. (Where Jimmy got the idea.)

Lots of experience. Neutral references (which worried Jimmy). No MD, but technically an MD isn't necessary for this job.

Like with Dr. Allan, Jimmy was waiting in the hallway when Mr. Potter came in.

He saw Jimmy, did a double take, and then checked his phone. "One of us is in the wrong place, and it's not me."

Jimmy tucks his phone into his pocket. "Hello to you, too. Neither of us is in the wrong place. My interview got moved to today. Apparently someone was killed yesterday, so Dr. Mallard was out of the building."

"Great." Potter says sarcastically, looking like he wants to sulk.

Jimmy hits his contact for Ducky; he wants to get this one done fast.

Ducky heads in a moment later, using the same spiel he did yesterday. As he's heading into Autopsy Potter says quietly to him, "God, he's a million years old. They told me he was old, but… Ancient. Upside, won't be waiting long to advance, old dude can't have more than a year left in him."

"We're done, Dr. Mallard," Jimmy says.

"All ready?" Even Ducky thought that was frighteningly fast.

Potter looks confused by this.

Jimmy turns to him. "Mr. Potter, politeness is a virtue. And when you spend hour after hour day after day working intimately with someone in a small space it is a good plan to at least try to not get on their nerves. You may go."

Potter's still staring at him, flummoxed. "Who are you telling me that I 'may go?'"

"I'm the guy who might have hired you if you had actually said hello to me and treated me like a human being."

"But…" he stares at Ducky.

"Goodbye, Mr. Potter," Jimmy says again. And Amos Potter left, in a very bad mood.

* * *

Candidate number three was the least qualified of the lot.

Bachelors of Arts from Penn State. One year of Medical School at the University of Pennsylvania, (three years ago), and two years as a Veterinary Assistant. Good references, though her previous employer (the Vet) had chuckled a bit about Sarah saying she was, 'One of a kind.'

Since that was a fairly close match to Jimmy's history prior to getting to NCIS (though he was in Medical School as opposed to dropped out) he's interested in giving her a go. It certainly worked out well for him and Ducky.

Like the previous two times, Jimmy is waiting in the hallway.

The doors open and this time he does the double take.

What Jimmy knows about Goth could be summed up in one tiny word. Abby. He knows he likes the aesthetic, even if it's not personally for him.

The woman standing before him is in head to toe black. Okay, not a problem. Black jeans, black and silver studded belt, black t-shirt, black trench coat, black lace gloves. (The concept of professional does not appear to have occurred to her. Though he does snap a discrete picture of her and one handedly sends it to Abby with _Would you go to an interview like this?_ ) Three lip piercings, black lipstick under them, those spacer looking things in her ears, lots and lots of black eye makeup. He finds himself idly wondering about how you put lipstick on with pierced lips. Like, is a brush involved or do you just pull the rings out of the way, and how does that little lip rub thing Breena does after she puts on lipstick work?

She doesn't smile, but she does say, "Hey. You waiting to interview, too?" That pulls his focus away from the mystery of the black lipstick.

"Yeah."

"Cool. Really looking forward to this."

"Me too. I understand this is a great Morgue."

"Yeah. Couldn't get much info on Autopsy, but a friend of a friend of a friend works in Cybercrime here, and he says it's great."

Jimmy wonders who the friend of a friend of a friend is, but makes a note to let Tim know that. "Jimmy Palmer."

"Hey. Sarah Bast. So… aren't you kind of old for this?"

Jimmy snorts at that. It's the kind of thing that might have come out of his mouth, but she doesn't look embarrassed or chagrined.

"I was with the Baltimore ME for ten years. Moving south to be closer to my wife's family."

"Oh, cool. New to town, too. Girlfriend and I are getting hitched in two months, and it's legal here so we decided to settle here."

"Good reason to move. Does she have a job already?"

"Oh yeah. She's a tattoo artist down on Lexington." Sarah quickly pulls off her coat, and pulls the neck of her t-shirt wide showing off her shoulder. "That's her work."

Jimmy nods. It appears to be some sort of demon-looking thing chewing on a goat. "That's very… intricate."

"Yeah. Still got to add the color in. Covers my whole back."

"Ah." He whacks the button to let Ducky know to come in. "So, um… what is that? Design for an album cover or something?"

"Oh no. Personal demon."

His eyebrows shoot up.

"You have a personal demon?"

"Yeah. Some people have guardian angles, I have a personal demon. Or he has me. Whichever."

Jimmy's very rapidly trying to remember everything he read in the handbook about religious discrimination. He doesn't think he can not hire her just because she appears to be some form of Satanist, but he's also feeling distinctly uncomfortable about this.

"Good for you," he says with a very fake smile hoping Ducky gets here soon. "So, what makes you want to work down here?" He's staring at her shoulder.

"Always liked death. Just, you know, really feel at home with it."

"Tend to think of this job as being more about the living. Finding closure for the people left behind. Every person on one of those tables represents a string of lives, and it's our job to do what we can for them."

She thinks about that. "That's a good way to think about it."

The elevator doors open and Ducky sweeps in, "Mr. Palmer, Ms. Bast, so good to see you." He does a brief double take upon seeing Sarah as well, but his is not nearly as noticeable as Jimmy's was. "Let us begin out interviews…

* * *

While Jimmy's working on the 'written exam' he checks his phone and finds a note from Abby. _No. For interviews I used to don my best career girl Barbie suit. Now, since I've got more than fifteen years in charge of my own lab and people headhunt me, I'd go edgier, but I'd still wear a suit. Just because you're Goth doesn't mean you aren't professional._

_Thanks. She tells me she has her own personal demon._

_I'll get the sage._

_Why?_

_You're gonna have some bad juju in the morgue until it gets cleaned out._

_Okay… What do you do with the sage?_

_Burn it. Few other bits and pieces, too._

_I don't actually want to know, do I?_

_Probably better off that way._

* * *

Jimmy would have to admit to feeling relieved that Bast muffed the written exam. Why she only made it through one year of med school was readily apparent going through her answers. And while it is true that there were several classes that Jimmy made it through by the skin of his teeth (And one he had to take twice, but look, it's not like Psychological Pharmacology was anything that he was going to need for his job, which by that point he was sure was going to be with NCIS. Yes, he can prescribe meds because he is a doctor, but if anyone he runs into is looking for psych help of a chemical nature, he's getting them to a real psychiatrist, fast. He knows he's not the guy for that job, and if he's got to look a drug up when it pops up in Abby's tests, then he'll look the damn drug up.) he was also working a full time job while he did full time med school.

Plus the stuff he had a tricky time with was not basic anatomy. He helped put the damn meat puzzle together, including the toe that was attached to a hand, so anatomy was something he had down, pat.

But anatomy was not something Ms. Bast had down pat, which meant he had a good reason, as opposed to a bad one, for not calling her back. (Abby took one step into Autopsy, cringed, and started talking about how bad this was and setting fire to stuff and chanting. He's still got no idea what was up with that, and really doesn't want to. He's just relieved he can put something other than 'personal demon' down for why Ms. Bast didn't make the call back list.)

* * *

As soon as Jimmy got done going over Bast's test, he grabbed his phone and punched ten digits in.

A second later he heard. "Hello?"

"Is this Dr. Allan?"

"Yes." There's a brief pause while Allan thinks for a second. "Is this Jimmy Palmer?"

"Yes. You've got a good memory for voices."

"Uh. Thanks." Another pause. "Why are you calling me?"

"I'd like to offer you a job."

"What, in Baltimore?"

Jimmy laughs. Good memory for details, too. "At NCIS, as my assistant."

More quiet. Finally, "Uh… Did you get offered a job as the Medical Examiner?"

"Yes, a few weeks ago. I actually am the NCIS Medical Examiner. Hiring an Assistant was my first job as the guy in charge. I'd like that to be you if you're still interested."

"Yes! Quite interested. Just… Who is Dr. Mallard?"

"Dr. Mallard was the Medical Examiner. I was his Assistant ME for more than a decade. He's on staff until April 4th, and I was hoping you'd be coming into work on April 5th."

"Yes, Mr. Palmer. I'd like that."

"Dr. Palmer. Off hours and out of the office, I'm Jimmy, but in Autopsy we go formal."

"Okay. Um… Not that I've got a problem with it, but, why?"

Jimmy doesn't actually know the answer to that. He has ideas. He certainly has a way he understands it, but by flat out being asked he realizes he doesn't know what Ducky thought he was doing with that.

So he answers for himself, and for why he intends to keep that formality in place, and for why he and Ducky kept it up well past the point of using each other's first names whenever there wasn't a body in the morgue. "It's a hard job, Dr. Allan. Our guests are going to tell us things we must hear. And we will listen because someone has to. We speak for those who cannot speak any longer. It's a good job, and it's an important one, but it is not easy, and a wall that separates us from what happens inside autopsy from what happens outside of it is necessary if we are to have functional lives. We cannot live this job 24/7, and that formality helps keep the different spheres of our lives separate."

"Yes, Dr. Palmer."

"Good, then I'll see you on the 5th?"

"Eight AM, right?"

"Correct."


	80. Setting Things In Motion

There have been a few, rare, moments where Tim's wanted to rub his hands together, cackling like a mad scientist, shouting 'Eureka!'

And right now he's awfully tempted to start doing it.

Exactly one month ago he hit the key that set the Beta test of the paperwork software live. Over the course of that month his guys and Autopsy had managed to snag, break, stall out, and confuse the software six times. (He was expecting that to be the first day of reports, not the first month.)

And now, fixes in place, patches patched, he's once again getting ready to send the software live, this time for the gamma test, NCIS Navy Yard-wide.

He hits the enter button and, boom, it's up.

A fast email to everyone, (he'd already written it, just needed to hit send) explaining what was up, and how everyone would still need to do their paperwork by hand, but that the computers should be doing it, too, and how if something went wonky they needed to let Cybercrime know.

And then it was time to settle in and wait for the error reports.

* * *

He's feeling more and more at ease in this job. His guys are moving more smoothly. They're teaming properly now, and as of last week the job software went live for the whole of NCIS, so they're running twenty-four seven with full teams. (Granted the members of said team may be spread along three continents.) With his current talent pool no case ever has to wait for more than a few hours to find someone who knows how to run it.

That makes him _very_ happy.

Sure, getting hands on work can still be a bit rough. ID10T errors seem fairly common when, say, someone in Bogota needs a phone hacked, and the nearest hacker is in Eido, and Bogota is having a hard time figuring out how to get the phone hooked into the system so Eido can hack it. But, talking Bogota through how to do it is still faster than sticking the phone on a helio and moving it to the closest hacker (Mexico City) and then waiting for him to get into the office, get done with his other cases, and then hack the phone.

So, in that he doesn't have a mound of paperwork on his desk to fill out, and in that he's also (not yet) getting inundated with error reports, and in that his Minions who also do not have mounds of paperwork to fill out and are now on 24/7 are whipping through the job queue, something he hasn't thought about for a while springs to mind.

Namely, back when he tested Cybercrime the first time Jarvis mentioned that he'd like a copy of the report and a feasibility study for doing it Navy-wide.

Might as well start that up.

* * *

"Can I ask you for some advice?" Tim asks, walking into Gibbs' living room later that evening. (He cut out a little early, wanted to talk to Gibbs. Kind of hoping to just 'drop by' when Borin was there so he could report back to the crew that he had at least seen them both in the same place at the same time, but no dice.)

"Sure," Gibbs answers, looking up from his kindle. (Tim makes a mental note to get him a new one for Christmas, this one's two generations out of date.)

"I started writing that report on the feasibility of my Cybercrime test navy-wide."

"Yeah."

Tim sits next to him on the sofa. "Okay, I've hit a brick wall. I don't know precisely how their computers are set up, and I can't determine how feasible this is if I don't know that."

"Sounds like you know what's going on."

"Yeah, on that part. None of the tech is an issue. I mean, I can find out how they're set, on my own, but, that's about twenty grades above my clearance and really illegal. So, what… Do I tell Vance, and he tells Jarvis? Do I go straight to Jarvis? I mean, what's the chain of command here? He asked me to do it so, do I go straight to him?"

Gibbs thinks about that. How to do politics is something he's not good at. How the chain of command works, he's… still not good at. His plan was to always go to the guy who could get you what you want or need and screw the intermediaries. He tries to think about it like he was the kind of guy who wanted a career and that not pissing off the powers that be mattered. That didn't work, he's not that guy, never was, and really can't imagine him too well. So, he tries it from how he would have handled it.

"You wanna own this, or do you want NCIS to own it?"

"Not following."

"If it's your baby, then you call Jarvis' secretary and make the appointment. If it's NCIS being useful to the Navy, if it's Leon loaning you out, then you put it through Leon."

Tim thinks about that for a while. His first instinct is that this is _his._ He thought it up. He put it in motion. His second instinct is that Leon might not see it that way. "Do you think Leon will be upset if I take this?"

Gibbs shrugs. "Maybe. Probably depends on what you do with it and how the rest of your jobs go. Keep doing your job and doing it well, he likely won't mind."

"Will Jarvis?"

"He asked you for this?"

"He told me that if I had time I should write it up for him."

"Sounds like he asked for it."

"That's how I took it. So, call his secretary?"

"Unless you want to share the glory with the rest of NCIS."

"I'll think about it."

* * *

And Tim did. For a day. Then he called Leon's office, got his secretary, and asked for Jarvis' email. Which she gave him.

Then he carefully drafted an email with his current findings and explaining what he needed to know and why in order for him to take this to a Navy-wide level. He cced it to Leon, but did not address it to him.

A few hours later he got a quick note from Leon:

_Looks good. Keep me in the loop._

* * *

Four days later he got this from Jarvis (also cced to Leon):

_McGee,_

_I've read over your preliminary reports and your plan for how to roll this out wider. I like what I'm seeing._

_If I remember correctly, you were involved in the hunt for Harper Deering. He used his knowledge of our system to find flaws and attack us with them._

_Put your Deering hat on. Set up a test, find our flaws, break them open, and let's get them patched before someone on the outside can break into them. Once that's done, I'd like you to set a testing protocol for the Navy, so that we may continue running these tests, but doing so doesn't become your full-time job. I have a feeling you have other jobs that need doing just as much as this one._

_Admr. Dean Finnegan runs all Cybersecurity for the US Navy. I've included his contact information and sent him a note to offer you any assistance you desire._

_Clayt_

For a long moment Tim just stares at that. _Clayt._ He swallows hard and gets to work. Jarvis is right, he's got jobs to do, lots of them. (Like right now he's the lead hacker breaking into a hyper-secure shell corporation's inter-web.)

But he also takes a moment to write an introductory email to Admr. Finnegan, requesting a meeting. Once he's got the access he needs, he can design one hell of a test, and he's really enjoying the idea of that.

* * *

Traditionally Admirals have flagships. They have battle groups and one specific ship that is their, for all practical purposes, home.

Admiral Finnegan does not have a flagship. That's sign one of how much naval warfare has changed over the years. He could have a flagship. He's an Admiral. He could have his very own pink aircraft carrier should he so desire. (Both his father and grandfather have/had aircraft carriers. Not pink ones though.)

But he doesn't.

He's out of Norfolk for several reasons, but primarily because it's the Cyberhub of the Navy, and if it happens on a computer anywhere in the world under a US Navy command, he's hooked into it from there. And because he's on land, in a hardened base, he doesn't have to worry about his command getting knocked out by wonky satellites, storms, or anything that could mess with a ship.

So, if there is one Admiral in the Navy that Tim McGee wants to visit in his home base, it's Admiral Finnegan.

* * *

Tim would have to admit to feeling a little nervous about this as he's driving down to Norfolk. He knows it will clear once they get talking, because Finnegan seemed very enthusiastic about what he wanted to do in his emails, but he's still going to visit an Admiral, and even if it's not The Admiral, it's still got a lot of the same associations buried in the back of his mind.

At least it's on dry land.

* * *

Over the years, Tim has been pleased that McGee is a very common last name. Because there are lots of McGees out there, the number of people who have put together Admiral John McGee with Special Agent (and now Director of Cybercrime) Tim McGee have been very few and very far between.

For example, he's not sure if Jarvis has twigged to it. He knows the only reason Leon found out was they had that one case his dad was part of. Armstrong actually did some research on him when he showed up to recruit him for NCIS, which is how he found out. He'd worked for the MCRT for five years before they knew what Navy Brat actually meant in regards to Tim.

But, of course, there are only eleven Admirals in the US Navy, and they know each other, so…

Tim can hope it won't come up, but he's not thinking it's likely.

* * *

So much for hope. Admr. Finnegan's secretary walked Tim in, they shook hands and then Finnegan looked at him carefully, thought about it for a few seconds, and then said, "Are you John McGee's boy?"

Tim supposes he probably does look like his dad some. And even if he doesn't, last Sarah said, he still had a picture of him up in his office, so…

"Yes, sir."

"No need for that. Dean'll do. How's the old son-of-a-bitch doing?"

"I understand he's well." Which is true but doesn't require him to pretend they have any sort of relationship.

Finnegan seems to catch it though, thinks about that for a second, like he was about to either ask a follow-up question or say something else about John, but decides not to.

Instead he nods and says, "You've got Clayt all fired up about this, so what do you need from me?"

* * *

Finnegan shows him their central hub. He talks through how everything works, giving Tim some very good ideas.

"We do this for ourselves, of course. My guys run tests on our ships, on our bases, on anything with a computer on it."

"Good tests?"

"Yes. But they still come from the inside. And they've still got a… _Navy_ feel to them."

Tim smiles at that. "I trained at MIT, and I can spot another Beaver from my era from a mile away. I know what you mean about having a certain feel to them. Trust me, nothing that comes from my office is going to feel like a Navy attack..." Tim thinks about that. "Unless I want it to."

Finnegan smiles at that. "Tit for tat? Want us to take a swing at you guys?"

"Certainly. So far all of my attacks have come from the inside, too. Part of how I could hack my own system. And you've got to keep watch for that, too. Especially with how spread out your organization is."

Finnegan nods. "Physical security of the system is just as important as keeping the internals safe."

"Exactly. We've had people break into the building because that's easier than hacking the system from the outside."

"So, you going to break in and 'compromise the physical layout'?"

Tim smiles. "Maybe. I'd have to talk to Jarvis about this, but… I think I'm going to make them think I broke in and launched from the inside, but actually strike from the outside."

Finnegan grins at that, really enjoying that idea. "That'll be fun."

"Oh yeah."

* * *

A week after talking to Finnegan, Tim had finished the first test protocol.

If he were to explain it to Finnegan, it would take three hours and involve a lot of words that most laymen don't know.

If he were to explain it to Gibbs, it would go something like this: My computer at work is going to slip a program into Norfolk. That program will hit the computers there that run everything. Those computers are hooked into every command center in the Navy. From there a program will hop to whatever ship we're testing. That ship will then get a message to do something bad. The ship will also get the message that it's being told to do something bad from one of the computers on the ship. The test is can the guys on the ship get it shut down in time, and can they find out where the attack actually came from?

He sent a somewhat more technologically sophisticated version of that to Jarvis (with the cc to Leon) and got back a one line response from Jarvis. _Isn't that supposed to be impossible?_

Tim smiles, feeling pretty cocky, and writes back. _Yes. It's_ supposed _to be impossible._

Another brief email hit his inbox. _I have three free hours in the morning of May 16_ _th_ _. Lt. James'll select a ship and we'll discuss putting the test into play. Let's get this set to go._

Tim sent back one line. _Yes, sir._


	81. When Are You Bringing...

"Think he's gonna bring her?" Tony asks Ziva as they get ready for Shabbos.

"No. He'll tell us ahead of time."

"It's been six weeks. Not like we've never met her before."

"I know, but…" She spreads her hands wide. Short of kidnapping Borin and dragging her to Shabbos or Sunday Dinner or Bootcamp, they've done everything they can think of to try and get Gibbs to bring her to one of their weekly gatherings.

But he hasn't, and besides glaring at them when they all stare at him and drop less and less subtle hints (Last week's was Breena flat out asking, 'So, when are you going to bring her?' and by that point you really can't call it a hint anymore.) he refuses to give them any sort of response.

Which means he's got six frustrated, gossiping kids on his hands, all of whom really want to get to meet (again) the new girlfriend, and get to see her as a girlfriend.

* * *

Gossiping about Gibbs and Borin is currently the favorite hobby of what used to be the MCRT. And it's not like they don't have other things to do, but right now they're the big news. After all, no one's pregnant (and by mutual accord they don't gossip about efforts related to getting that way, at least, not beyond their own spouses at home), everyone's married (except Gibbs), all babies are settled in, jobs are jobbing along.

All in all, the status quo has, for the moment, re-set, and sure Jimmy's collection of interviewees was fun, but that was two days of chatting. (Mostly about what on earth a 'personal demon' is and who would possibly mention that to someone at an interview, followed by Jimmy doing a bit more scrutinizing of Ms. Bast's work history and coming to the conclusion that she'd left way more animal-oriented jobs after a year or so than was comfortable.) And yeah, the thing with Tim's navy test was cool, but, well, besides Tim getting all hot and bothered about the details it's kind of nebulous for anyone who isn't Abby.

It's not like they're doing anything mean, they aren't being snide or snippy, talking about Gibbs and Borin. Invasive, sure. It probably wasn't entirely necessary for Abby to dig up that face morphing software and make up some baby Gorins. (They were awfully cute, though.)

And looking at Baby Girl Gorin, (while Tony and Abby discussed whether any potential Gorins would be their kids' cousins or aunts and uncles) Jimmy said, "I think that train left the station a long time ago."

Which resulted in Abby, Ziva, and Tony all staring at him. "What do you mean, Palmer?" Tony asked.

This was when it occurred to Jimmy that Gibbs' vasectomy was unlikely to be common knowledge, and that it was entirely possible that besides Ducky (who was Gibbs' medical proxy and doctor for a million years) he might be the only one who knows about that.

"Just, you know, get the sense he's done with kids. Three ex-wives, no kids with them." Jimmy said, fast.

"You are a terrible liar," Ziva replied, closing on Jimmy.

"How can that possibly be a lie? He has three ex-wives. He didn't have kids with them."

"But that is not why you think he's done with kids." Ziva said.

"Okay, how about he's almost sixty, and no man in his right mind starts a family that old?"

Ziva didn't buy that, either.

"Okay, I know he's done with kids."

"Jimmy?" Abby asked.

"Doctor patient confidentiality. Can't tell."

More staring, but they let it drop.

* * *

"She coming?" Breena asks as they head into Tony and Ziva's place on Friday night.

Ziva shakes her head. Week seven, still no Borin. She turns to Jimmy and Tony, "On Sunday, you two and Tim, you will get Gibbs, and you will talk to him, and you will make him bring her next week, yes?"

"With what? Am I going to drug him or something?" Jimmy asks. "If anyone's going to make him do something it's you girls. You need to go cry on him or something."

Ziva rolls her eyes. "You will talk. Explain. This is home. We bring the people we love home."

"Might not be love. Not yet. Not this soon. And…" And for Tony it all clicks into place, slamming into place, hard. "And if it is love, we're not going to see her anytime soon. If it's love, it's going to scare the shit out of him and he's going to take it really slow."

Jimmy nods.

Breena stares at both of them, eyes narrowed and shakes her head. "Men."

Jimmy sighs. "No. I get it. If she's a disposable girlfriend he can bring her around, because if it doesn't work it won't hurt so bad. If it's real, and he lets us see it's real, then if it doesn't work out, he doesn't just have to deal with being hurt, he's got six of us trying to be useful and comforting and…"

And Gibbs steps into the kitchen saying, "And in my business all the time, hovering around, asking me how _I am,_ treating me like I'm made of broken eggshells, and moping on me _._ "

Ziva takes two steps over and gives Gibbs a hug and a kiss. "We want you to be happy."

He gets double teamed by Breena with another hug. "And we want to _see_ you being happy."

"Are we doing hugs in here? I want hugs!" Abby bustles in mid-hug. Adding herself to the press. "Borin meeting you here?"

Gibbs stares up at the ceiling. And yes, he does not mind having his arms full of warm girls all happy to see him, but… "How about you guys let me date her for a while before you get the wedding all planned out?"

Abby and Breena look slightly guilty. (Not like they planned the whole thing out, but… Slow day. No customers at Slater's, Tim's software is whipping through the paperwork in the lab, so they may have spent an hour or two texting about it.)

"Fine. Still, you know she's welcome in any of our homes, right? Just as welcome as you are. You don't ever have to feel like you can't bring her around. And, it's exciting, Gibbs! You're dating again and acting so much happier and… We want to share, too!" Abby says.

He kisses Abby's forehead, then Ziva, then Breena, and sighs. "It's going well. I'm enjoying it. But, I don't even know if we're really dating or not. So, how about you let us get that figured out before adding _you_ to the mix?"

"How can you not know?" Breena asks.

"We… haven't actually gone out."

Which is true. They've made dates to see each other, at one of their homes. And she drops by sometimes. (He's been tempted to just show up at her place but A: he does not have a key, and B: if she wants people-free downtime, he doesn't want to barge in. Sometimes you just need to be alone.) But there have been several ten day long stretches where they didn't see each other at all. And she has had to cancel two the 'dates' they made. Though they usually text for a minute or two a day. So, it's not like weeks have gone by without any contact.

And yes, he thinks (hopes) this is serious, or could move in a serious direction, but they could just be fuck buddies. (Okay, he could be building that in as a buffer so it won't hurt so damn bad if it falls apart.) It feels real and serious and good, but… he's wary. After all, they've had some pretty serious conversations, but… but they've all been about the past, and Gibbs is fairly sure that those conversations are just mostly housekeeping, the kind of things you talk about if you're anywhere near a half-way decent person and you want to do what you can to avoid hurting the person you're with or wasting their time.

So, besides a general sense that they seem to be liking this, and they'd like to keep seeing each other, there's been no definition as to what it is they have.

"You haven't gone out?" Breena stares at Gibbs as they pull away from him and move into getting dinner on the table mode. "What are you doing?"

Abby laughs at that and the somewhat startled look on Gibbs' face when she asks. "Jimmy's rubbing off on you, Breena. That's a question worthy of him."

Breena squints at Gibbs. "Come on, _that_ can't be _all_ you're doing, right?"

No, it's not _all_ they're doing. Eating, sleeping, talking, quietly reading/watching movies/watching a game, sometimes go for a run or swim (maybe that qualifies as out for a date?), all happens, too, but, yeah it's _a lot_ of what they're doing. Plus it's one of Borin's favorite ways to blow off a bad day at work, and it certainly was one of his back in the day, too. So, it might be two thirds of what they're doing when they're together and awake.

Tony's got a really dirty grin on his face as he slaps Gibbs on the shoulder while Gibbs continues to stand there feeling a bit blindsided by that question. "Lucky man!"

That snaps him back into action. Tony gets a light head slap. "I'll bring her round when we're both ready for it. Okay? And you all nattering at me isn't speeding me up, _got it_?"

He gets four versions of "Fine" from the ladies and Tony.

* * *

They say the prayers, bless the children, and sit down for dinner.

"How was the first week?" Tim asks Ducky, passing the Challah. Monday had been his last day at NCIS, and unlike Gibbs, when Ducky said that he did not want any fussing about it, they paid attention.

"Infernally slow, Timothy." He and Gibbs share a look. "But not as bad as it could have been. I've been spending a few hours a day working with Eleanor on her profiling technique. It is an interesting hybrid approach we're creating, her use of numbers and patterns with my use of psychology.

"Possibly, if this proves to be effective, we'll have a paper or two worth writing."

"And a new sub, sub-specialty for people to work on," Penny adds.

"There is that." He passes Penny the salt, unasked. "And how is your new assistant settling is?"

Jimmy starts to answer but Tony cuts in with, "You mean The Ghost?"

"He's quiet," Jimmy says.

"No. You and Tim are quiet. Ziva, when she's in ninja mode, is quiet. Your new assistant is _dead._ "

Jimmy rolls his eyes a little. "Thursday was our first call out. Dr. Allan is still trying to figure out the line between properly respectful and… unnervingly reserved. He's never been at a crime scene before, let alone one that was in someone's home. So he was being very quiet, and very precise—"

"And very nervous. If he inhaled twice the whole time you were in there—" Tony says.

"It's also been a long time since he's had anything to do with a dead body. And that was a smelly crime scene. So, yeah, he was nervous, and he was being very careful, and he didn't breathe much because the vic had been in that house for forty-eight hours. And at one point, while he was laying out the body bag, he was being so quiet Tony almost tripped over him."

"Just about broke my ankle trying to save from that."

Jimmy rolls his eyes a little again. Allan may not be huge, but even if he was silent, he's still a full-grown man next to a dead body; Tony should have been paying better attention. (Of course, Tony's got a different view of the subject, along the lines of he was photographing behind the body, and the last time he looked, no one was back there, and next thing he knew he'd stepped back into something soft and moving.)

"So you are saying he's a perfectly functional medical professional trying to do a good job in a new and sensitive environment?" Penny says, dryly.

"Precisely. Thanks Abby." He takes the green beans from her, taking a large serving for himself, put five of them on Molly's plate, and passes them onto Gibbs who is sitting next to Molly. "He talks more when we're back in Autopsy. But, especially when someone else is there, he doesn't want to be cracking jokes over the corpses."

Breena shakes her head. "You've got to break him of that, or this job'll kill him."

"We're working on developing a sense of humor. I'm trying to get across the idea that they're people. Dead people, but still people, and people like humor, they like being talked to, and the like getting a chance to tell their stories."

"He'll get there," Abby says. "You were awfully quiet the first few weeks, too."

"That's how I remember it."

Ducky laughs. "That's _not_ how I remember it. You hovered around behind me, repeating everything I said into that recording device." Ducky mimics the way Jimmy held the recorder, right up to his face. "How many hours did it take before you just recorded what I was saying?"

"Three minutes." Jimmy says dryly. "I remember things better if I say them and hear them. Since you found it annoying, I just started doing it in my head."

"How are you liking having Autopsy all to yourself?" Gibbs asks.

Jimmy shrugs. "It's really quiet. I'm," he looks to Ducky, "used to a constant stream of some sort of educational information, stories, anecdotes, or something in the background. So, now when we're working, I start talking, just to fill up the quiet."

Ducky nods, understanding.

"Meanwhile, Dr. Allan's looking at me like I'm some sort of bizarre wing nut because I can talk about things like wing nuts, and why they're called wing nuts, and when they started using them, and—"

"You weren't really going on about wing nuts, were you?" Ziva asks.

"No." Everyone's staring at him. "Sort of. Surgical screws. Our current guest has three in his femur. That's how we were able to ID him."

"DNA?" Tim asks. (He's been busy with the Navy-wide computer test, and was out of the office yesterday and spent just about all of today sitting in front of his computer digging through what he got access to yesterday, so he missed this part.)

"Missing identical twins. We found one of them," Tony says.

"But not which one," Tim fills in, the light going on for him. "Anyone want that chicken wing?" Everyone shakes their heads so he snags it. (The wings are his favorite part. At least they are the way Ziva cooks chicken, all brown and crispy and salty and yum!)

"Right." Jimmy says, catching the bit of chicken Molly tried to send flying before it got more than two inches from her fork. "No flinging food. Do you need to be excused?" Molly shakes her head; she knows that if she's excused before she eats everything on her plate, there'll be no dessert, and Aunt Ziva always makes sure there's a special dessert for her, so she doesn't want to miss it. "Anyway, he's got the screws, we take them out, look them up. And then we've got an ID."

"Do you have a missing twin?" Tim asks.

"As of 13:27 this afternoon we have a missing twin." Ziva answers.

"He's not being overwhelmingly forthcoming on why he was missing and what happened to his brother. So he's spending some quality time in holding, and we're going to head back in around two in the morning to have another chat with him," Tony replies.

"He's not the vic?" Tim asks.

Abby shakes her head. "Bishop and Ducky and I ran the numbers, looked through everything, and best we can tell, he's two or three levels behind this, but not directly responsible for it."

"Yeah, he did something that went, very, very wrong, brother dear ended up dead, he ran for it, and now we've got to figure out what the hell he did to get a guy so angry at him that he stuck a knife in his brother seven times."

"The guy's wife?" Breena asks. "Tim can you…" She's nursing Anna while trying to eat, but can't cut her chicken one handed. Tim's sitting next to her so he takes over slicing the chicken breast into bite sized pieces for her. She nods her thanks when he's done.

"Seven stab wounds, yeah, it's something like that," Tony answers. "So, you were in Norfolk today?" Tony asks Tim.

"Yesterday…" He takes a few minutes to explain how his conversation with Admiral Finnegan went, what he learned, what he hoped to do. "If I can pull it off…" he wraps up, "whoever's in charge of that ship is going to wet his pants when it happens. I'm thinking I'll make the ship target another one of the ships nearby. It won't actually target or shoot but the computers will think it is."

"Can you do that?" Penny asks between bites of sage stuffing.

"That's where 'if I can pull it off' comes in. I've got the blueprints and an invitation to come on in and ransack the place, now all I've got to do is see if I can."

"In your copious spare time," Abby says while wiping mushed cauliflower off of Kelly's chin.

"Got a bit more of it now. Paperwork software is still holding strong. Only two error reports today and both of them were user issues."

"User issues?" Ducky asks.

Tim shakes his head. "Code 1D10T, problem is located between chair and keyboard. Same thing with the job processing software. Cops can't type. And if they don't put the information in correctly, the computer can't use it. But that's not a bug on my end, so I'm feeling very good about this."

"You should. Monday's case, we broke the case by three, finished filling in the database once, and by five all of the paperwork had spit out, nicely filled out, ready to file. It was perfect, McGee!" Ziva says, very happy.

"Great. Now, how do you feel about running a how-to-type-class for those twits in the desks behind yours?"

Ziva shakes her head. "Not a chance."

* * *

Breena and Ziva are tidying up the dishes after dinner. Ziva's rinsing, Breena's making sure everything is stacked properly in the dishwasher, and Gibbs is on lugging dishes in from the table duty.

He places the dishes next to Ziva, and she puts her hand on his wrist. "This week, take her out. Go somewhere, in public, with her, and have a good time."

He raises an eyebrow.

"Women like to go out, Gibbs."

Breena nods along with that. "Makes us feel good. And we like showing off when we've got a handsome man on our arm."

He just looks at both of them and then nods quickly before heading back into the dining room to grab more dishes.

When he came back in, Ziva has a different question for him. "You are almost done with Shannon, right?"

He nods. Everything's done but the name, which he's still stuck on.

"So, does that mean you are out of projects?"

He eyes her tummy for a second and she catches that. "I am right now."

"Good." She pulls him back into their dining area and pats their table. It's a good dining room table. Sleak, elegant hardwoods in rich, warm cherry browns. "This seats six comfortably, nine of us is a squeeze, Borin will be ten, and the kids will need more room soon. Would you be willing to take a commission for a dining room set?"

"No. But I'd make one for you as a gift."

"The wood and hardware and everything has to cost real money." And yes, properly kiln dried hardwoods are not inexpensive. "Let us pay the cost, at least. You can gift us the designing and the labor." (She and Tony had guessed this was probably the best deal they could get out of him.)

His eyes narrow at that, but Ziva's got that set look on her face, and he's sure that if he doesn't budge on this, they'll just go buy a table.

"Fine. You want something like this but bigger?"

She nods a bit. "Not precisely like this. We want it to look like something you made, but we like these colors."

He nods again, and thinks a little more, especially about what he's doing on Monday. About the Realtor DiNozzo Sr. had hooked him up with and what she wanted to show him on Monday. Namely, what might be the future Mallard Manor.

And if this place is big enough, and close enough (supposedly it is) that might end up being where future Shabboses (Shabbi? He doesn't know what the plural of Shabbos is) are held. Because it's not just that kids will take up more space (because they will) but because he's fairly sure there will be more than four of them, and if Borin does become part of this, that gets them up to at least fourteen people for dinner, and he none of them have a dining area that can handle that easily. He knows for certain that nowhere Senior's going to find for Tony and Ziva will feature enough room to hold the kind of table she's talking about, at least, not if they want to use that room for anything else, and they will.

"Get me pictures of what you like. We'll talk more, then."

Ziva smiles at him.


	82. Son-In-Laws

They're wrapping up Sunday dinner when Amy's boyfriend Collin asks Jimmy, "Can I come to Bootcamp with you guys?"

"Uh..." Jimmy glances at Tim and Gibbs who both nod. "Yeah, sure."

"Cool." Collin's grinning at them. "Used to do MMA in college. Haven't found a group around here I really like. They're either way too much kill everyone or too into proper form. Where do you fight?"

Jimmy gives him the address for the Navy Yard.

"Okay. I'll follow you guys there."

"Do you have gear?"

"Yeah. Amy said Breena said you'd probably be cool with me joining in."

"Ah." Jimmy nods. As soon as Collin's in his car he quietly says to Gibbs and Tim. "What the hell was that?"

Gibbs grins at him before slipping into his own car, and says, door open. "That's a guy contemplating becoming your brother-in-law. He's about to pull an end run around Ed."

* * *

Collin actually can fight. In an academic, never-done-it-in-a-life-or-death-situation sort of way. (He runs his own graphic design business, so it's not like pounding on people is part of his job description.) So, honestly, he's pretty even with Jimmy, who's also never fought for real, and not too far behind Tim, who's never done it with his fists.

Real danger adds an extra edge to your skills, and Collin doesn't have that.

What he does have is he's ten years younger than Tim and Jimmy, five years younger than Ziva, and really, really quick.

He's actually making Ziva sweat, which is amusing to all of the guys. (She still won. Five years and fast doesn't win over Mossad-trained and does this for real, but it was more of a workout one on one than she's had in a long time.)

So, it was fun, and Collin is a pleasant companion, pretty quiet, focused, making sure that he's not annoying anyone.

Once they are all showered and dressed again, he says, "That was fun. Can I buy you all something to drink." Ziva and Tony demur, their no-longer-missing twin is proving to be unreasonably quiet, and they're going to take another swing at breaking him.

* * *

Which is how, ten minutes later, Tim, Jimmy, Gibbs, and Collin are outside, milling around Seth's coffee cart, letting Collin hand over drinks, and getting ready to really talk to him.

Once handed out, they're sitting in the shade, enjoying bright sunshine and a warm April day.

Collin takes a sip of his iced coffee and says to Jimmy, "So, I don't suppose there's some magic formula for making Ed like me?"

Jimmy laughs. "If you find it, let me know?" He shakes his head. "Being worth a few million dollars and signing pre-nup saying that Amy gets all of it if you two ever split up might do it."

"Got a few million I can have?"

"Amazingly enough, I'm all tapped out on millions right now."

"Yeah, figured that. Is it worth it? I mean, all three of you know him better than I do, and he seems to actually like you," he says to Gibbs. "I love Amy, but…"

Jimmy nods again. "Yeah, 'but.' I know all about 'but.' I spent a long time thinking about that before I asked Breena to marry me. If you love her. Really love her. Then yes. But this isn't light love, or cute love. If you have a good, strong, healthy relationship, he's going to be a stressor, and if you've got a rocky one, he'll break it. It really does have to be you and her, back to back, able to take on all comers."

Collin nods at that. "I do love her."

"Good," Gibbs says. "He's protecting his girls. Finally started warming up to Jimmy a bit when he figured out that Jimmy wasn't going anywhere and he had the balls to keep his girls safe. He respects strength and he respects money, because they represent a safe, secure life for his daughter."

"And I was light on both of them when Breena and I started dating."

"Even if you had piles of money and used to be a drill sergeant, he still wasn't going to like you," Tim says.

"True. And he's not going to love you, Collin, either. Because both of us mean that he's not his little girl's number one man anymore."

"Great." Collin's not thrilled by that. "She really loves him."

"He's her dad," Tim says. "And the more I learn about that family, the more I see that if there's one thing Ed Slater ever did right, it was raise three amazing daughters. They all adore him, and not in a spoiled-brat,-sucking-up-to-daddy-for-presents sort of way, but in a he-provided-them-with-all-the-support-they-needed-to-become-brilliant-women sort of way."

Jimmy nods along with that. "Complete son-of-a-bitch, to me, and you, and any other poor bastard who marries one of them, but to them, best dad ever."

Collin thinks about that.

Jimmy does, too. "When it comes down to it, you've got to be sure that Amy does chose you. Breena picked me over Ed. If it ever comes down to me or him, she'll back me. Having to pick'll break her heart, but she'll back me. And he has tested it to make sure. Part of our wedding being so stressful was him asking every ten minutes if she _really_ wanted to do this, and how she could back out at any time, including while he was walking her down the aisle." Tim hadn't known that and he winces at it. "But she picked me. She picked me even when I asked her to postpone the party part of the wedding. If you and Amy don't have that, he'll kill your relationship. You've got to love her enough to put up with him. She's got to love you enough to draw the line in the sand and tell him you're not going anywhere, so he better get used to you."

"Okay." Collin looks, determined is probably the best way to put it, as he drinks his coffee.

"Look, only reason I'm going to say anything about this is because you're here and you're asking. Breena and I got married before we lived together. That was us, and it worked for us. This one," he points to Tim, "lived with Abby for…"

"Year and a half."

"Year and half, before they got married, and I helped them move in, so it's not like I've got a problem with it. But this is your acid test. She wants you. She wants Daddy happy. She can't have both, so she's fooling around trying to hold it as long as she can by lying to him. If she's not willing to go with you and tell Ed you're living together, and take the shit storm that is going to come upon both of you from him, pack you stuff and move out. She doesn't have your back, not the way you need. Not the way you want if you're serious about being married forever.

"And don't dither about it. I had to threaten to beat the shit out of the man to get him to treat me like a human. He drops by to visit, notices you live there, he's going to understand that as you don't have the balls to talk to him about it and he will _never_ offer you a dime's worth of respect."

Gibbs nods. "And you won't deserve it, either. You're sticking around, you're looking to join his family, you talk to him."

Tim can see that startles Collin. "It's not an old-fashioned he owns her sort of thing. You don't ask for her, because she doesn't belong to him. But you do talk to him. It's just polite. It's showing him that you do have the strength to sit down, look him in the eye, and prove to him you've thought about his daughter's future enough to have a plan. A lot of hard things are going to happen in your life, and if you can't handle her _Dad,_ a man who loves her and wants what's best for her, how are you going to do with people who genuinely want ill for her? He loves her. He doesn't want her getting hurt or hooking up with a loser, so you show up and prove you aren't one."

"And then he laughs until he cries, tells you over his dead body, and spends the rest of his life annoying you, but, still… you do it anyway. We all did. It wasn't fun. None of us liked it—"

"I thought it was fun." Tim adds.

"That's because you talked to _him._ " Jimmy replies.

Collin's looking from Tim to Gibbs, really confused. "Wait, isn't he _your_ dad?" They don't really clarify exactly how the McGee branch of the family is related to each other. The larger Slater-clan just has them all classified as 'Jimmy's friends.'

"Yes," Gibbs says. Collin does not appear to find that answer useful for his real question, namely, _why was he asking you?_ "And if you spend ten years working for Ed, save his life several times, always have his back, when he'll say 'yes' without thinking about it if someone asks him if you're his kid, you too can enjoy Tim's level of just show up, pull out the ring, and say, 'So, you giving her away or what?'"

"I did not do that."

Gibbs flashes him his amused look. "You sure as hell didn't ask."

"No. You'd have laughed if I asked." Gibbs nods. "And Abby would have been pissed off about it. 'Cause you don't own her." Gibbs nods at that, too. "But I did show up, and I did show him the ring, because… Because I wanted to, really. It's a cool ring. But, if I hadn't worked for him for ten years and if he didn't know about my writing, I would have shown it to him as a way of saying, 'Look I'm serious about this and I've got the sort of cash to support her and your grandchildren.'"

Jimmy shrugs. "I asked, and the ring was tiny, and he laughed. I didn't get part of it was a pissing contest. But especially with Ed, what you're doing is showing him you can and will stand up for his daughter, against him if need be." Jimmy stares at Collin, looking him over coolly. "And just for the record, nothing against you or personal, we did this in February with Tim's soon to be brother-in-law, but the one thing Ed and I do agree on, and you'll find the rest of this crew does, too, if you hurt one of the girls, you better run fast and hide good because otherwise we will hurt you."

Tim nods along with that. "And by hide good, he means you never touch a computer again, 'cause otherwise I will find you." Then he nods at Gibbs. "You also never go outside, and you stay away from windows, because he can still nail a headshot at a thousand meters. I've been right behind the guy where if he had missed it would have hit me, so trust me when I say this one can still shoot."

"We're guys, and we're not her dad. We get it. We're not saying you can't break it off, or if you do marry her that you've got to stay married forever. But you start banging the secretary while you're married or stop being a dad to your kids, you're going to wish you were dead."

Collin's eyes are wide and he's looking between Gibbs, Tim, and Jimmy, realizing none of them are kidding. He nods slowly. "Okay."

"Okay!" Jimmy says brightly with a big smile. "So, you wanna come next week? Trust me, we also _all_ get wanting a good excuse to get out of Sunday dinner early."

"Uh, yeah, that sounds good." He stands up. "I should probably get going."

The other three of them nod at him. "See you next week," and other variations on the theme of goodbye echoing from them.

Gibbs leaned back against the bench, sipping his coffee, grinning. "Ed's not going to know what hit him."

Jimmy and Tim are looking at him curiously.

"You're going to report back to Breena that he's a good guy. I'm going to report to Ed that he's a good guy. I'm sure he's spending time with Jeannie. By the time he's ready to move on a ring, he'll have Amy, Breena, Jeannie, and me all hitting Ed with the fact that he's good son-in-law material. That kid's not stupid. Little scared, maybe—"

Jimmy shakes his head. "Amy's scared. Look at how he's handling us. He's not afraid to say they're living together. She is."

"He's scared now," Gibbs says, "Not sure she'll pick him in the long run."

"Oh. Yeah."

"Think she will?" Tim asks, sipping his drink.

"I'm sure we'll know one way or another soon."

They're walking back to the car when something hits Tim. He gently nudges Gibbs with his shoulder. "You gonna be doing that again? Talking to Borin's dad?"

That gets him a headslap, a head shake, and "You're just as bad as the girls."

Tim grins at him.


	83. Skeptical

Gibbs is skeptical. That's probably the best way to put it. But in the two months since he called Jenny, this is the first place she's found that she thinks might be what he's looking for in a family home.

It's big. Definitely big. And beaten up, really beaten up. He asked for big and beaten up, and it's really big and really beaten up.

Ten bedrooms, seven baths, lots of extra space (there will be no problem sticking a table big enough for twenty for Shabbos in the… empty space that could be a dining room, or living room, or something, let alone one for their current group), a good deal of land, and water access.

It's ugly as sin. Whoever designed this thing… Hell, no one designed this. No one in their right mind would design this. It probably started a someone's little (or not so little) vacation place, and then that someone (or a different someone) just kept tacking on rooms as needed.

It's beaten up. Four days after Lana Turner died, Tropical Storm Tina roared in and left the place battered. Window damage, roof damage, siding torn off. One of the trees had uprooted and was blocking the driveway, another one took out a back corner of the house. But, since no one was living there at that point, no one noticed, and a full winter went by before her sons remembered they had this chunk of property in Virginia. And, remembering it, they wanted to get rid of it so they could settle her estate that much faster.

Gibbs stares at it. There are things they can do to lessen ugly, new siding, new roof (beyond what they had to fix to deal with the storm damage), new windows. But it's still shaped like a house made out of Legos by a kid.

And the inside… water damage, weather damage… Most of it looks okay, but where the roof ripped off and the window broke is a mess. And if that's mildew and not water staining those walls, that'll be a lot of work to deal with.

Plus, it looks like no one's done much with the place since the '70s. No one's decorated, that's for sure. (Polyester shag carpeting left open to the elements for seven months is a sight Jethro never wants to see again.) Whatever this house was, it was not a valued bastion of happy family memories. At least, not any recent ones.

But as he's roaming the back he notices something, stone patio. Big one. Fire pit, two foot tall wall that works for additional seating, and something big covered with a tarp. It looks a lot newer than the rest of the house.

"What's that?"

"Not sure," Jenny says, checking her notes. "Oh. Outdoor kitchen. According to the notes, back in '08 they began to refurbish for a sale, but the sale fell through." She starts to pull the tarp off, and he quickly takes over and then feels the smile easing across his face.

It is an outdoor kitchen. It's stone, gray something or other. There's a built in (small, given the shape the rest of the house is in, likely broken) fridge, and a sink, but the main part is a huge grill, and, he smiles even wider, an oven. There's even, though it's cracked and splintered, a pizza peel on a hook on the far side.

Gibbs may not be a deeply superstitious man, but he also doesn't believe in coincidences, so, with this staring him in the face, he gets his phone out and starts taking pictures.

"Let's go through again."

Jenny shakes her head, if he wants to see the place again, she'll show him. After all, if she can get someone to take this Albatross off the Turner's hands, all the better for her and them.

This time, he gets shots of everything.

* * *

He's printing out the photos when he hears Mona hop up and head to the door, followed by the sound of it opening.

No insane barking, so it's got to be someone she approves of.

"Hi Mona." Borin's voice. He smiles at that.

"Hey."

She's in his living room a few seconds later, hugging him from behind, looking over his shoulder. "What's that?"

He turns to kiss her. "Surprise for the kids, maybe."

She squints at the shot that's printing out, perplexed on how _this_ might be a welcome surprise for the kids. "That looks like a wall with a pretty nasty case of black mold. They pissing you off?"

He laughs. "I'm hoping it's not, but it might be." He shuffles through the shots finding one of the whole house from the outside. "Duck and Penny want to find a place where we can stay without tripping all over each other."

She looks at the shot, eyes wide. "Won't be a problem there."

"Nope. Room for all of us, the kids, any more kids they may have, and twenty-five years from now, any new kids they may bring home."

"So, a family home for you?"

"Yeah. For all of us. Home used to be NCIS, but we're not all there all the time, and even if we were, the babies wouldn't be. So, home. At least on weekends and holidays and summers and as often as we can all get there. We're already overflowing Tony and Ziva's for Shabbos, and we're tight for any sort of sit down meal here. We never all fit at Penny and Ducky's. And Tim and Abby or Breena and Jimmy can just get everyone squeezed in, now, but in ten years we'll have who knows how many kids all running around. So, home, for all of us, together."

She smiles at that. "Ducky and Penny are bankrolling it, and you're…"

"Finding the place, seeing if we can make it livable, and then in charge of getting it that way. Kids'll add muscle and sweat. Realtor seems to think this is about as good as we're going to find given what we're looking for. Less than an hour from DC, big, on the Potomac, with a pier and boathouse. Beat up shape, but that's something I want."

She looks at the shot of the whole place, thinks about the almost completely done boat in the driveway, and says, "Give you a job to do?"

"Among other things. We don't want the kids putting cash into this, but if it's beat all the hell up they can put work into it. It'll be theirs, even if they aren't bankrolling it."

She nods at that, looking through the pictures. "It's really… unique."

"Ugly."

She nods. "Yeah."

He smiles dryly. "With any luck, by the time we're done, it'll 'have character.'"

She snorts at that.

He looks at his house. "This one was ugly as sin when we got it. Turns out there was pretty under all that '70s crud."

She stares at the picture. "You think there's pretty hiding under there?"

He inclines her head in a way that says _very doubtful_. She's right, unless they bulldoze a bunch of it, that place'll never be pretty. "It'll be big. We'll be in one place, but everyone'll have their own room, and with my kids…" He shakes his head. "I've slept over at Tim and Abby's often enough to know you don't want to share a room with them, or be in the room next to them."

Her eyebrows rise at that.

He gives her a _Yes, exactly what you're thinking is correct, they are horny and loud_ look. "And I've got no reason to think Jimmy and Breena or Tony and Ziva are any different."

She smiles at that, kisses him gently, nips his bottom lip, and pulls back saying, "Apples didn't fall far from the tree, or are you taking after them?"

He laughs, silently, eyes warm. He glances around, sees she's got her purse and her go bag, but didn't bring any food. "You wanna go out tonight?"

"Out?"

"Yeah, like a restaurant or something. Delivery is fine, but… maybe I like having everyone see you on my arm for a night?"

"Got a place you're thinking of showing me off?"

"You like meatloaf?"

"I've been known to eat it every now and again."

"I've got a place."

* * *

Elaine approves.

Vast, visible rays of _Oh My God, Gibbs, she's PERFECT_ are radiating off of her as she pours more coffee and gets their orders.

"Now, I know what he wants. He's here on a Thursday night, he's looking for meatloaf. But what can I get for you? And for his friends… You got a hankering for something not on the menu, we can do it."

Borin looks over the menu. She does eat meatloaf on occasion, but she's got to be in the right mood for it, and right now, she's not.

"Bacon cheeseburger, fries."

"Sure. Rare?"

That surprises Borin. "You serve rare hamburgers?"

Elaine smiles, very satisfied. "Grind our own beef, to order. Takes longer, but you can order rare anything here and won't get sick."

"Yes, I'd like a rare hamburger. Haven't had a rare burger in forever."

Elaine smiles. "Back in a bit."

Borin looks at Gibbs. "This who you're showing me off to?"

He nods, sipping his coffee. "Best comfort food in DC, too. Once Elaine knows you, you don't have to order. She sees you pull in, and by the time you're sitting down she's already got Joe, her husband, cooking it. And she always knows what you want. You might not, but she does."

"And on Thursdays you want meatloaf?"

"Today's special. Try some of mine, you'll know why."

"That why your retirement party was here?"

"One reason. Kids knew this was one of the places I'd put up with. Wouldn't have been true for a lot of other places. Elaine and Joe would have been invited to the party, which meant closing up shop, so might as well have it here and let them make some money, maybe get some new customers."

That makes sense to Borin. She takes another sip of her coffee, thinking about the house.

"They really are 'the kids' now, aren't they?"

He nods his head. "Got asked if Tim was mine on Sunday, said yes without thinking about it."

She smiles at that. "What's he think about that?"

"When I was hurt, out of it, the docs asked who he was, he said he was my son. Right now he and Abby are my next-of-kin. They and Ziva are more mine than the others. Abby's parents are dead, so are Ziva's. Tim'd be better off is his were. So, it's _more_ whatever it is, with them. But they're all my kids. Some of them have some other parents, too. Breena's not less mine because both of her parents are alive and well and actually good at being parents."

"Sharing them?"

"Yeah."

"So, who was asking if Tim was your kid?"

And while they wait for dinner he tells her about adventures in dealing with Ed.

* * *

The second time Gibbs shows Ducky and Penny a stack of pictures it's just the one place.

This time Ducky and Penny are a lot happier with the results.

"It's in awfully rough shape," Gibbs says by way of warning.

"And yet you've already gone to see it?" Ducky asks.

"Yeah."

"Can we see it?" Penny asks.

"As of this morning, no one's placed a bid on it. It's an hour ten from here, if traffic cooperates, closer to forty-five minutes if I drive it."

"We'd prefer to get there alive," Ducky adds, dryly.

Gibbs acknowledges that with a head tilt. "If you're free, we can see it tomorrow."

"What else would I be doing?" Ducky may be doing better at adjusting to retired life than Gibbs is, but that's not exactly saying much. In June a new semester begins at American, and as the spouse of a Professor he can take whatever classes he wants. He's looking forward to that. Been a long time since he's done anything with Classical Greek, and there's two high-level musical theory seminars that have piqued his interest. They're also talking about possibly letting him teach a class or two on criminal pathology, he's obviously qualified for the job, and that intrigues him, as well.

But June is still two months off.

Gibbs gives him a look. "You weren't the one I was asking, Duck. Got class, Professor Langston?"

"I have an early seminar on Fridays, but after ten I'm free until Shabbos."

"Then we'll pick you up at American and go from there."

* * *

"How's the other half of the hunt going?" Gibbs asks several minutes later after they've got the details of who is driving out of the way.

"Slowly," Penny replies. "I'm getting to know some interesting people, but so far…" She trails off and looks at Ducky. Gibbs can feel there's something the two of them have talked about and wanted to hold off on mentioning until they were alone with him.

"Jethro, are you sure you're set on this plan?" Ducky asks.

"Yes." Of course he's sure. Why would he not be sure?

They both look at each other.

"Ah." Ducky says, delicately.

"Ah? 'Ah' what?"

"Do you think it's wise to simultaneously be starting up a relationship with the Coast Guard's Head of the Chesapeake Division while trying to work on smuggling, by sea, illegal aliens into the country?"

"Ah." Yes, that's a point. And that's something he's been working really hard on not thinking about. "I know."

"Jethro, we want you to be happy. We're behind you on what you want to do with these girls," Penny says. "But we don't see how sleeping with the head of the local CGIS is going to work well for that."

Jethro could, if he wasn't feeling so defensive, actually sit down and think about this, but he is feeling defensive, so he shoots back with, "How did sleeping with a four star Admiral work for your peace activism?"

Penny inclines her head. That's a point. And she can see what Jethro's doing, that this is two things he wants clashing and he's trying to not really deal with it. "I'll give you that was tense. But neither of us were looking a prison time for what we were doing." Jethro just stares at her, remembering something she said about the occasional leaked detail, and she knows he's remembering it. "Okay, point taken."

"I'm not saying anything to her until I can't not, and then… I can't imagine this would be a problem for her."

Penny's just looking at him, letting those words just sit there. One of the things she knows from very long association with people who are convinced they're in the right is that they have a very hard time understanding how anyone else might disagree with them.

He doesn't budge on it, so Penny says, "She's the Coast Guard, Jethro, having a problem with stuff like this is her job."

"He was an Admiral, having a problem with leaking stuff was his."

Ducky's listening to this quietly.

Penny sighs. She can see Jethro's got his wall up on this, so she pulls back and tries a different tact. "I had more than twenty-five years of marriage with him before we got there. I knew that man in and out and through all things, and he knew me the same way. In that we were married, we couldn't be forced to testify against each other. In that he was an Admiral, he was above suspicion. We knew we could get away with it clean. You and Borin are none of those things."

That hits. Hits him hard. Hits him so he can't shy away from it or try to shift what she's saying away from the point. "Fuck." He barely puts any voice into it, just mouths it really. The heart wants what it wants. It wants Borin, and it wants to be able to find girls in trouble and give them a better life. It wants to not just save lives but offer lives worth living.

And it wants a home, that it's starting to imagine with a woman who gets the job and the need to do it and who likes bourbon and steaks by the fire. "Fuck." Little louder this time. Because Penny and Ducky are right, and these two sides are at odds with each other. He doesn't know why she ended up at the Coast Guard, not specifically, not yet… And just because this is a no brainer to him, doesn't mean it's one for her.

If it's just the job, just going after killers, she probably won't have an issue with what he wants to do. If it's about service to the country, if it's about _protecting the borders_ she may. _FUCK._

"We don't even know if we'll find someone, yet."

He sees the look Penny and Ducky share.

"That does not mean you stop looking for someone. If…" He licks his lips. If it's the right thing to do, and he's sure it is, then he can't be with her if she doesn't agree. "If Borin can't be okay with this, then she's not the one for me. That's just how it is. But if there's nothing to be okay with, then…"

"Hedging your bets, Jethro?" Ducky asks.

"Why not? I'm allowed to, right? I've borrowed more than enough trouble over the years, maybe I can put this one off until I've actually got some trouble to borrow?"

"Okay." Ducky and Penny can both see that he won't, can't just let it rest. He wants to. Wants to pretend it's not there, but in that they've actually spoken to him about it, he can't, not anymore.

"See the place tomorrow?" Jethro asks, again, getting them off of Borin. They both nod.

* * *

"Rough." Ducky says, as they walk around the outside.

Lana's sons hadn't wanted to put the money or effort into fixing the place up. They just wanted to get rid of it and get her estate settled as quickly as possible. (Something about how getting rid of the property would mean that all of her holdings would be in Maryland, and that would streamline something with the taxes… Gibbs was paying significantly more attention to the house than what Jenny was saying about the Turner family.)

It was a big, sprawling, something. Might have been a Cape Cod style house originally. But over time a lot of different wings and rooms got added onto it. Now it was two, or three, and in one spot where there was both attic and basement, four floors of rooms spreading off a huge, two story kitchen-living area wrapped around a massive, open to both sides, stone fireplace.

It was ten bedrooms, with a master suite on the first floor, and an in-law suite in the basement.

It was dull, blue weather-beaten wood siding on the outside, grimy gray trim, tarps covering some of the roof and several windows, three acres of lawn that hadn't seen a mower in months, another three acres of woods, and a path down to a small beach, boathouse, and pier leading on the Potomac.

Inside it was… depending on which part you were in, wood and stone floors, cool white (where there wasn't water staining and possibly mildew) walls, and warm, golden oak trim. It was two spacious suites (shag carpeting and fake oak wood paneling), and eight more bedrooms ranging from huge echoing squares of space (one with mirrors on the ceiling) to one small octagonal one, with floor to ceiling windows on five sides. Bathrooms ranged from copious space with Jacuzzi tubs and good light to tiny, dank closets tiled in avocado and bubblegum pink. It was close to 5,000 feet, plenty of room for nine (and Gibbs hopes, ten) adults and an indeterminate number of children with them.

Inside it was also water damaged from the storm and the winter that came after, hardwood floors rotting, drywall Jethro knew was going to have to come down because it's falling apart, and fake oak paneling that was going to have to come down because it's so ugly it's making his skin crawl.

But the bones, and the parts that had weathered the storm… He turns to Ducky and Penny and asks, "So, is it home?"

Penny rests her hand on the fireplace in the center of the main living space. It's slate and granite, gray, cool under her touch, just about at her eye-level is a mantle piece, also in warm oak, that wraps all the way around. There's room for a lot of memories on that mantle, a lot of pictures.

And above it, the chimney goes straight up the ceiling fifteen feet above their heads.

"I think the big version of our crest goes there."

Ducky nods, pointing in front of it. "Dining table here?"

Penny smiles. "I think so. How much effort is it going to take to get this place livable?"

That's a real sticking point. Jethro shrugs. "This is more than I can just do on my own. This is ask the rest of them if they're willing to put some _real_ time into it before making a bid. This is you," he's looking at Ducky, "and I have something to do every day for the next three months, at least, and that might just be tear down." Gibbs looks a little uncomfortable with it, but… "Ed and Senior offered to help with the building on Tony's place. Supposedly they know what they're doing. I've seen Breena handle drywall, so Ed does know what he's doing, 'cause he taught her how to do it right. Not sure about Senior. If we can wrangle them into it, we should take the help. And if…" he pointed to a discolored smear along the far wall, "that's mold and not just water staining, this'll be an even bigger and more expensive project."

"Then tonight at Shabbos, we shall talk," Ducky says.


	84. Decision Time

Apparently it has been a quiet week at NCIS. Tony and Ziva are able to cut out early, so Shabbos is at their house. Which Gibbs thinks is just fine. Their home makes a very clear argument for why a place where they can all fit is a good idea.

He's got the pictures. Ducky and Penny are going to bring it up when they think the time is right. Probably after the 'what have we all been doing this week' part of the conversation.

* * *

He didn't get bombarded with 'You bringing Borin?' questions this week. That was nice. Several looks, and the 'So, what exciting happened to you this week?' question seemed to indicate that Borin-centric information would be welcome, but he didn't add anything.

Besides seeing her once, and mulling over what the hell to do with the fact that she's Coast Guard, and he wants to start trafficking people, not much Borin-centric stuff happened this week, and none of it is anything he's willing to tell them about.

Excitement for the week for the rest of them ranged from Breena getting to deal with a family that was so fractious that they had to schedule two separate viewings, complete with funeral service, so that the dead man's sons didn't have to be in the same room at the same time, to Penny enjoying the fun that is having a student show up to complain about his failing grade, even though he had A: not done any homework, B: only shown up for a quarter of the classes, and C: left half of the midterm blank.

"…I asked him what grade he thought would be appropriate for a man who did not even deign to attend the class regularly and he just stared at me like I was speaking in French. Finally he said, 'I need a B to graduate with a 3.0.'"

"What'd you say to that?" Tim asks his grandmother.

"'In that this is a junior level micro-medical engineering seminar you should be well enough versed with basic mathematical averages to know that it is mathematically impossible for you to get a B in this class. However, if you pull a C, which will require you to get As on everything in the rest of the class, turn in all of your homework, and ace the final, you can then take it again in September, get an A in it, average that with the C you may be able to pull this time, and then get your B.'"

"Let me guess, he had a fit?" Jimmy says between bites of roast beef.

"He glared at me and left. I got the note from the registrar that he's dropping the class today."

"All's well that ends well?" Ziva asks.

"This time. One of the little boogers complained to the Dean last semester. He didn't get very far with that." For a second, everything is quiet. Penny catches Ducky's eyes, and he nods, now's the time. "We had something we wanted to talk to all of you about."

That gets six sets of eyes staring at Penny. Most of them looking curious with a slight tinge of nervousness, after all that's a vaguely ominous phrase coming from the eighty-three-year-old clan Matriarch.

"Nothing bad. Ducky and I had been talking about how this is a very big family, one that will hopefully be getting bigger, and how it'd be nice to have a place where all of us can be together without bumping into each other and tripping over each other."

In that they're all tightly squeezed around a table made for several fewer people in a living/dining room combination that is only four feet longer than the table they're squeezed around, this seems like relevant point.

"A home, for all of us. A place for weekends and vacations, and down time. To be used by all of us, together, or on our own."

"We roped Jethro into this, and he found a place." Gibbs gets up from the crowded table, and heads to Tony and Ziva's room, where all the coats are currently hanging out on their bed. He finds the folder of pictures he'd taken, and brings it back to the table. He can hear Penny explaining how she and Ducky were thinking of buying it, but since it's for all of them, and would require a sizable time commitment, it would be a group decision.

"It's big," Jethro says, "Lots and lots of room for all of us. But it's gonna need a lot of work. And right now, it's really ugly."

"Are you trying to get us to turn it down?" Abby asks.

He shakes his head. "Trying to make sure you guys know how big of an undertaking this is going to be." He hands the photos to Tony, who had been sitting next to him. "We do this, and all of our off time, all summer long and probably the fall, is going to be spent on this."

Tony's flipping through the pictures, and then passes them to Ziva. She looks more slowly, smile spreading over her face. From her, the shots go to Breena, and down the table.

"But when we are done…" Ziva starts.

"If we just fix it up, don't change anything structural, it'll be ten bedrooms, seven baths, plenty of room, backyard to run around in. It's on the Potomac, and there's a boathouse for Shannon, little bit of a beach for swimming or fishing. If we go for it… We're going to have to redo so much of it to deal with the damage and the fact that it was decorated last in the '70s, that ripping down more walls and rearranging it into five suites wouldn't be a problem," Gibbs says. He'd been thinking about how best to deal with their collection of families, and the idea of setting it up so that each family had its own area, main room for Mom and Dad, auxiliary space for the kids, and then turn two of the smaller bedrooms (they didn't have their own baths anyway) into a play area made a lot of sense to him.

Breena smiles, getting this idea immediately. The pictures she's looking at are rough, but if anyone had seen the home her parents turned into their vacation place (bought shortly after Hurricane Andrew) they'd have never dreamed of what it eventually became. She can look at this house and see a lot of potential. Yeah, it's never going to be on the cover of Home and Garden, but they can make it into a damn fine home.

Her smile spreads. This is how her family built wealth that they hoped would last for generations. Variations on this theme is how her great-grandparents set up their business and homes. She looks around at the collection of people around her and feels very pleased by this.

Wealth isn't yours. It's something you use, build up, and pass more of onto your kids so they can do the same for theirs. The family she was born into isn't "rich," no gold plated china for them, no yachts, and south of France vacations were a once a decade sort of thing, not a hop on over every season type thing. They are at the top most range of comfortable. But she knows her Dad certainly hopes his grandchildren would be able to shift into full on "rich."

Steps like this is how they'll get there.

A house like this, all fixed up, on good land builds equity. Equity can be parlayed into top-flight educations (she looks at Tony and Ziva, knowing they're worried about finding a home in a good school district) and business loans. Those seeds grow more wealth, and with wealth comes choices, and choices bring many more paths to stable, comfortable lives.

Tony looks really nervous about this. Unlike Breena's family, his family was "rich" and he remembered the dark side of sibling squabbles over who got to use what, when. He remembers his Dad using his money as a club, a way to try and beat Tony into becoming another generation of businessman, constantly on the hunt for the next big score.

He has useless playboy cousins, and, sure he liked a good party as much as they did, but he didn't live for the party. That's not true. He did live for it, once. Just like them, he spent years running from one 'fun' high to the next.

And if winning the game wasn't a better high than any party ever, he'd still be there, yet another useless, charming DiNozzo, running from one empty high to the next.

And if a fire hadn't shown him what life could be, what it could mean, he'd have probably gone back to it as soon as school was done.

Constant fighting, constant nitpicking, constant sucking up, the way the money gets used to ensure the image of affection. He hates that, now, can feel how much it poisons everything. How you hate your aunts and uncles and grandparents because they're just walking bank accounts, and they loathe you because you're a parasite.

To say Tony's wary about this is a massive understatement.

At the same time, any home with Gibbs in it seems very unlikely to encourage that sort of behavior. And a home with an actual family in it, that too seems like it wouldn't encourage that.

But it still makes him nervous.

Ziva was born on it kibbutz, the idea of a family-owned home is second nature to her. Granted, the one she was born on grew orange and olives, and people came and people went, but there was always family there, at least some of them, a long branch of extended cousins and cousins of cousins, relatives by marriage or, like their family, long and dear association.

She's wondering, as she looks over the pictures, if they could grow something there. Obviously not oranges or olives, it's way too cold for that up here, but home for her has trees that blossom and grow fruits. Apples, maybe? She loves fall, now that she lives in a place that has autumns, and a grove of apple trees, with kids playing in it, picking fruit, as summer ends…

She likes the image a whole lot.

Jimmy's torn. He likes the idea of having this place, but he's also got a ton of continuing education units he's got to get done this summer. The paperwork software's bought him a lot of time, but right now he's using it to get Dr. Allan up to speed. He doesn't want to say, 'I can do this' and then end up short shifting his hours because he's got to spend a lot of his Saturdays in seminars so he can keep up his MD.

He's looking at the pictures, and Penny isn't kidding, this is a massive time commitment.

"I've got one hundred hours of CEUs planned for this summer. Five of my Saturdays are already booked for seminars, and I'm going to have a lot of homework and studying. I like the idea of this, but…"

"You do what you can, Jimmy. None of us are going to fuss if you're not putting up shingles because you're keeping up your MD," Abby says.

For her this is easy. Of course they're going to do it. The biggest issue she can see, and she's sure Tim's on the same page, because as soon as Gibbs said ten bedrooms they both looked at each other, his eyes asking and hers saying yes, is how they're going to get Ducky and Penny to take money from them.

A place like this, even if it is… She gets the pictures from Jimmy, opening the folder, Tim looking over her shoulder, and yeah, it's _rough_.

"It's the Burrow on steroids," Tim whispers to her. And there is a certain resemblance to the Ron Weasley's version of a rickety-looking house with rooms added wherever, whenever a new one was needed.

She laughs a little at that. "Like the Weasleys'd ever let it get so beat up."

She keeps flipping through, and yeah, it's beat up, but it's also got to cost at least a million dollars, probably two, and that's a ton of money. Tim's on track to finish the last of the contracted Tibbs novels this summer. That's another three hundred thousand dollars coming in soon. Tuck more away for Kelly and retirement, but they'd still have a good chunk of cash to put into this.

"Is that black mold?" Tim asks.

"Don't know," Gibbs answers. "If you guys want to see it live, maybe snag some samples, we can go tomorrow."

Like for Abby, for Tim this is a no-brainer. Assuming this place is close enough so it's easy to get to for weekends, he's all for this. They already spend a lot of time just driving from one home to the others, something that cuts that out would be lovely.

He can imagine this, cut off little early on Friday, head to this house, Shabbos, weekend together, back to the real world Monday morning. Sure, not every weekend, and when the kids are older, they'll probably want to be home for time with their buddies, of course, this thing'll be big enough to bring some buddies along…

"All summer and fall, but it'll be ready by Christmas, right?" Tim says.

"Maybe." Gibbs isn't sure. Jimmy not being there for five of their working days will cut into this. "Hopefully. The outside will be done by then."

"Okay, definitely next year then." Tim puts the picture of the mantle in the center of the table. "Stockings hung by the chimney with care. All the kids together for Christmas morning. Hell, we'll have the room, if Ed and Jeannie, Senior and Delphine want to be here, too, we can do it up right. Everyone here, all at once, together."

Abby squeezes his hand gently. The Christmas he never had as a kid.

Gibbs nods along with that, and Penny says, "That's what we're thinking."

"So, let's go see this place, tomorrow," Breena says.

* * *

Ducky and Penny were expecting Tim and Abby to walk them to their car.

"We can put money into this," Tim tells his grandmother.

"Not a ton, not right now," Abby adds. Between the wedding and house all of the money from Most Precious was gone. Shadow Force was finished right before Kelly was born, and that had been earmarked for college and other kid expenses. Right now Tim is less than twenty thousand words from the end of the last of the Tibbs novels. Should have the full advance on that by November.

"But come fall we could kick in two hundred thousand."

Penny smiles at that, and shakes her head at them. "This is for fun. When you've got all of your basic expenses taken care of, you own your house free and clear, college for Kelly and any other children you'll have paid for, your own retirements set, then yes, we'll take your money for this. But not before then."

She and Ducky had come up with that as a good way to put Tim and Abby off without actually hinting as to why they didn't want them to have a financial stake in the property.

"We're close. House is paid for. Kelly's college fund is full," Tim says, he determined look on his face.

Penny shakes her head again. "I know you both want more than one child. You're going to have to do better than one college fund."

Tim rolls his eyes. He can write more books. They aren't thrilled about taking Tibbs books on spec, but on spec is better than no books at all. And all he has to do is say, 'Write me a contract,' and he'll have money set for at least three more of them. "We're not hurting for cash. At all. Between my salary, and Abby's, and the books… We can afford to put money into this, in a way none of the rest of them can." Though, as he thinks about it, Jimmy and Breena are likely getting close to having that sort of income. "Even that badly beat up, that house has to cost a ton, and even with us doing it, fixing it won't be cheap."

Penny stares at him. "When you two have five million in the bank, you can buy in."

"Penny!" Yeah, they aren't hurting for cash, but that's still at least a decade off, and likely more.

"Uh un. Not negotiable. We're old and well off. We can buy this outright and still not have to worry about outliving our money."

"You sure?" Tim asks his grandmother. "Don't want you hurting for this."

They both nod. "Your grandfather's pension alone is providing me with over ninety thousand a year, for the rest of my life. You want to guess how much I'm making in residuals from some of the patents I hold? Let alone my professorship?"

Tim holds up his hands. "Fine." Then they both look at Ducky.

"I appreciate your concern, but I am financially sound. And like your grandmother, I can afford to buy this without any risk out outliving my wealth. Even with this purchase, my charities of choice will still do well by me."

"Okay."

Ducky says, "When we buy, we'll be setting it up as a trust. Jethro will be one trustee since he's the one who knows what needs to be done to make this home livable. Breena, since from what we can see this is second nature to her, will be the other. The trust will cover not just the house, but money to be invested to maintain an income stream large enough to pay the taxes and upkeep on the house. I am sure, that by the time she is looking for a new trustee to replace Jethro, you will have no problem convincing her to accept an influx of operating capital from you."

"So, you're saying we're not putting any money in until we're the grandparents?" Tim says dryly.

"Oh, my, yes, that does seem to be a likely consequence of how we've set this up!" Ducky says, ironically. "Meanwhile, I suggest you research home wiring. Judging by the decor, my guess is that there will be quite a bit of work necessary to get this house able to provide the level of wifi you require."

"Point taken."

* * *

The pictures didn't do the place justice. It looks beaten up and ugly in the pictures. In real life it's tooth-achingly ugly.

They got there, a fine early April morning lighting the gnarled grass and weather-beaten home, and spread out to explore.

Tim and Abby are walking around, Kelly in her snuggli on Abby's chest, looking very intently at everything.

"I didn't know polyester came in colors this awful," he says as he kicks at the carpet in the room that was open to the elements, feeling his lungs starting to tighten up.

She shakes her head. "Get samples of it." She brought a collection of sterile test tubes. Part of making the decision on this is what level of hazmat this place is. If they can't disassemble it without getting sick, they're not going to bid on it.

"Don't need to, I can feel it's filled with mildew."

"Here." She swaps him Kelly for the sample tubes. "You need an inhaler?"

"God, no." Asthmatic lungs work by tightening up and shutting down to keep the stuff they don't like out. Inhalers work by opening them back up again. People who don't understand this think that taking a few hits on an inhaler is a good plan for an asthmatic sitting in the middle of whatever is setting of the asthma attack. Asthmatics know that you take the inhaler _after_ you're away from what's setting you off, otherwise you're just going to make the problem worse. "That'd just get this crap even deeper into my lungs."

Abby isn't not asthmatic, but she's grasping the basic concept with ease. "Okay, get out of here."

"Good plan." He wheezes.

* * *

"Timothy?" Ducky asks as he heads back into the kitchen area, hands over Kelly, quickly, and starts coughing loudly. "Are you all right?"

"Lot of mildew in the…" he points toward the side of the house they'd been wandering around in, while coughing. "Lungs don't like it," he says when he can inhale again. "Just got to get away from it."

He spends a moment standing in front of the fireplace, not talking, because talking messes up how you breathe and will just make him cough more. After a few minutes, his lungs notice they're no longer under attack and begin to relax.

"Okay, better."

"Really?" Ducky sounds concerned as he pats Kelly's back. She's been staring at her father, wondering what that loud noise was.

"Yeah. I'll be fine."

"Do you have an inhaler?"

Tim shakes his head. "Not for years."

"Uh huh."

Tim catches that look in Ducky's eyes, and knows that by the time they come back to work on any sort of tear down for this project, he'll probably have a collection of inhalers to pick from.

"Mold, mildew, and dust triggered asthma. I'm allergic to cats, and it wouldn't shock me if there weren't a bunch of them living here over the years. I don't on well with Albuterol-based inhalers."

Ducky nods. "What does 'don't get on well' mean?"

"Mean's I'll make Abby mainlining Caff-Pow and speed look tame."

"Jittery?"

He smiles, self-depreciating, and nods definitively. "Yeah." He looks around the house again. "Granted, if you want me working on this twenty-four seven at about three times my normal speed, Albuterol might be a good plan."

"Have you tried Xopenex?"

Tim takes Kelly back, slipping her into the snuggli. "Don't think so. I haven't had an inhaler in probably eight years. Besides now and dropping Penny's things off at your house in that dust storm, I've wanted one, maybe, twice in all that time. Is it new?"

"Enough. I believe it's been out for a decade or so. When we get back to the…" But Ducky doesn't have his prescription pad at the Navy Yard anymore. "I shall send Jimmy a note and tell him to write you a script for it. Fill it on Monday. Whether we buy this home or not, you should have an inhaler on the off chance you need one."

"Sure." It can sit in his go bag and collect dust until it expires like the last one did.

"McGee!" he hears Tony yell out. Fortunately from the sound of it, he's in the other, hopefully mildew-free, wing of the house.

"Off to investigate," he says to Ducky, who nods at him.

It takes a few minutes, due to how rooms were haphazardly applied to this house, the hallways are of a long and winding nature, but he finds Tony and Jimmy standing in the middle of a bedroom, smirking.

"What?"

"We found your room." Tony says, still smirking, and Jimmy's on the verge of laughing.

Tim looks around at it. Okay, it's a bedroom, decent size, no carpet, that's a selling point, harvest gold wallpaper, that's not, and, like the rest of the house, it's got one electrical socket per room. (Ducky wasn't kidding, he's going to be rewiring the whole damn house to get this thing ready. Barely any electric, no cable at all, and wifi, what the hell is that?) It's got its own bathroom, which is nice, but he's really not seeing why this particular one is _his._

However Jimmy and Tony are just standing there, grinning at him, really enjoying this joke.

So he looks around again, and still doesn't see it.

"What?"

Tony points up. There's a large patch of the ceiling covered in mirrors. "Figured that was about your speed," Tony says before both he and Jimmy succumb to giggles.

Tim looks at them, and then snorts. "Amateurs." He wiggles his index finger at them, as he steps below the mirrors. "Come here, let's learn how to use mirrors. Your wives will thank me." He points up. "Mirrors on the ceiling don't give you a very good view. And in most positions only one of you can see them. Lame view for only one of you, that's a job done by someone who doesn't know what they're doing." He heads to the middle of the room and looks around for a bit. Then two steps to the left. "If you do know what you're doing… The bed goes here. You want the mirrors…" He points to back of the closet door, and the front of the bathroom door. "Though you'll close the door a little bit more to get a really good angle. And you want a vanity, there." He points to one more wall. "That way you can both see, from any angle you like, you don't get the distortion from the mirrors being over your head. Upside down and backwards is more likely to make you seasick than turned on, and, better yet, you don't look like a freaking pervert if anyone just walks into your room." Tim stands there, smiling, enjoying the look of surprise on Jimmy and Tony's faces.

"I'm never going to be able to set foot in your room again, will I?" Tony says.

"You're the one who brought it up." Tim looks around some more, and heads into the bathroom. One of the nicer ones. He comes out nodding and quickly texts Abby. A few minutes later, she wanders in. "This one ours?" he asks.

She looks around, looks up, looks around again, and says, "Once you move those mirrors, sure. Closet and bathroom doors, and," she points to the same spot on the wall where he said the vanity should go, "there, right?"

He nods, smiling.

"Good. Yeah, I like this room. It gets good light." She heads out for a moment and then comes back in. "Ohhh, and the one next to it is that little octagonal one. We knock the wall down between them…"

Tim nods back to her, getting this idea. They're close to the end of the hallway here. The little octagonal room is off of this one, and then there's another room at the end of the hall, that opens into the octagonal one."

"There's another room next to that, and then the other side of the hall's got another bedroom/bathroom combo. You want to share the room without a bathroom for our girls?" Abby asks Jimmy. "Put them in there. That way we've got them between us. And you guys take the next master bedroom?"

"Let me go find Breena and take a look," Jimmy says.

Abby smiles at that, looks at Tony and Tim standing around and says, "Okay, glad we've got that set. Gotta get more samples." She kisses Kelly and Tim, and heads back out again to grab some more mildew.

* * *

An hour later they're all sitting on the back patio.

"Assuming that your tests show that the micro-organisms that are growing on this house are non-toxic, should we put a bid on this home?" Ducky asks.

"Didn't see any signs of termites," Gibbs says. "But the whole north corner of the house needs to be ripped down and redone."

"Windows and doors are ancient," Breena adds. "If they're younger than Abby is, I'd be amazed."

"There's nothing in the way of insulation, either," Gibbs adds. "But all the siding's coming down, so Tyveking everything won't be too hard."

Tim hadn't been able to check out the exposed wiring in the north corner of the house, but Abby had taken pictures for him. "We're tearing out the drywall in pretty much every wall on the inside, because the whole place needs to be re-wired. That'll make adding extra insulation, easier, too."

"Don't know anything about plumbing," Jimmy says, holding onto Anna, as Molly runs around in the grass beyond them. "But I know grout is not supposed to be black and I'm fairly sure the tile is supposed to be attached to the walls and floors in the bathrooms, not lose."

"So, we're looking at ripping off the roof and the siding, tearing out all of the windows and door, taking down most of the interior walls, chipping off all the tile, rewiring everything, likely re-plumbing it, all new appliances, and just for kicks, redoing a bunch of the walls. Are we keeping any of this place?" Tony asks. "Or would it just be easier to low-ball the bid, see if they'll bite for the price of just the land, bring in the bulldozers, and start from scratch." The others all stare at him as he says that. "What? I wasn't always asleep when my dad talked real estate."

They all look at Jethro. He shakes his head. "Nah. The bones look good. Structure is sound. The kind of messing with walls we're talking about is more about moving around where the drywall goes than tearing out studs."

"So, are we doing it?" Penny asks.

Jethro smiles. "I'm in. Tests come back clean, I can start working on tear down and designing what the inside'll look like."

"We're in," Abby says. "We'll hit the Navy Yard on the way home. I'll get the samples cooking. Hopefully, by start of work Monday I'll know if we should put a bid in."

"I think Molly approves," Breena says, as they can hear her laughing as she runs around. She looks at Jimmy and he nods. "We're in."

Tony's looking at the place. It's very much not a mansion for pampered brats. He really hopes it won't be when they're done. Ziva's looking out at the yard, and the trees beyond, seeing… something, gardens in her mind, probably. She looks happy here, really happy, and he can imagine her planting things, enjoying a space to make things grow.

"We're in," he says.

"All right. We'll get the report back from Abigail and if all is well, we'll place the bid on Monday," Ducky says.

* * *

On Monday, Ducky got the call.

"Abigail?"

"It's mildew, and mold, and a lot of other little nasties, but none of it's toxic. Keep Tim out of it or get him a face mask, and we're good to go on teardown."

Ducky felt the smile spread across his face. "Wonderful! We'll get on it."

He and Penny sat down, and talked, and went through their finances to see how fast they could shift money around. Then they placed a bid. Twenty-five percent below the asking price, but to sweeten the deal they offered immediate closing. Cashier's check in hand as soon as the paperwork could be drawn up.

Wednesday morning everyone got a text from Penny: _Saturday morning, get your grubby clothes on; we've got work to do!_


	85. The House

Thursday morning. The rest of the crew would be joining them on Saturday, but, like Gibbs said, he and Ducky now had something to do, every day, for at least the next three months.

Gibbs, of course, is used to this. And sure, this is a much bigger project than he's ever worked on before, but he's at least familiar with the ins and outs of something like this.

He has the sinking suspicion, as he picks Ducky up, and notices that for Ducky, grubby clothes equals scrubs (Gibbs supposes that makes a certain amount of sense: cheap, easily washed, easy to move in, cool, all of that is good, but it looks really odd.) that Ducky has likely never done anything even remotely like this.

It's also occurring to Gibbs, as they head toward the house, that he's never really done anything that involved managing Ducky before. He's never had to try to teach Ducky anything. Or, God, correct him on something.

_Yeah, this'll be interesting._

Of course, today's version of interesting is somewhat less strenuous than tomorrow is likely to be.

First things first, they've got to get those fallen trees out of the way.

Once that's done, there's ordering a few dumpsters, making lists of the tools they're going to need, obtaining said tools, and then tomorrow they can begin the tear down.

Today's work is actually going to be fun, because ripping up trees with chainsaws is something that Gibbs really likes doing.

Plus, as they get out of the truck and head toward the first tree, chainsaw (Gibbs only has one) over his shoulder, Ducky with two hand saws, it hits Gibbs that this appears to be oak, which means as long as they roll the logs out of the way, he can use them later for something interesting.

"Branches come off first. Clean cuts, gonna want to save this."

Ducky nods at that, eyeballing the tree in front of them. It's dead. Very dead. There are littered brown leaves on the ground under the tree, and the twigs look dry and brittle. "And are we using the hand saws for the branches?"

"You are. I've got this."

"And why do you have that?" Ducky appears to be under the impression that the older guy should get the power tools.

"Have you ever used one before?"

"I've used bone saws before."

Gibbs flips off the safety and turns on the engine. "Not the same thing." He pulls his ear protection on, and hands ear plugs to Ducky before taking two large steps away from Duck, and starting up the chain saw. It buzzes to life with a hard kick, which is why Ducky didn't get to use it. If you've never done it before, that kick can be a surprise, and that surprise can kill you. Tim or Jimmy or Tony want to use this, that's one thing, but the girls and Ducky… he's got no idea how strong their arms are, and he's sure as hell not explaining to Penny how he handed Ducky a chainsaw and that was that.

He keeps an eye on Ducky as he works. (Okay, he keeps an eye on Ducky between choosing branches to remove, while he's actually sawing, he keeps his eyes on the tree.)

Eventually Ducky notices or senses it somehow. He pulls off his ear protection and gestures for Jethro to do likewise, so he shuts off the saw and does so.

"What?"

"I am fine, Jethro."

"Didn't say you weren't."

"You are staring at me as if you are afraid that at any second I will drop over with a heart attack."

Gibbs opens and closes his mouth. Because, yeah, okay, that is more or less exactly what he's doing, but he didn't think he was being _that_ obvious about it.

"As of my last check up all of my arteries and veins were clear. And I am more than capable of" he mimics the motion he's using for sawing, "for hours without any ill effect."

"Okay. Just… Don't want to be bringing Penny any bad news."

"And I would prefer you didn't have to, either. But if it happens here, it happens here, and this," he gestures to indicate the work they're doing, "will not be the cause of it. I do not need you coddling me."

"Okay."

Ducky's voice grows serious. "Mother lived fifteen years too long. Slowly fading further and further away from the rest of the world a day at a time. I don't want that. Jethro, I am of sound mind, doing something I enjoy with someone I love, for the joy of other people I love, wrapped in spring sunshine. Can you think of a better way to go?"

"Duck…" He swallows hard at that; he doesn't want to think much about Ducky going any which way or another, and then sighs, blinking. Yes, it's a good way to go, but this a hell of a lot grimmer than Gibbs wants to be. He rubs his hand over his face, blinks again, and then forces a smile and says, "My girlfriend's almost twenty years younger than I am. I can think of a better way to go." Gibbs holds his face serious for almost a second before breaking into a huge smile and laughing.

Ducky's eyes go wide for that second, and then he starts to laugh, loud, belly laughing, along with Gibbs. After a moment, he takes off his glasses and, still chucking, wipes his eyes. He inhales long and deep, exhales, and says, "Le petit mort becomes le grande mort. I'll give you, _that'_ s a better way to go." He laughs again, and Gibbs laughs with him. "Bad for your lady friend."

Gibbs nods, agreeing with that.

"But good for you. We should all aspire to such ends."

"Amen, Duck."

Gibbs is about to put his ear protection back on when Ducky asks, "And is Ms. Borin your girlfriend?"

Gibbs looks up at him, startled.

"It's just, your previous women, Susan, Dr. Ryan, Ms. Hart, Hollis they were all _friends_. In fact, if memory serves, both Timothy and Anthony received headslaps for referring to Susan as your _girlfriend._ "

Gibbs inclines his head at that, they did get headslaps, mostly for the gossip, but the girlfriend bit triggered it, too.

"Have you… spoken to her about what else it is we hope to do here?"

Gibbs shakes his head. No. He tried, but the fear of her leaving killed those words dead long before they had a shot of getting out of his mouth.

"In the old tales, the knight goes forth, and risks everything to do what is right. Thus he goes off to slay the dragon, knowing exactly what it is he risks, because the threat of the dragon is too great to be ignored. You are a knight, Jethro, you always have been.

"But there are myriad dragons out there. More dragons than there are knights. We can go and find one that doesn't risk you losing your lady in the process."

"You getting cold feet?"

"No." Ducky smiles. "I've married my lady. She'll be there to the end of my days, or hers, whichever of us goes first. My castle is secure. My loves are safe. I'm ready, willing, and able to go forth and slay dragons with you. My last grand adventure.

"But it doesn't have to be _this_ adventure."

Gibbs sits down on the oak, patting the bark, Ducky sitting next to him.

"What else would I do? Really? Rachel suggested being an EMT."

"You'd be good at it. Cool head, able to deal with anyone who comes your way. The medical training is intensive, but I doubt you'd find it difficult. Private Detective, take up cases the police have given up on. You could teach self-defense. Work with battered women, teach them to fight and to shoot."

"So we can arrest them when they finally shoot the sons-of-bitches hurting them? I get into that, I'll end up doing a lot more than just practicing with my sniper rifle."

The look on Ducky's face indicates he doesn't necessarily see that as a problem.

Gibbs shakes his head. "Only one bullet left for that rifle, and it's got a target picked."

Ducky nods, well aware of who that bullet's for, should the need arise.

"I want to do it, Duck. It's… if you were to sit down for hours to come up with something that perfectly matched my skills and what I've got to offer, that's it."

Ducky nods, agreeing. Sailing skills, ability to read people at a glance, facility with language, nerves of steel, undercover skills, deep sympathy and protective nature, yes, this is Jethro's perfect job.

"But I want her, too."

Ducky smiles, sadly. "I'm afraid that may be a combination you cannot have."

"I know. I am, too." Gibbs swallows hard again, and pats the tree. "Come on." He puts his ear protectors back on, waits for Ducky to get up, and then fires up the chainsaw again.

* * *

Saturday morning. Bright and early. Tim's noticed it's a lot easier to get up bright and early on Saturday mornings these days. Probably because it's not like there's any shot of sleeping in. Kelly's up by seven every morning, so they pretty much are, too. Right now, Kelly's all dressed and ready to go. She's chilling out on Mom and Dad's bed, laying on her back, working on stuffing both sets of toes into her mouth.

Mom and Dad are somewhat less ready to go.

"Jethro's bringing all the tools, right?" he asks Abby as he's pulling on his oldest, rattiest jeans. (Not very old or ratty. Downside of all the weight he lost is that almost everything he owns and still wears is new.)

"Think so, why?" She's hunting through her closet for her overalls. It's been a while since she volunteered to build houses for Habitat For Humanity, but she's still got her gear somewhere.

"Just checking."

"Do you have tools to bring?"

"Yes, but not for this part of it." Most of his tools are for electronics. He's got lots of good stuff for soldering, and a wide array of extremely high-tech micro tools for dealing with the delicate innards of a computer. On a much bigger scale, he's ready and able to fish cable through a house, splice wires, sink LED light sockets, and add in extra electric plugs. However, the hammer, saw, crowbar, wrenches, and various and sundry other around-the-house tools they have are all Abby's. "When we get to rewiring, I've got stuff."

"Found it!" Abby pulls her overalls and tool belt out of deep storage. "Now let's see if I can still fit my ass into these."

He pats her rear gently while kissing her neck, and then delves into the closet to find his work boots.

* * *

Out in the sun, breaking things, spending the day with most of his favorite people. Jimmy was really looking forward to this.

All was going well. They got their things, packed the girls into the backseat, and headed over to Ed and Jeannie's. Molly's going to get some quality time with Gramma and Papa. (Anna's staying with them, because she spends most of her time nursing and sleeping.) He and Breena were going to head off, and then _breaking things_!

Was and were are the operative words in those statements.

Apparently, last night, Amy and Collin dropped by to have a chat with Ed and Jeannie. Jeannie, of course, knew why they were there and what they had to talk about. Ed did not.

To say he did not take that conversation well would be an understatement along the lines of 'You know, absolute zero is a bit nippy.'

A very quick conference between Jeannie and Breena resulted in Ed coming along, because both of them thought that a chance to break things would be good for him.

So, as they're driving to the house, Jimmy now has, instead of an hour to just chat with his wife, alone, without small people interrupting, which he had been looking forward to, an hour with Ed fuming in his backseat, occasionally muttering things under his breath.

They've been in the car for ten, tense, minutes before something that's actually intelligible comes out of him. "Why would she lie to me?"

Jimmy bites his lip. He could answer. He wants to answer. He's got answers coming out his ears right now, but he feels Breena's hand on his wrist, so he doesn't. He stays quiet.

"She's not blind, Dad. She saw how you treated Jimmy, she saw the crap you've put me through, the crap you've put _both_ of us through, and for some reason she wasn't eager to deal with that. You put me in an impossible situation, and you wonder why she didn't want to be there herself?"

Ed glares and looks out the window. "When it's Molly and Anna, you'll understand."

"No! I won't. You couldn't have designed a better husband for me if you tried, and you're still not fond of him. So, no, I'm not going to understand this. Molly or Anna fall in love with a good man, a man who's good for them, I'm not going to be a jerk about it."

"He'll understand," Ed says looking at Jimmy.

Jimmy glances at Breena, wondering if it's okay for him to talk, now, and she nods slightly. "It's my job to protect Molly and Anna's hearts, my job to raise them so they can find happiness and recognize it when they have it. It is not my job to constantly second guess them. It's not my job to try and wedge myself between them and the men or women or whoever it is they love. And it's sure as hell not my job to make them break down crying on their eventual mates because I'm being a flaming asshole about the fact that they want to get married. That's not my job, and it's not yours, and if you don't want Christine," Breena's youngest sister, "pulling the exact same crap on you, shape up, get over yourself, and welcome their men into your home."

"Collin's a good guy, Dad."

"If he was a good guy, he'd have married her. None of this shacking-up shit."

"Dad."

"It's bullshit. You love her. You're going to stay. You get married. This… he's playing house and then he's going to knock her up and run."

"We've already told him that if he tries to bail on his kids we'll kill him," Jimmy says. "He took it seriously."

"Who's we?"

"Me, Tim, Gibbs. After bootcamp. After letting him see that we could literally beat the shit out of him if we wanted to."

"Why were _you_ doing that?"

"Because he is serious, and he's not insane, so he decided having a chat with the one other person who knows what it's like to be Ed Slater's son-in-law was a good plan." Breena already knows this, but Ed doesn't. "We would have been engaged six months earlier, but I was spending a lot of time figuring out if she was worth having to deal with _you._ And she is, but that was a lot of long nights thinking hard about it. And then it was another year of you making her miserable and me want to shoot you in the ass because of it. So no, no sane guy jumps into that without a lot of thought, because having someone you love ripped in two because her Dad is being an ass isn't fun. Every day of it kills you, and it kills her, and…"

Now Jimmy shuts up, because if he gets going on this too much, he's going to make Breena upset, and he's going to be in a bad mood, too.

He relaxes his fingers on the steering wheel, noticing they were clenching hard. "Getting married was supposed to be happy and fun. It was supposed to be joyful. And honestly, between you and Deering, I'm not sure who fucked over our wedding worse. You've got a chance of not doing that to Amy and Christine, so for God's sake, take it."

From then on, it's a very quiet drive to the house.

* * *

"Hammers, crowbars, duct tape… What else do you think we'll need?" Tony asks Ziva as she returns to the cart they're pushing through a Lowes on their way to the house.

"Tony, why do we have a shovel?" Ziva asks as she puts the tool belts she had grabbed into the cart.

"We need a shovel."

Ziva eyes the shovel; it was not in the cart when she went to grab tool belts. Granted, she doesn't know all that much about driveway snow removal, but she's fairly certain that the kind of shovel one uses for a driveway in winter does not look like the long handled, small-bladed object that Tony just put into their cart.

"What do we need that shovel for?"

"You'll see. So, this everything?"

"For today, at least. I'm sure we'll want other tools eventually." In that both of them are apartment dwellers, they don't have much in the way of tools. A few screwdrivers, okay, one screwdriver, phillips head, because a knife just won't do that job well, and one strap wrench. For anything else, if something goes wrong they call the maintenance guy, and he fixes it.

As they head toward the register, Tony turns the cart away, heading toward the plant section.

"Tony?"

"Come on." He takes them in deeper, surrounded by growing things. "I know you were seeing something in your head when we were there. Knew it was outside by where you were looking. Thinking it's some sort of tree, because that's home. So…" They're in a long row of young trees. Apples, peaches, pears, plums, cherries, further back are decorative ones.

"Tony…" She's smiling at him.

"Not a whole lot of them. They've still got to fit into the car." They're young trees, yes, but young trees are still seven feet long. "But, we can start, at least. Get one or two in today."

Ziva starts hunting around. She knows basically nothing about growing fruit trees, but this part's probably pretty easy. She takes her phone out to see which ones do best in this area and comes up with a decision.

Two small trees, each with a tag that says Arkansas Black, and a picture of very dark red apples go into the cart, too.

Tony smiles at them, and at her. "Trust the ninja to go for black apples."

She smiles at him, eyes sparkling. "Ninja apples."

* * *

"Okay, so, this is also our home. We're gonna walk around the property, and you've got to stay inside of it. If you can do that, you can go run around. You go wandering somewhere else, I'm going to have to tie you up."

Woof.

Mona's excited. Twice now Jethro's left and come home smelling interesting, and she too wants to know what those smells are and where they're from.

He opens the door to his truck and she goes bounding out of the cab. Space. Lots of space. And it's green. And… oh a butterfly. And like that she's off like a black rocket, tearing after the butterfly.

Gibbs looks around at the work site. Yesterday and the Thursday, he and Ducky got the trees cut up and moved out of the way. They also cleared out the section of the house the tree took out.

He's not sure if he wants to tear all of the siding off first, and then go back in and reframe and Tyvek, or if it's a better idea to get this patch cleaned out to healthy wood (that's how he thinks of the parts of the house that aren't growing mold and mildew), reframe that section, put the plywood up, and then pull all of the siding off the whole house and go at it at once.

What he does know is that having a big hole in the house isn't a good plan.

Either way, he's got a load of lumber and a bunch of tarps in the back of his truck… so he's ready to move.

* * *

Ducky and Penny thought of something the rest of them didn't. Water. It was a very good thought.

Theoretically the water got turned on yesterday. But, whether or not it's good to drink is a whole different story. So, when they pulled up with a trunk full of bottles of water, Gibbs sighed with relief.

He'd brought burgers and burger fixings, figuring that with three acres of woods, and all the branches that are too small for good woodworking he'd have no problem getting the grill fired up and ready to cook, but somehow the idea that they'd want something to _drink_ (beyond his own thermos filled with the coffee that goes everywhere with him) hadn't hit him.

* * *

Two by fours are not light.

And he's got a metaphorical ton of them in the back of his truck. (In reality, it's probably close to 600 pounds.) They need to get from his truck to a space he and Ducky cleared out for them (tarp already laid out so they're not sitting on wet ground.)

At first it's just Gibbs, Ducky, and Penny. Which makes for slow headway. Eventually Tony and Ziva show up, which speeds things up. Then Jimmy and Breena and Anna, and Ed with a black cloud hovering over his head. (Bad mood or not, he's still lugging wood like a champ.) And finally Abby and Tim with Kelly and the play pen the girls will be hanging out in.

At ten-months old Kelly's still pretty good on the stick her in one place and she stays there part of life. She's also still at three naps a day, so she gets to come along, too. At five months old, Anna sleeps and eats even more often. With any luck, they'll hang out in the play pen, amuse each other, and enjoy the shade. At least this one time. If it's a disaster, then they'll work something else out. But at least for right now (fourteen minutes into this experiment), they seem pretty content to hang out in the playpen, in the shade, watching the adults.

Once the whole crew is there, they make fast work of the lumber.

Ed eyes the siding, standing next to Gibbs, and says. "You got anyone who knows anything about plumbing?"

"Not really."

"Anyone can rip siding off. I've got a flashlight in the car. Show me where the steps to the basement are and I'll give your plumbing a once over."

"Thanks."

A minute later, Jethro's got him in the house, in the back of the kitchen, next to the pantry, at the basement steps. "Electric's not on, yet." He takes a few steps to the sink, and turns the water on. "Water works." It's kind of grayish brown. He shakes his head at it.

Ed nods, heading back into the basement; Gibbs following. They stop at the bottom two steps and Ed turns on his flash light. "Hopefully that's just it's been years since the water's been used." Ed looks around, they're the only two in the house. "She's living with him."

Gibbs nods.

"You knew."

He nods at that, too.

"Didn't say anything."

_That's obvious_ is on Gibbs' face.

"Why?"

"Your daughter's so scared of wrecking things that she's not willing to talk to you, I'm not going to get into that."

Ed snorts. "He didn't come talk to me."

"Thought that happened last night."

"Didn't talk to me _before._ "

"He doesn't want to marry _you_. He's not going to piss Amy off if she's saying keep quiet."

"He should have talked to me."

Gibbs nods. "Jimmy told him that."

Ed's eyes go wide. "Jimmy told him that?"

"Yeah. 'Cause it's the right thing to do. He talked to you, first. The way he was supposed to. And you laughed at him, even though your daughter loves him and he treats her like she's a goddess, you still laughed. You think he didn't tell her that? Or that she didn't tell Amy?

"Think she didn't see that, and understand it as you don't respect a gesture like that?

"You think Amy didn't watch and see everything you did to Jimmy. Think she didn't know how miserable you made Breena when they were getting married? Think she somehow missed all the snide comments and little putdowns you piled on him over the years?

"Collin's a good kid. He's serious about her. We could see it; she didn't want him talking to you, so he talked to us, about how to deal with _you._ Because no man in his right mind wants his woman crying on him about her dad.

"And that's what she's doing today, right? Crying? Because let me guess, they came over, and they sat you and Jeannie down, and they told you they're living together and they love each other, and you threw a fit, probably said some really mean things to her and him?"

Ed nods. "Just to him."

"They invited to Sunday dinner?"

"How can they be invited to Sunday dinner? We all get together, to go to _church,_ which they aren't welcome at anymore—"

"Quit it. Three quarters of you family'll get booted out if that's the case. Jimmy and Breena are the only people I know or have ever heard of who are under the age of forty who waited until they got married. Your Minister had no problem letting Tim and Abby stand up with Jimmy and Breena for Molly, and they were living together then. And you're not going to suggest I stop coming because I've got a girlfriend I sleep with."

Ed's got the grace to look uncomfortable.

"Your girls are people. People like sex. You do. Your wife does. The stork brought none of your grand babies. Be happy for them that they found good men who love 'em, are good at it, and make 'em happy with it."

Ed looks really startled by that.

Gibbs shakes his head. "I only had my daughter for nine years. So, I didn't get to this part of it. But I had dreams for it. And I don't know Collin well enough to say for sure, but I've got a good feeling about him, but I do know Jimmy, and I would have given my right arm for Jimmy as a son-in-law. To have had a man love my girl the way he loves Breena…

"I've put away men who raped women, put away men who killed their wives, beat 'em up, tortured them. I've killed 'em, too. One… _sick bastard_ stuck 'em in wedding dresses and kept them chained in abandoned rooms made to look like the '50s. I've seen every flavor of bad out there. And for just plain, old not getting along, I've lived it.

"Right now, I'm just getting started again, and you know who I'm looking at when I'm trying to figure out how to do this? Jimmy and Tim. Because they get it. Because they're good at it.

"I've got a lot of rules, and one of them is 'don't apologize, it's a sign of weakness,' but when I fuck up, fuck up bad, I apologize. And if I were you, I'd get Jimmy alone and I'd apologize for all the crap you've put him through. Then I'd do the exact same thing for Breena. Then I'd give Collin a call, offer to buy him a beer, and start trying to patch up the mess you've made with him, and if not for his sake or yours, you do it for Amy. You do that, you work at it, and you won't have this problem with Christine."

Ed nods, and Gibbs isn't sure if that's his way of saying _I'll do that_ or _I'm done talking about this_ but either way he knows they're done.

He heads back into the kitchen and sees Jimmy just standing there, staring at him.

"Uh… just checking in. Wanted to see what you were up to."

Gibbs inclines his head. "You heard?"

"Yeah."

Gibbs takes a step closer and puts his arm around Jimmy. "She'd have been the same age as Ziva, and I'd've been damn proud if she had picked you."

Jimmy nods, solemnly. "Thanks."

Gibbs shakes his head. "Nothing to say thanks for. You earned it. Lot of times over. Anyone who's not deliberately blind can see it."

"Still nice to hear."

Gibbs nods at that. "They get started."

"Yeah, feel like ripping off some aluminum siding installed just about the same time as Ed's sexual politics?"

Gibbs laughs at that. "Sure."

* * *

It's fun. Loud. Aluminum siding does not come off a house peaceful and quiet. And Abby's got some sort of music blasting out of their car. So, they can't really talk. But it's fun.

It's a beautiful day, the sun is shining bright overhead, they're working together at something happy, instead of the way they usually work together, at something tragic.

It's a good day.

Ed pops back up an hour later, vastly longer than it'd take to inspect the pipes, not nearly long enough for some serious soul searching.

"Good news. Your pipes are copper and in good shape. Bad news is your hot water heaters are older than Breena and so calcified you could use them as fossils."

Gibbs nods. Relieved about the pipes, and he'd already put new water heaters on the list, so that's not a blow.

Ed picks up a crowbar and finds a chunk of wall no one's working on, and gets to prying away.

* * *

It's during the lunch break that it occurs to Tim that, though it is April, and as a result cool out, it is still bright and sunny.

And as the biological result of many, many, many generations of pale-skinned, melanin-deficient Irish people breeding with each other, he's got a natural SPF of, maybe, on a good day, negative two.

He is realizing this because, while moving around, and working, and sweating he wasn't paying attention to anything but the work, but right now, relaxing into their lunch break, enjoying the scent of wood fire and burgers, it's hitting him that the bits of him that have been open to the sun, his face and arms, are burning.

He doesn't think his skin looks too pink, but he peels off his work gloves and winces. (This would also be when it hits him that he's wearing _sunglasses._ Brown-green sunglasses, which tone the red down on everything. And for that matter, so is everyone else around him.)

He takes them off and winces again, able to see what color his skin is. "Oh…"

Abby looks up from Kelly. She's nursing right now, and had been talking to their daughter. She looks at him and her eyes go wide.

"It's really bad, isn't it?"

Abby nods. "I've got sunscreen in my purse. In the car."

"Probably too late for that."

She nods at him. "It'll keep it from getting worse." She takes her glasses off, too, and winces again. "Oh, God, Tim. Wow, okay. At least it's just your face, neck, and arms. You have a long sleeve shirt in the car, right?"

He does. He'd worn a button-down over the t-shirt because it is cool, but working meant he warmed up pretty quick.

"Go get a lot of sunscreen and that shirt back on. Gibbs!"

He turns from the grill, and Tim sees his eyes go wide.

"Do you have an extra ball cap in the truck?"

He shakes his head. "Don't you have yours in your go bag?" he asks Tim.

"No. I don't need field gear in my go bag anymore."

"I have mine." Ziva replies. "Come, McGee, let's get you fixed up."

Back at his car, rubbing copious amounts of sun block on very tender skin, he figured out why everyone looked at him like he was some sort of bizarre creature. He's got a reverse raccoon look going. Two wide round bits around his eyes where the glasses were, the rest of his face, bright, flushed pink.

Ziva's cap (adjusted to fit him) helps to get more shade on his face, his long sleeve shirt means his arms are protected now, and as they're walking back to the patio she says, "You remember what poison ivy looks like, right?"

He shakes his head at her. "It's a summer plant. Don't have to worry about it in the spring."

"Are you sure? This will be miserable. This plus poison ivy…"

"I'm good, Ziva."

"Okay."

Tony's putting buns on plates as they get back, and he takes one look at Tim and says, "Time to take you out of the pot, McLobster, you're done."

"Yeah, thanks, Tony. You couldn't have noticed that before I was cooked?"

Tony spreads his hands wide. "I was doing my job."

"Yeah, well, me too."

"When you get home, Timothy, brew up a good strong tea, allow it to cool, soak paper towels in it, and then apply them to your burns. That will help with the swelling and pain."

"Thanks, Duck."

"My first tour of duty was in Korea, which is not, in fact, Scotland, or anything like Scotland. The height of sun screen back then was titanium dioxide paste. In addition to absolutely destroying any camouflage you may have had, it was utterly useless as sun screen. No one there had ever heard of an aloe plant, let alone had one, so tea compresses were all the first aid one could do for burned skin."

"Ugh." Tim says, wincing in sympathy.

Ducky nods. "Took two months before I stopped burning every single day."

"Oh." Tim shudders at that.

"Africa was worse. The only time I've ever had sun poisoning was in Africa."

"Ducky, no offense, but, I don't want to hear about sun poisoning."

"Why are we talking about sun… Good Lord, Tim, you forgot sun screen didn't you?" Jimmy asks as he sits down.

"Very astute, Palmer," Tim says back. "Ducky's making sure I know how blessed I am to live in a world of sunblock." He turns to Ducky. "Trust me, I get it. Just forgot I needed it, because that's usually a summer thing."

"You don't wear it every day?"

"No. You do?"

Jimmy rolls his eyes. "What do you think that stuff I'm rubbing on myself when I get out of the shower is?"

"I try not to think about things like that."

Jimmy shakes his head. "Next time we're in the locker room, remind me to do a mole check on you."

"Me? You think either of those two do, either?" He points to Tony and Gibbs, both of whom are looking a little sheepish about this.

"Really?" Jimmy asks.

Tony and Gibbs shake their heads.

"Next bootcamp that's at the Navy yard, you're all getting checked out. 'Cause none of you are missing a melanoma on my watch."

Three heads nod.

"And you two, he points to Gibbs and Tony, start wearing sunblock."

"Why us and not him?" Tony asks.

"He should, too, but it's not as big of a deal. You and Gibbs go outside. He spends most of his time in front of a computer."

And quietly, lingering toward the back, Ed watches.

* * *

Breena's getting Anna in the car seat. Jimmy's tossing tool belts into the trunk. Ed stands next to Jimmy instead of getting in the car.

"Gibbs said you're the one who told Collin to talk to me."

Jimmy nods.

"Thanks."

Jimmy nods again, about to close the trunk of their car.

"That was a good thing to do. Even Jeannie was lying to me about it. So, thanks."

He turns to Ed. "Wasn't for you, Ed. He's asking about how to make you like him, and I've got nothing for that, because nothing I've ever done's managed to do it. But I do know that if he wants any shot of a decent life with Amy, she's got to be on his side, not yours. You make them chose, and her living with him was just putting it off. So, I told him that that's his acid test, if she's not willing to tell you, if she wants to keep hiding, then he's got to leave, because you'll rip them apart in the long run."

"You told him he should talk to me, too, though."

"Yeah. I did. It comes back to us, Ed. At least, I believe that, and in twenty years, I want the guys my girls love to come and talk to me, so yeah, I told him to talk to you. So did Tim, and Gibbs, because that's just basic courtesy. But it's not about you. It's about him being a stand up guy."

"Okay."

"You ready to go?" Jimmy's hands flatten on the door to the trunk, about to shut it.

"Almost," Ed says. Jimmy turns so he's leaning against the back of the car, arms crossed over his chest. Ed looks at him, really looking, seeing Jimmy. "I know you're a good husband."

"Great."

"And you're a good friend."

"Everyone knows that."

"You're a good father."

Jimmy nods, taking that as his due. "There was a time when that would have lit me up like a Christmas tree for a week. If you had said that to me back when Breena and I had been married for a year, I would have glowed." He shakes his head and then shrugs. "Maybe I hadn't earned it at a year. Anyone can do a year. You screw up the first year, you're trying to mess things up. Hell, Tony's dad, who's got a new wife every leap year, can manage a good first year.

"And, you know, if at any time, when our hearts were breaking during those _days_ of losing Jon, if you had taken me aside and told me I was doing a good job, it would have mattered, and it would have helped.

"But now. Too little, too fucking late, Ed. I don't care what you think about me anymore. Caring about what other people think about me burned off when we lost Jon. There are men, who I respect, who's opinion of me matters, you are not one of them.

"I should respect you. You raised three wonderful girls, one of whom is the light of my life. You're a good grandfather. And if you ever figure out how to be as good of a father to a woman as you were to little girls, I will respect you. Breena's thirty-two, Amy's twenty-nine, Christine's twenty-six. They are adults, with lives and loves and jobs and hopes, and they need a Dad who can handle them as adults. You ever figure out how to do that, and I'll start caring again what you think of me."

Ed nods. Jimmy slams shut the trunk, and heads to the driver's seat.

* * *

It was a good day. They'd worked hard and enjoyed it. The north corner was re-framed, got new plywood up, and a quarter of the old siding is off of the house. He's tired, and sore, and, like Tim, a little (but only a little) sunburned.

A very good day.

He's looking forward to getting home, kicking back, few cold beers, call Abby, see if she wants some company, and if not, pizza and a game sounds good. Turn in early. His body might not have considered what it was doing right after he retired work, but it's certainly aware that today was work, and as a result, he's tired.

Tomorrow, after dinner, they'll get a few more hours in. (Tony and Ziva had decided to camp over tonight, so they'll get a full day in.) Rate they're going, they'll have all the old siding off by the end of next weekend.

It occurs to Gibbs that maybe he and Ducky and Penny should have a chat about what they're going to replace the old siding with. He sends a quick text off when he gets to a stop light.

A few more miles, and he pulls onto his street, and sees that his day just got better. There's a dark red Taurus sitting in his driveway.

He smiles and pats Mona. "We've got company for dinner."

Mona's not impressed by that, though she is in favor of dinner. She hops out of the truck a step behind him, and goes running for the doggie door, not wanting to wait for him to get the mail and head inside.

Almost nothing interesting in the mail, bills, bills, bills, and… It's huge, and thick, and he thinks he's slept on sheets that have a lower cotton count than the paper in this envelope. Lots of silver curly-cues, and a personalized _Love_ stamp.

It's Senior's wedding invitation.

Well, at least his date's enthusiastic about him in a tux.

Speaking of said date, he steps into the house, and finds her sitting on his sofa, reading.

"Hey."

"Hi," she stands up, getting ready to hug him, and he takes a step toward her. He sees her stop, sees her wince a little, and stop breathing, and it hits him that he's been working in the sun all day, hard, and probably smells bad enough that he could knock a goat over.

He holds his hands up. "Fifteen minutes."

Borin nods.

Gibbs heads straight for his washer, tosses everything he's wearing (besides his boots) in there, and then goes to the shower.

He's still in there, enjoying hot water on sore shoulders, as Abby steps in, pressing up close against him, kissing his shoulder. He turns to face her, kissing her back.

"Take it you had a good day?" she asks.

"Yeah." He smiles at her. "And it's getting' even better."

* * *

A/N: Sooo... The powers that be decided to have Abby Sciuto and Abby Borin on one show. Great. Now, I'm at the point in the story where Gibbs is thinking of Borin as Abby. I'd like to write it that way when we're in his head. ("Give Abby a call...")

Is that too confusing? I think it's in character for him, but I also get that you guys out in reader-land need to be able to follow along. Comments from the peanut gallery would be welcome.


	86. The Knight's Lady

A/N: Some housekeeping. Those of you in reader-land seem pretty evenly split between 'figure out which Abby from context' and 'change the spelling of Abby.' (Come up with cute nickname came in third, but as of yet, Gibbs hasn't told me what nickname he might use for her, and Borin hasn't consented to respond to one.)

Sooo... Abby McGee and Abbi Borin. The characters think of both of them as Abby and get it from context, but I'll add the i to make the reading easier.

* * *

As they settled into their third month of… whatever this thing they've got is, there are certain things that Borin deeply appreciates about Gibbs.

First off, he has never, not once, gotten sharp or annoyed with her when she's had to break a date. The fact that he doesn't get huffy about it, how, 'Look people's _lives_ are on the line,' actually does trump dinner in front of the fire for him makes her happy and makes her try to miss fewer of said dinners.

She has, twice now, cut meetings that were running long, short, so that she could make it to his place for dinner.

His own personal level of been there/done that means that when she's stuck and spit-balling, he asks good questions and usually has good ideas. Though 'Tell 'em all to go fuck off,' one of his bits of advice, may not always be practical, but it is often a satisfying idea. And, even if she won't act on it, it's fun to have someone else who gets how annoying the brass is.

And, due to budget levels, she's still in the field on occasion. Like everyone else at CGIS under her, she takes a turn on call for weekends, but there are also cases where _she_ gets called in because she is who she is and she's damn good at the job. If she's getting called in, it means the case is already at stratospheric levels of FUBAR, or 'delicate,' or both, so both times she was having very bad days, when she just needed to get out of her head, out of her world, out of all the shit that goes on and the monsters out there, when she headed to his place with a bottle in one hand and metaphorical steam pouring out of her ears, he was more than willing to knock back a few shots, fuck her until she couldn't see straight, and then just relax quietly, instead of asking her lots of questions about what was going on.

Though the second time it happened, after the first round, when she was laying against his chest, feeling the vaguely tickly roughness of his chest hair against her cheek, he quietly said, while petting her hair, "When it was me, there were some things I didn't want to take home. I wanted them out of my head as fast as I could get rid of them. So, I'm not gonna ask, because I'm thinking you don't want to talk, not because I'm not interested. If you do want to talk, I want to listen." She nodded at that and kissed his nipple.

"Just want to fuck until I can sleep."

He kissed the top of her head. "I'm good for that, too." And then flipped her onto her back and started to kiss his way down her chest.

She appreciates that she can bitch to him about the job, and he doesn't suggest that she should quit if she finds it so frustrating.

There are more, tangible, things she appreciates about him, as well.

He almost always smells good. Okay, not always. She'd been curled up on his sofa, reading, when he got home, raggedy, dirty, and sweaty from that day of tearing down chunks of the house of black mold (as she thinks of it) and she'd gotten up to hug him, gotten about three feet away, and promptly came to the conclusion that he smelled so bad that even Mona didn't want to get near him.

(He saw her come near, saw her stop, step back, stop breathing, and said, 'Give me fifteen minutes,' before depositing his clothing in the washer, and walking naked up to the shower. Fifteen minutes later, he was still in the shower, and she slipped in behind him, much happier with how this was working.)

But most of the time, he smells _right_ to her. First time she can ever remember seriously thinking about stealing a t-shirt or two so she'd have something man scented to snuggle up against when she's alone.

And, if he knows she's coming over, he shaves. She likes that. Likes that he makes the effort, and how smooth his skin is newly shaved.

She likes how, sometimes, when he's not expecting her, and she just drops by, it's clear he hasn't shaved for a few days, and he's pleasantly stubbly.

Actually, she likes the fact that he's hairy all over. She's always said that if she wanted some sort of hairless, girly thing, she'd date women, and the men who can grow body hair, should. And he can, which she likes. Plus, she suspects he'd find the idea of ripping it all out or shaving it horrifying, which she also likes. She finds men who spend longer on their grooming than she does on hers disconcerting.

She likes the fact that he's in damn good shape. She's got men twenty years younger in her office that aren't in half as good of shape. A lot of them. She loves the fact that he can keep up with her. She works hard to keep her body the way it is, to make sure she's quick and limber and ready to deal with whatever may come her way, and she appreciates that if she says, "Get a swim with me?" because that's her exercise of choice (She knows he's more of a runner or fighter, and maybe one day she'll join in on Bootcamp, but not yet.) he grabs a pair of trunks and is ready to go.

She loves the fact that he can keep up with her on other levels as well. Sure, he's not twenty-two, or fifty-two for that matter, and his left knee won't agree to go along with marathon sex if they're kneeling, but he's happy to use his tongue and fingers when his dick's out of the game, and he can go a damn long time with said dick.

So, given this level of appreciation, she's getting… curious, is probably the right word, as to how he ended up with three ex-wives, because from everything she can see, he's a keeper.

But she's also not insane, and a man who's been divorced three times is a man wearing a huge, neon _proceed with caution_ sign.

* * *

Of course, it's not just proceed with caution on his part. Though there's a lot of that. After all, three other women liked this man enough to marry him, and maybe he did have unerringly bad taste, but…

They had to think things were going good, right?

They must have liked him, too. Must have liked this whole, life-with-him-thing, right? That's part of the whole get married thing, you _like_ being with each other.

And it went bad, somehow. Somehow this is good and right and fun and everything stopped being all of those things.

Three times.

And one time it didn't. One time where it was good and right and fun and love and everything a marriage is supposed to be, and then it was gone.

She knows all about the time it didn't go bad. About that weird space of the memory of something cherished and beloved and how to work a new life into that, letting it go enough to have a life, but keeping it close because it was so much who you are and were.

She's very aware that there's a boat in his driveway with no name on it. Everything else is done. It's ready for the water. Except for the name.

She stopped wearing it a decade ago, but she still has her engagement ring. She still has the pictures of the two of them, and she's sure Jethro has more than the shots he showed her.

So, she gets it. And she gets not knowing exactly what to do about that. She doesn't want him to feel like he has to cut Shannon and Kelly and who they were and what the meant to him out of his life. Just like she doesn't want to pretend there was no Liam, or burn his pictures, or any of the rest of it.

_I'm not in love with her…_ He had said. And she's not in love with Liam, not anymore. But she still loves him, loves the life she had with him, and she knows Gibbs still loves Shannon and Kelly, loves the life he had with them.

She supposes that's a good thing. A man gets to fifty-seven years old and never loves anyone, and you've got to see that as an even bigger glowing, neon _back the hell off_ sign than three ex-wives.

* * *

Then there's her own proceed with caution. This is good. It's very comfortable. It's easy in a way even Liam wasn't. It's really freaking scary because it is good and it is comfortable, and she could easily see herself snuggling into this man and staying there forever and she hasn't felt that way in a very long time and the last time that was true it got ripped away and…

And sometimes she feels like he's taking her apart. When they're at it slow and gentle, or just sitting around quietly, or when she's drifting off to sleep and he snuggles in just that little bit closer. Sometimes that feels like unraveling, cracking… shifting, like old dry plates of… something, armor maybe, are slowly moving into a new configuration.

And she's not sure if that's good of if that's just setting up for another heartbreak.

Lots of ands.

Abbi Borin hasn't had any hope about a man, or a relationship in a long time, and that's under all the ands, under the proceed with caution signs, under the fear and doubt, a tiny sprig of hope, trying to grow strong.

* * *

Still, _three_ ex-wives. That's something to talk about it.

They're at his place, post-sex. She thinks this is true for both of them, it's certainly true for her, that it's easier to talk about intimate things when they're naked and relaxing.

There are some things she just can't talk about dressed. Her clothing is as much armor as her personality sometimes, and for some things it just has to come off before she can get into them.

So, she's laying across his bed, he's on his stomach, looking very content. She rolls a bit, so she's facing him, one leg draped over his hips, fingers gently stroking along his spine. He turns his face toward her, but his eyes are closed.

"So, _three_ ex-wives?" she asks.

He doesn't exactly smile, but there's a sort of sheepish grin on his face as he opens his eyes, propping up on his elbows. "Yeah. Three ex-wives."

"Why?"

He rubs his face and looks uncomfortable, rolling onto his side to face her completely. "Because I really can be dumber than a box of rocks. And no one was kidding when they said the second B was for bastard."

"You still dumber than a box of rocks?"

He gives her his _uncertain_ look. "I hope not. But I didn't think I was then, either. I do know I'm not a bastard, at least not that kind, anymore."

"That's a start."

He gives her his _agreeing_ look. Then came the sheepish one. "I missed her." Sad smile. "And I chased after anything that was like her that I could find, and then I made sure it didn't work," he sighs, thinking about the trafficking he's hoping to do and wondering if this counts as an entirely new and even more spectacular way of making sure it never works again. "Trying to do better with you, because I'd like this to work."

She nods at that, kissing him.

"How about you?" He strokes her shoulder. "Ever get close after…" He doesn't know the name of her Marine.

"Liam. No." She shakes her head slightly. "Decent number of 'friends,' a few lovers, but I never let anyone stick around long enough to ask."

"Gonna let me stick around?" he asks, eyes serious and watching hers.

He can read the look on her face, the mix of knowing her past patterns and hoping to not repeat them, but knowing they're patterns for a reason. "Not planning on sending you off. Hope I don't scare you off." He can read the look on her face that says trying may not be succeeding, but she's going to try, and he can live with that. Trying might be all either of them can do. It's a good first step.

"What made you want to try again?"

The hip with the new scar is the one that's face up. Her fingers lightly ghost over it. "Just creased me, you know? Didn't even notice it until Flant told me I was bleeding, but it got me thinking. Wasn't sure if I wanted the job to be all I ever had or was. I don't want to give it up, but… I don't want it to be my everything, either. A week later, you want to get coffee, why not? I like you. I'd told you not to be a stranger. Worst comes to worst, we spend twenty minutes drinking coffee trying to think of something to say."

"Worst didn't come to worst."

"Nope. How about you, why'd you call?"

His eyes trail over her body, making one reason very clear. "Pretty red hair, great voice, you do your job well, you don't take shit from anyone, and you can stand up to me. My ideal woman."

She wiggles her butt a little. "Great ass didn't hurt, did it?"

He kisses her, hand resting on her bum. "Not at all." He could let it lie. They could just stay here, warm and comfortable and together, maybe nap some, maybe get some dinner. But he can't just let it lie. He's got to bring it up, because it's not fair, to either of them, to know what he wants to do, to know how bad it could be for her, and to do it anyway without telling her.

Like he said, he's not a bastard, not that kind, at least, not any more. The guy who married Stephanie to give himself a cover for fooling around with Jen is long, long gone. He takes a deep breath. "Why CGIS?"

She can feel this is important, to something, but she doesn't know what, or why it would be. "Wasn't supposed to be CGIS, didn't even know they had an investigative service. Was going to be FBI, or you guys. But, I finished FLETC in '05. It was the beginning of a six month hiring freeze. I was the last class to go through for a year. Coast Guard was small enough, and understaffed enough, that it still had a bit of budget left, so cool my heels for six months, and no promise of a job after, or go with them. I couldn't just sit there for half a year, so I applied, they liked me, I'm with the Coast Guard."

"It's not about serving the US or defending the borders from whatever's out there?"

She shakes her head. "If I could still do that, I'd still be a Marine. I can serve people. I _need_ to serve people. But, patriotism's lost its shine over the years. I mean… what the fuck did we do over there, Jethro?" She rubs her eyes. "What did I lose my team for? Since '14 the whole bloody place is a mess again, and ISIS grabs a new chunk of it every day." She sighs, shaking her head, he can feel she's hit the point where angry on this is all burned out, and all that's left is defeat. "CGIS is about catching killers, tossing drug smugglers in jail, returning stolen people home, and feeling like… Feeling like there's a reason I'm still here."

He nods at that, gets that in his bones. The bullet, the blast misses by a hair and kills everyone else, and you've got to wonder why you're still there. Gotta make yourself feel like you earned the second chance.

She looks at him, head tilted, thinking about being just out of FLETC, and the prospect of six months of nothing followed by job hunting. She couldn't have done it. She still couldn't do it, day after day of just… nothing. "What are you doing, Gibbs?"

He sends her his _huh?_ look, and she shakes her head. "I can't retire from this. I'm never going to be able to retire from this. And you're worse than I am. So, what are you doing? You didn't just retire. You'd be climbing the walls, going insane if all you had was woodworking and me. You need it, just the same way I do. So _what_ are you doing?"

He smiles, and she catches the bit of wary sadness in the back of his eyes. "I don't know." He licks his lips and there's a sad smile on his face. "Hopin' I'm not a whole new level of stupid. I've got something in the works, but I don't know if it'll ever come to anything beyond in the works." He swallows. "Would you be willing to trust me on it? That if it ever goes from an idea to real, that I'll tell you about it first?"

She looks at him for a long moment. He's scared. His guard is up and he's trying to get away from something on this. And that scares her because this is Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and she's never seen him scared before. "Am I trusting you because it's dangerous or because it's illegal?"

"Yes."

"Oh, Lord." She winces and rubs her face. "Yes, I'll trust you on it, but don't make me. You're not telling me because you think I won't like it, won't stick around for it, so tell me now. If you're willing to set it in motion, you're already set on it, so, if this is it, this is it, let's get it done."

He nods and then kisses her, his eyes are so sad right now, and she's feeling sure that whatever he's going to come up with, it'll break her heart. "If I was going to do something… If my mind was already made up, and there was no talking me out of it… and if you'd approve of it… I'd hope… something where no one would get hurt… and someone, maybe several someones, in a very bad situation would get a much better one… but it was illegal, and if I got caught, you'd be in a shitload of trouble for not reporting it, 'cause it's in the realm of illegal you're in charge of…" He winces at that. "Would you want to know? Or would it be easier to not know, so you don't ever have to worry about not reporting it?" He figures that's specific enough for her to put the idea together and vague enough allow her to say, under oath, that she did not know what he was doing.

She ponders that for a long minute, thinking about what he's said and what she knows about him. No one gets hurt. So, he's not talking about sniping people. She knows she's got people who she wouldn't mind if they met a bullet, and she's sure he does, too. He wouldn't run drugs, not with what happened to his wife and daughter. Guns? That doesn't strike her as people in a bad situation to better. Bad situation to better… He's got to be talking about moving people.

That's not nearly as bad as she was afraid it could have been.

It's the hardest part of her job. For anyone who's got a conscience, at least. Poor, hungry people desperate for a better life, so desperate they're willing to literally die to try and get it, and it's her job to turn them away. They come in rafts, boats, in anything that'll float. Chesapeake isn't as big of an issue for that, but she did two years in Miami, where every day there was more of them.

It's why she transferred out of Miami. Couldn't stand fishing dehydrated, starved, sometimes dead people out of the water, and turning the living ones back to 'wait their turn in line.' She knows that for most of those people the line never ends, that there literally is no legal way to get into the US.

Poor, uneducated person, no family in the US, all he's got going for him is a willingness to put it all on the line for a better life. For him, they put up 10,000 visas a year, done by lottery. Tens of millions if not a hundred million people in that lottery. He's got a better shot of getting stuck by lightning than getting that visa. Next year, the exact same thing. Not like he gets a better shot of getting in the next year. Same odds. Because there is no 'line.'

But it's the job, and it's the law, and if she's stingy on allocating resources away from drug smuggling and murders to go after illegal aliens that's doing as much as she can do.

Gibbs can't even begin to put into words how much of a relief he finds this, when she asks, "Are you going to get caught?"

"Hope not." Because right now, that's all he can do. "Like I said, it's in the works. Don't have anything to move or plan on yet, so…"

"You gonna do more than hoping?" It's a serious question, gauging how carefully he's planning this.

He strokes her collar bone. "I am going to do everything in my power to make sure that I don't get caught. If it's hinky, we're not going to move on it. It's not some sort of go out in blaze of glory thing. I want to actually help."

She squeezes his hand, stopping his meandering finger. "And will 'everything in your power' extend to using my position in any way to help you not get caught?"

"No." He shakes his head. He won't, can't do that, or ask her to. "And I won't. I'll tell you, as specific as you like, if you want to know, or I'll go on 'fishing trips' if you don't, but I'll never ask for help, or for you to do anything that might get you in any trouble."

She nods and licks her lips. He's never seen that gesture on her, but he knows exactly what it means: a sort of contemplative uncomfortableness. "But you'd prefer I didn't ask what you were up to if I felt like I'd have to report it?"

"Yes." He thinks about that for a moment. "I guess I am asking you for something. I'm asking for you to look the other way. And I'm asking you to not ask me about it if you can't."

She kisses him, sweet and exasperated at the same time. "Jethro."

"Yeah?"

"Tell me about it. Don't want anything biting me in the ass as a surprise."

He lets the breath he didn't know he was holding out. "This goes right, and it never will."

He knows that look, it's extremely well-worn skepticism. "When does anything ever go 'right?'"

"Good point." And so, lying in bed, early May sunset mellowing into dark, Jethro tells her his plans. "It's just… ideas… right now." He tells her about Mike, and who Mike was, and what he thought Mike was doing, and what he and Penny and Ducky were trying to get started up. He tells her how they don't have any details, don't know how to find the girls, yet. But the boat's ready, the house will provide them with a launching point, how they have a lawyer on standby, how, right now, the ball is in Penny's court because she's the one on finding them a good contact.

For a long minute she just stares at him, and then sighs, pressing her hand to his chest. "You couldn't have designed a worse thing for me to know about if you had tried."

"I know," he looks and feels sorry about that.

"And there's no shot of changing your mind?"

He shakes his head, looking at her, eyes soft and earnest. "Abbi, is it the right thing to do? If we can find them, we're going to be getting abused girls to a better life. Is that wrong?"

"No." There's not a hint of doubt in her voice.

He lifts her hand from his chest and kisses her palm. "Then why would you want to try to change my mind?"

Her eyes shut, and she kisses him again, fingers cupping his cheek. She stares at him for a long moment, and he can feel her make the decision. "You ever get a text from me that says 'See you Tuesday' you drop everything and head for the hills, got it?"

He nods, knowing exactly how serious that is. "You don't—"

"Hush. It's the right thing to do, so why wouldn't I help?"

"It's your job to not help. Stopping guys like me is exactly your job."

She stares at him for a long time, thinking, and he doesn't try to rush her. Finally she says, "We do the job because it makes a difference. Because we give other people some peace, and maybe we save some people by putting the bad guys away. But most of the time, it's too little, too late. We provide closure. Maybe for once it'd be nice to help provide some openings."

He nods. "Yeah. Ziva and Tony have been talking about having a baby soonish, I hope, and she talked about that, about how it's time to stop devoting life to death, and start devoting it to life."

"Yeah. It's good, Gibbs."

He nods. "If we find someone, I'll tell you."

"Jethro, don't get caught."

He smiles at her. "Can you think of any better reason to get thrown in jail?"

"No… But… I don't want to be visiting you there." She stretches and slides her hand down his naked side. "They don't let you do _this_ in jail."

He smiles, feeling, very content, very... secure right now. Very, _right,_ all over. "Friday night Shabbos. Not sure if it's at my place or Ziva's yet, but, would you come?"

"You mean, like bringing me home to meet the family?"

"Yes."

"I'd love to go to Shabbos with you."

He grins at that. Imagining her as part of the family.

She stretches and sighs. "It got dark while we were talking."

He notices that for the first time. "Yep."

"You hungry?"

"Yes."

"Good, because if you're going to get me involved in a major criminal conspiracy, you better buy me a damn good dinner, too."

He smiles at that, sitting up. "Wherever you want, my treat."

* * *

They're in the shower when one other thing about this springs to mind. He's certain that Borin will keep silent on this, but he also knows that it's a good plan for the conspiracy members to know who is who.

He's washing her hair when he says, "About our plan. Ducky and Penny are part of it. You know about it. The kids… suspect something is up, they also know I can't retire, but they also have not and will not ask about it. It's not the sort of thing we'll be chatting about at family dinners."

She turns around so her hair is in the water, rinsing clean, and then gently taps his shoulder so he knows to turn. "They don't know to protect them?" she asks as she starts to shampoo his hair.

"Yes. They'd agree. They'd approve. They'd probably want to help. But the fewer the people who know, the better."

"So, why do I know? This is a case where not saying anything really would protect me."

"You know how you don't tell the people you love about the job to protect them?"

He can feel her nod, even if he can't see it. But he figures it'd be good to say this next bit face to face, so he turns around to say, "Has that ever worked out for you? It's never worked out for me. And it wouldn't have worked here. You ever found out, or if I got caught, you'd hate me for not telling you."

"I'd understand."

"Yeah, but you'd still be pissed."

She nods. She would be.

"And I don't want to be lying to you. I've done it. Not said. Protected partners, friends, family, lovers. And it never works. They're always angry after. Finally someone put it like this: when you say, 'I was trying to protect you,' what you're really doing is saying, 'I'm going to do what I'm going to do, and I don't want to have to deal with your emotional reaction to it.' And, that's not fair or kind to the person you don't want to deal with."

Borin nods at that. "Never thought about it that way, but… that makes a lot of sense. 'This is hard enough without you being horrified/scared or crying on me about it. And I cannot take anything else on top of this, so please, back off.'" She goes back to massaging the shampoo into his scalp. That feels good.

"Yep. And that's it. For you, and for me. But there's this other person who's scared and worried and… And I've done that… more times than I want to say. Never, ever works. I'm trying to not make the same mistakes I've already made a dozen times."

She switches them around again, so this time he's under the water, rinsing off. "So, you're saying, with me, you're going to make new and different mistakes?"

"That's the plan."

She laughs at that.

He looks at her, tenderness in his eyes, seriousness, too. There are a lot of feelings, ideas, all of which probably could translate into words, if he worked at it, for a long, long time.

She strokes his face, sees him working at this, and then kisses him. "It's okay, Gibbs. I get it."

He smiles and kisses her back. "What do you want for dinner?"


	87. Team Building

In an effort to locate quality people for his pool of talent Tim has a specialized search in play for his news feed.

And on May 3rd, 2016, that search pays off.

He's writing up a plan. He's had it in play for a while, but, since they've now finished the active development stage of the paperwork software, he's got the time to put this into play. Namely, he's got 154 techs under his command, all of whom suddenly have a lot more free time, and that is a _huge_ pool of talent.

So, he's writing up a memo about how he wants each member of Cybercrime spending at least one week a year studying, attacking, dissecting, all manner of closely scrutinizing their security protocols, looking for holes, weaknesses, or God, worse, _spyware_ that's lurking in their code where it isn't supposed to be, and then one additional week on defense, building up extra walls, protecting them, when his computer chirps at him to let him know that something interesting is up.

And boy is it. His eyes flick through the storyline quickly, and before he has it done, he's already calling Abby.

"You okay on your own for a night?"

"Tim?" she asks, wondering what's up. Part of the whole Cybercrime thing is that he's not supposed to be just wandering off unexpectedly.

"Just went across the wire, three kids out of New Mexico just took down Anonymous. Got all of it, all of the servers, the nineteen people who were orchestrating it..." Yes, _officially_ Anonymous is a collection of somewhat sympathetic to each other individuals all working toward vaguely similar goals, but, especially among law enforcement, there's always been the idea/hope that there was some sort of unifying force behind it, and if the story he's reading is right the answer to that was yes, and this girl... Cristin Brand, and her two buddies, just broke the whole thing open. "the fifty-four hundred people who were hacking, they took down the entire house of mirrors. The oldest one is seventeen. I want to be in the air in an hour and at her house offering her a job before the sun sets."

He can feel Abby smile.

"I think Kelly and I can do a night on our own. Go get your hacker!"

"Thanks. I'll call when I can."

"Love you."

"Love you, too."

Tim doesn't have a secretary. Every other Director at NCIS does. Why he doesn't has never occurred to him, but he's guessing it's because no one ever thought that his job would need one. After all, he already knows how to use a computer, which, from what he can see, is a lot of what the other Directors' Secretaries do.

He's never actually thought about that until right now when he's trying to figure out how to get in the air, while wrapping up his memo, and sending out another one for where he's going and why. Finally, he calls Vance's secretary and asks her what to do. He's found a commercial flight, but it leaves later than he'd like and won't get in until after ten.

He's hoping he can hop whatever Navy or Marine transport might be available and get there faster.

Karent gets him pointed in the right direction, and hooked into the air traffic schedule at Andrews, Norfolk, and Dover, and lets him know that NCIS does have a jet, and it is available to him, but as Director of Cybercrime, he's fourth on the list of people who get to use it.

But today, it's free. And tomorrow, it's free. So he snatches it, calling in with instructions to get ready to go, he'll be on the tarmac as soon as he can get there.

* * *

"Like the last five times, we are done talking to the press!" and the extremely irate woman with the black hair and brown eyes tries to shut the door in his face.

Tim's very glad that he got his foot in the door and that today's shoes are pretty tough, otherwise he'd have a very sore foot. She did not give the door a gentle push.

"I'm not with the press." He gets his ID out and the woman in front of him, who he's assuming is Cristin Brand's mother, squints her eyes to read it. She's frazzled. Probably didn't know what her daughter was up to, let alone expect the storm of reporters and tech bloggers who are camping out in front of her house. (They've actually got cops keeping them back. So the fact that they let him through probably should have been a hint he isn't a reporter.)

"What's NCIS?"

"Naval Criminal Investigative Service."

"We're not talking to _you_ without a lawyer."

He holds up his hands. "I'm not here to interrogate your daughter; I'm here to offer her a job."

"What?" She's utterly stunned by that. Apparently none of the barracudas circling her home are headhunters. Their loss.

"May I come in?" It's got to be one hundred and ten out there, and sure, dry heat and all, but it's still _hot_! The fact that he's dressed for early May in DC is not helping the matter. Blue jeans, black button down, leather jacket (in the rental car) is not New Mexico-friendly clothing.

She squints at him again, but lets him in. A staggering wall of AC hits him, and for a second it feels really good, and then he's wishing he'd brought his jacket. Overheating to overchilled in less than five minutes. _Splendid._

Enough of that, business time. She hasn't offered him a seat or a drink. She's got him standing in the foyer, looking at him warily.

"I'm Tim McGee, Director of Cybercrime for NCIS, we're a Federal Agency devoted to solving crimes involving Naval and Marine personnel and their families. We also work on terrorism and Naval and Marine security. Your daughter and her friends just counted one of the biggest hacking coups ever, and I want her working for me."

"Just like that. You've… You don't know anything about her."

"Are the stories true? Did she and her buddies take down Anonymous?"

"Yes."

"Then I want her, and when they turn eighteen, her buddies working for me. May I talk to her?"

"She hasn't even graduated high school, yet."

Tim thinks quickly, there's what, six weeks of school left for the year? He's not getting rid of Hepple until June, anyway. "She's a senior, right?"

"Yes."

"That's fine, I can't hire her until she's eighteen anyway. I'm comfortable with a whichever happens first start date."

Mrs. Brand (she still hasn't introduced herself, so he's hoping that's right) is still staring at him, dumbstruck. "Are you really serious?"

"I am dead serious. Yes, I do want to meet her and talk to her and see if this kind of job is interesting to her. But, if she wants it… We have what's called a Probationary Year. She'll work for us, be a full employee, but over the course of that year, if she's not happy or doesn't like it, she can leave and it's not a problem. No bad reviews, nothing like that. I just chalk it up to being a bad fit. If, at the end of the year, she wants a career with us, we're good to go."

"She's been accepted to MIT."

He nods. "MIT's a great school. I'm a Beaver, too. I got my MS there, class of 2002, and loved it. But, MIT also has a deferred acceptance program. She can work with me for a year, and if she doesn't love it, her place will still be waiting for her. Plus, they've put all of their classes online, so there's no reason why she can't study anything that takes her interest in her spare time. With as hot as she is right now, I'm certain that if she wants to work with me, and take a course or two a semester long distance with them, they will work with her to make sure it can happen. Trust me, they're going to want her on their alumni list.

"And, if she does love working with me, and just wants to work for me, four years from now, instead of being $170,000 in debt with no concrete job experience, she'll be…" Tim does a little quick math. "One hundred and forty thousand in the black, with four years of experience at a Federal agency, and the kind of skills that any firm would kill to have."

The assumed Mrs. Brand looks him over for a long minute, and then says, "Wait here. I'll go get her."

And, two minutes later Cristin Brand, the girl who got Anonymous, and her dad, had joined them in a sunny living room to hear more about this job at NCIS.

* * *

She's so young. He forgets exactly how young eighteen is, because it's been a long time, and there really aren't any teenagers in his life. She must have gone to school today, (Catholic school from the looks of it.) because she's in a plaid skirt, white shirt, and navy blue blazer. Her hair is long and black, her eyes are dark brown, like her mom's, and he's not sure if she's (and her Mom) half or a quarter Latino, (her Dad is blond with blue eyes) or just tan.

They talk, and she's smart, and enthusiastic, a little overwhelmed by all of this, little overwhelmed by him showing up and saying, 'Come with me, get to be a grown-up overnight, none of this messing around with college stuff, I'll give you a job and let you catch bad guys and save the day.'

After all, he remembers how it felt when he was not all that much older, and the FBI and IRS were offering him desk jobs and then Armstrong sauntered in and told him to leave that bullshit behind, come with him, and get to use a gun and put bad guys away.

(Though, in that he's sitting in her parents' living room, both of them watching him like a hawk, his version of 'leave this bullshit behind' is significantly more polite than Armstrong's was.)

But he's very much playing up the save the day angle, explaining their most recent cases, and how what they do literally saves lives, and she's impressed.

He asks her about what they did. Most science/hacking reporters know just enough about the subject to write something that other people who don't know anything about the subject find compelling. So, while he's sure that the main thrust of the coverage was right, took down the whole Anonymous syndicate, he's also sure the how and why aspects were, at best, glossed over.

So he gets her talking, and she spends two hours on it, working him through the whole thing, seeming to really enjoy talking about this with someone who _gets_ it.

He's enjoying the conversation, too. She's got great instincts. She and her buddies can code like no one's business and they went in deep, built awesome covers, and broke the whole thing into pieces.

"When do you turn eighteen?" he asks as they wrap up.

"July 7th."

"If you want it, July 8th I've got a desk and a job waiting for you."

She's smiling at him, eyes bright. "Oh yeah."

"Wonder—"

"Wait a second. We are not letting you just snatch up our daughter," the now-introduced Marcella Brand says.

"Mom, I'll be eighteen. You can't stop me."

Tim holds up his hands. "Look, I get this. I've got a daughter of my own. You did college visits, right? Checked everything out, made sure the place looked good?"

All three Brands nod.

"Pack some bags. I've got a jet, so come back with me. Check it out. We pay travel expenses for people who come to interview, so putting you up for a night or two and then flying you back home won't be a problem." (He doesn't actually know if that's true or not, but if petty cash won't cover it, he'll pay out of pocket. He wants this girl on his team.)

"You have a jet?" David Brand asks.

"Not me personally. NCIS does. I've got 154 people under me all over the world, Cristin would be part of the 12 who report directly to me, but if I need to get to one of my other stations, I have to be able to travel."

"So, wait, you… what, read about her, grabbed a jet, and got here, just like that?" Marcella asks.

"Yes. I'm going to build the best Cybercrime division of any Federal Agency. You build something like that by investing is good people. You," he looks at Cristin, "are exactly the kind of person I want on my team. So, if you like, pack up, let's go see where you'll be working if you come with me."

* * *

He thinks it's the Lear jet that sells the Brands on the idea that this is a real job offer. The idea that his agency would go to this level of expense to come get her, and make her want to work for them, begins to settle them down.

Of course, after a day of annoying press badgering them (and they did swarm when they saw him leave with her) several hours outside of any contact with the rest of the world was probably pretty nice.

"You really want to hire me?" Cristin asks. She's been alternating between watching the sky and ground, and staring in awe at the jet. And Tim has to admit, it's an awfully cool jet. He did some staring in awe and fiddling with all the nifty little dohickies on the way over. Then he took pictures and spent a few minutes texting with Abby about the fact that he gets to use the _Lear Jet!_

"Yes."

"Don't I have to have a college degree or something?"

"I got some wiggle room from my boss on that. You've got to be over eighteen. You've got to do the job. Showing up on time, doing the work. You go to college, you can coast. You can play. You're more than smart enough that if you wanted to go and party for four years, you could. You come with me, you can't… Actually, you can do whatever you like on your off time. But, when you're on, you've got to be on, and they do random drug tests so you can't come up positive for anything. Beyond that, your off time is your own.

"So, for fifty hours a week, you'd be mine. The computer will spit out jobs, and you'll do them. They'll range from pretty easy stuff, NCIS agent in New Orleans, say, needs someone to track a suspect's computer history, to very hard stuff. You remember Ajay Khan?"

Her eyes go wide, and she nods. "That was you?"

Tim nods back. "Yeah. I'm the one who took him down. I had help. My partners actually grabbed him and made him talk, but I'm the one who found out what information we had to get out of him. Even thinking he was about to die, he was still trying to BS us, and I'm the guy who knew it was BS, so I got the right answer out of him."

"Wow."

"Thanks."

She stares at Tim for a few minutes, really looking at him, thinking. "So, why haven't I heard of you?"

Tim inclines his head, not exactly shrugging that off, but keeping the answer light. "Because I like it that way. Got a kindle on your phone?"

"Yeah."

He gets out his own phone, heads over to Amazon, and sends her a gift. "Maybe you have heard of me."

Her phone chirps to let her know it's got a new email and she sees the book he sent her. "You write books, too?"

He nods. "The job will take as much time as you'll let it, but it doesn't have to be your whole life. I've got a wife and baby girl at home, too. Cybercrime works twenty-four seven, but I work hard to make sure all of you have downtime, too. Once those pictures of us leaving your house go on the wire, some other agencies will get the idea that maybe they'd like to hire you, too. If I'm the only guy who shows up with a job offer in hand, I'll be stunned.

"They'll be good offers. Maybe better pay, maybe they'll say 'Go to college and we'll have a spot for you in four years.' They may offer to pay for college. I can't do that. But I can give you the best team, the best work/life balance, and the best cases. I can get you working now, and they likely won't. And I believe in teams, in the power of people who know how to work with each other, and how that makes the work better, makes you sharper, so as soon as they're old enough, your two friends'll get job offers, too.

"You won't always be working with them. They might not even end up at DC. I have to put people where I get openings, and the one I've got right now is in DC. The ones I have next year may be in Tokyo or Berlin or Detroit or… We've got stations all over the world.

"But if you let me, I'll leverage your skills, teach you to be an even better hacker than you are right now, and we'll catch killers and stop terrorists."

She stares at him with wide eyes. "I feel like I'm dreaming."

He smiles at that.

* * *

It's after ten when they get wheels on the ground. "So, get you settled and come in tomorrow morning, or come see everything now?"

The older Brands look like they're all in favor of settling down. Cristin wants to see Cybercrime.

So they go.

It's after eleven by the time they get in. "Pretty quiet this time of night. Ngyn and Connon are on, and I think Howard's still here. She's been hunting a digital terror cell for the last five days along with techs in Eido and Cartagena."

Brand's eyes light up at the big screen tvs, gaming stations, and snacks.

Tim sees that, and his Dad instincts are sharp enough to read the look. "That's for cooling off time. Sometimes it's good to have some time to just veg before you go back to it, and sometimes you need to cool off some before heading home. Either way, you can get it here." He points to the sofa and says to the adult Brands. "If they're too wired to drive, I don't let 'em go home without a nap or someone else driving."

"How old are most of your employees?"

"Cristin would be the youngest by six years. Next one is twenty-three, and she's a wunderkind, too. Most of the rest are somewhere between thirty and fifty-five."

"You're younger than a lot of your employees?" Dave Brand asks.

Tim nods. "NCIS respects talent more than years on the job. This time last year I was a field agent, actually carried a gun and arresting people. But I was better with a computer and had a better vision for where I wanted Cybercrime to go, so now I'm the guy in charge of it."

All three Brands look impressed by that.

He shows them the work stations, introduces Connon, who's busy working away. He explains what he's doing (pretty straightforward, just basic computer history for one of the guys upstairs) and tells the Brands a bit about working at NCIS.

Tim introduces them to Ngyn, whose eyes go wide when he introduces Brand. Then she looks to Tim and back to Brand, and immediately gets into a deep and heated conversation with Brand about what she'd done. Howard drifts over, sees the gab fest going on and hops into it, bringing over Caf-Pows and coffee.

"Cristin…" her dad says when it gets to 01:00.

She waves him off, her new buddies are awesome!

"Cristin, time for us to get some rest."

She pouts at him, but allows herself to be pulled away.

When Tim drops them off at the hotel he says, "There'll be a formal job offer in the mail tomorrow. If you want to come back tomorrow and meet more of my team, you're welcome to. If you want to just rest and head home, or do some sight-seeing, that's fine, too. I'll email you tickets for a return flight for tomorrow evening."

* * *

May 6th, Tim got a piece of mail, over-nighted from New Mexico. It was a signed job offer. He also got an email from Leon, short and to the point, _You used the jet?_

He sent back. _Got five minutes to talk?_

A minute after that, _Sure._

He heads up to Vance's office, and as soon as he has the door shut he says, "I found my first seventeen-year-old."

Vance does not seem to think this is an answer to his comment about the jet, but says, "Tell me he starts after he turns eighteen?"

"She'll be eighteen in July, and she begins then."

He's not entirely sure if that look on Vance's face is amusement or concern. "You're hiring eighteen-year-old girls?"

"I hired the seventeen-year-old girl who flushed out Anonymous. I was at her house less than four hours after the news broke, which is why I needed the jet. And I gave her two best friends who helped offers to start the day they turn 18, in 2018."

"You going to have a space for them?"

"I'll make 'em if I have to. They're worth it. So, you saying I'm not supposed to use the jet? Karen," Vance's secretary, "said I was on the list for it."

"You are, just… Usually we send each other a note about it."

"Oh. Will do that next time."

"Good. Craig was surprised to see it wasn't sitting on the tarmac waiting for him."

"He didn't have it reserved."

"No, he didn't. He's the only one who uses it, so he didn't bother."

Tim gives Leon a _not my fault_ sort of gesture. "Something blows up and I need to be there for it, unlike Jenner, I'll move. Someone hits my radar, someone I want for the team, I'll move on it. I've got no problem using Navy or Marine transport or going commercial, but if I need to be in Rota tomorrow, I'll be in Rota."

Leon smiles at that. "I'll remind Craig we've got a sign up system for a reason."

"Thanks."


	88. Meet The Family

Gibbs had last seen Borin on Tuesday, when they'd had that long talk and he invited her to Shabbos.

Now it's Friday, and he's hit the point (usually noonish) where he and Ziva need to decide who's house it's going to be at. So…

Phone in hand, he gets to calling.

"Hey, Ziver."

"Gibbs, our place this week. Pot roast is roasting away in the slow cooker." He loves the fact that she's good with direct and to the point. Though it also occurs to him that he might have gotten her in the middle of something. He's got the sense she's a bit distracted right now.

"Good. Feel like setting an extra plate?"

That gets what sounds like Ziva's undivided attention. "Yes! Borin is coming?"

"That's the plan. Next call is making sure she can come."

"Gibbs!" He can feel her smiling from here. "What changed? Why now?"

He flashes his best _nope, not telling_ look at the phone, where it's completely useless.

"Gibbs?"

He rolls his eyes. "It's called a _private life_ for a reason."

"Fine. But this is a good thing! Can't wait to see her again. Is she Abbi?"

He stares at the phone for a second wondering if she's asking if he's developed some sort of pet name for her, or if she thinks he calls his girlfriend by her last name. "I call her Abbi."

"Hmp. We used to call her Borin, but…"

"You and Tony still call Tim, McGee and Jimmy, Palmer, I don't think she'll be annoyed if you keep calling her Borin."

"Yes, but what about when her name is Gibbs? We will have gone from two Abbys to two Gibbses."

A sigh and massive eye roll. "Rein it in while she's there, okay? Tell Tony I don't want to hear anything about the fourth ex-Mrs. Gibbs, and if any of you call her Mom, you're all dead."

He can feel that smile, too. "Yes, Dad."

"What do you want me to bring?"

"Salad is good. Some sort of fresh, green vegetable. It's fleischig, so nothing with milk. Those brownies you got from Abby… This is going to be insane… From Abby McGee's baker were good."

"Noted. See you by sundown."

"Oh yes!"

* * *

Gibbs's picking Abbi up at her place, and then they're heading to Tony and Ziva's.

He's not nervous. Excited maybe, but not nervous.

It hits him, as he's driving, that he's never voluntarily shared a girlfriend with his family. Probably because last time he had one, they weren't precisely a family, yet. Though they were getting a lot closer, and that made it easier to let them see.

They met Susan, once, because they pretty much couldn't not meet her. It was Christmas time. He invites everyone he's on speaking terms with to his Christmas party, so it's not like he couldn't invite her.

But it did feel really odd to have her there, and them there, and have them see him be intimate with a woman. Not like he was ever smooching Hollis in the Bullpen. (At least, not when his team was still at work.) Not bad, but very odd.

This doesn't feel odd.

* * *

He heads to her door, and lets himself in. When she expects him, she leaves the door unlocked, and he doesn't have to knock. (Though he doesn't yet have a key, and has not pressed in that direction. He figures that when you date someone who can pick the locks to your home, that offering a key is doubly important, and that you need to wait until it's freely and comfortably given. Otherwise you're just barging on in.)

"Hello."

"Hi," he hears from upstairs, so he heads on up. She's standing in front of her closet, in her underwear, staring at her clothing.

For a moment, he settles in to enjoy the view.

"What's the dress code for this?" she asks, turning around, and as she faces him, he steps toward her for a hello kiss.

He's in his standard work clothes: slacks, t-shirt, golf-shirt, jacket. She sees that and nods. "Dress code is casual but not grubby. Dinner starts before sunset, so in the winter we're usually coming straight from work, so work clothes. Summertime things can get more casual. Girls wear sundresses. Tim'll wear a kilt."

She blinks slowly, looking confused. "McGee has a kilt?"

"He's got three of them now."

She looks irked and shakes her head slowly.

Gibbs shrugs. "He likes it. Abbs likes it—"

"DiNozzo teases the hell out of him about it."

"Not so much anymore. If you ever want to come to church with us, that's suit and tie and Sunday-best dressed up."

"You wear a suit and tie to church?"

Gibbs nods.

"I'll have to see that."

"I'm free on Sunday if you are."

She nods at that and then returns to her closet, pulling out a blouse, tailored gray trousers, and a navy jacket.

* * *

"I've never been to a Sabbath dinner before," she says as he pulls away from her place.

"Until Ziva and Tony hosted the first one back in… Molly was brand new, so gotta be more than two years ago, none of the rest of us had been either."

"Do I need to do anything?"

"Not if you don't want to. Join in as much or as little as you like, being there's the important part."

Abbi nods. She stares out the window while he drives and then asks, "Shabbos on Friday, church on Sunday… Do you have a religion?"

He laughs at that. It's a fair question, and something they haven't talked about. "Raised Episcopalian. Dog tags say I'm Protestant." He shakes his head. "I don't care much one way or another. Shabbos is home and family for Ziva and Tony, so I'm there. Church and Sunday dinner is home and family for Abby and Breena, so I'm there. You?"

"According to my dog tags, I'm also Protestant. Haven't been to church in… forever. Wasn't a big deal for my family, and the livestock needs to be taken care of every day. They don't care if it's Sunday and town's fifteen miles away and you've got to drive half an hour to get there for a service that's going when they like to be eating."

Gibbs nods at that.

"You believe in God?" she asks.

"Yeah. I pray, too. Been known to light the occasional candle. But, most of the… stuff… that's not important. Just there to help set the mood." He glances over to her, _your turn_ on his face.

She shrugs. "Don't think about it much. Not sure I like the idea of some great, all-powerful, all-knowing being that lets all this shit happen. The bad stuff's easier if it's just us, you know?"

Gibbs nods. He understands that. "Tim'd agree with you on that."

She smiles. "You call him Tim now, and DiNozzo, Tony, and Palmer, Jimmy. When'd that happen?"

"Slowly, a little bit at a time."

* * *

They're in the elevator heading up toward Tony and Ziva's place. "No emergency stop," Abbi says, looking at the buttons.

Gibbs shakes his head.

"You ever… put that to good use? You know, at work?"

He looks at her and licks his lips, a very amused expression on his face. "Didn't think I was _that_ fast."

She laughs at that, squeezing his hand. "Didn't answer me."

He shakes his head.

"Ever think about it?"

He kisses her ear and whispers quietly, "Oh yeah. First time you worked with us, I was thinkin' about it."

She gives him a quick kiss as the doors slide open. "Good." When she pulls back and they step out, she says, "So, how affectionate are we in front of them?"

Gibbs shrugs. "Whatever you're comfortable with. Duck and Penny don't touch a lot. The kids… no one makes out, but kisses and pets and hugs are common. More of us then there are chairs sometimes, so the girls'll sit in their guys' laps. Might get some stares if we're huggy, but I don't mind."

"Big, bad, Leroy Jethro Gibbs is _huggy_?" Borin is vastly amused by this idea.

"At home, I get to be whoever I want." He stops and pulls her close for a second, kissing her quickly. "And if I want to be _huggy_ with the gorgeous redhead by my side, I can be huggy."

Abbi smiles. "Good. That's how home should be."

* * *

You work with people a half-dozen times, you spend some very intense hours with them on cases that are matters of life or death, and you develop a certain sense of them.

In some ways it's very deep and intimate.

In other ways it barely scratches the surface.

And when it came down to it, Borin, who had worked with and gone out for drinks with the MCRT a few times, really didn't have any sense for them as a family. Sort of. She has a sense of their positions in the family. She knows Gibbs is Dad, she knows Abby's the baby, the favorite who's doted on. DiNozzo's the oldest son; the brat who's allowed to get away with more than the others, but gets smacked on occasion for it to keep him in line. McGee's the invisible middle child. David's her dad's right hand, the child most like himself and the one he'd turn to if he needed something.

But, hearing Gibbs talk about them, she's fairly sure that those broad sketches are, at best, caricatures and likely, these days, quite a bit off.

If what Gibbs has told her is true, she's also never seen them as a family. She's seen a very close team of good friends. But that's not who they are now.

Even knowing that the people she is going to meet again have changed, and that this is going to be a much more intimate gathering, she isn't expecting Tony and Ziva's home to be so… homey. But it is.

It's warm and welcoming and smells amazing.

They're the first ones there, and even though she and David, who is now DiNozzo, and should probably just be Ziva, get along well, and have gone out for drinks and dinner a few times on their own, Abbi isn't expecting the warm hug when she walks in, or the way Gibbs gets hugged, too. (He is apparently not kidding about being allowed to be huggy at home. Ziva gets a warm squeeze and a kiss on the forehead.)

The house smells great, savory, spicy, beefy smells mingling with fresh baked bread. Borin knows Da—Ziva can cook. They've talked about that. But it's not an obvious concept in her mind. Ziva cooks. Because Ziva eats. And Ziva has a home, that she cooks in, that's very warm and comfortable looking, astoundingly tidy (magazine cover tidy, which staggers Abbi because she can't imagine any place that DiNozzo… Tony… lives being this organized) decorated in warm creams, bright yellows, and cooler rust tones.

There's a table set for ten plus a high chair, flowers, gracefully curved yellow calla lilies, flanking the source of one of the amazing smells in the house, two loaves of bread.

"You make the bread?"

Ziva smiles. "I do. If we're at his house," she indicates Gibbs, "he does, too."

Borin looks at Gibbs, surprise on her face. He shrugs. "Ziver's better at it."

"Because I've done it for years. And I did not have a two-year-old helper the last time I did it."

"Molly only helped once."

"How do you have time for that?"

Ziva smiles. "Once a month I make a large batch of the dough. It rises twice, and on the second rise I punch it down, braid it, put it on baking sheets, and freeze it. Then on Friday morning, I take it out of the freezer, and by the time we're back from work, it's thawed, risen, and ready to bake."

That's so easy that Abbi's thinking she's going to be baking more bread.

DiNozzo steps out of what Abbi's assuming is their bedroom a moment later, relaxed, white button down, blue jeans, hair damp, feet bare. "Borin! Ziva told me you were coming. We've been badgering him to bring you for months now." She gets a hug, and Gibbs gets a slap on the back.

Gibbs's eyes narrow slightly at that as Abbi turns to him, "Months?"

"They're easily excited," he says dryly.

Tony laughs.

They hear the door open, and a second later Borin has her arms full of Abby, blonde Abby, blonde Abby wearing normal, professional clothing, even her neck tattoo is missing, (She's not entirely sure what happened with that, but wow, it's a change!) hugging her. "You're here! Oh, this is so awesome! You should be here all the time! We've been waiting for you!" (Fortunately, Abby talking at a million miles an hour and knocking her over with boundless enthusiasm is exactly what she expects, so the shock of the different outside is rapidly soothed by the proof of the same inside.)

Gibbs licks his lips and quietly says to Borin, " _Very_ easily excited."

Borin chuckles at that as Abby pulls back, giving Gibbs a warm hug, saying something quietly to him as she held him close. He smiles fondly at her.

Abbi notices McGee a few steps back. Who is also looking a lot different. Gibbs has talked about the whole Bootcamp thing, and she gets the idea that that kind of workout builds muscle and tone, but wow! And when the hell did he start wearing rolled up sleeves and a wrist cuff, let alone… yeah, that really is black nail polish… Okay, he and Abby switched. He went Goth, and she's clean cut, and apparently today is opposites day. There's a little, baby girl in his arms, and he's smiling at them. "Hi," she says.

He gives her a one-armed hug. "Hi."

"So this is Kelly?" She says, staring at the baby in his arms. She's small, but very alert, big... bluish-green eyes looking at everything, taking her in. She doesn't have much in the way of hair, very short blonde-brown wisps all over her head, but she's got a little head band made out of pink ribbons with tiny skulls on it, and a black onesie, also with a pink skull on it, so yeah, this is very much Tim and Abby's child.

He smiles at his daughter. "This is Kelly."

"She's beautiful."

"Thanks." Gibbs is hovering closer, so he also gets a one-armed hug from Tim along with. "She's got a new trick. Don't know if she'll do it now, but she kept doing it on the car ride over." He hands Kelly over to Gibbs. "Okay, baby, what do you have to say to Pop?"

Kelly looks at her grandfather and snuggles into him, tucking her head under his chin.

"Yep, she not—"

"Papapapapa."

"Good girl!" Tim coos at her.

Gibbs holds her out so he can see her face and kisses her. "So you're talking now? You know I'm gonna want to hear what you've got to say."

"Papapapapapapapapa!"

Tim smiles at the look on Gibbs face; he's just beaming at this. "She started day before yesterday. Don't get too excited, that's what she's calling me, and Abby, and Heather, and the mailman—"

"Sounds like she got that one right." Jimmy cuts in with, kissing Kelly's cheek and giving Gibbs a quick hug. Tim quickly whacks him on the back of his shoulder before giving him (and Anna, who Jimmy's carrying) a hug as well.

"You've met Jimmy, right?" Tim asks Abbi.

"Yes, briefly." She offers her hand and he shakes it.

"Hi. This is Anna," Yet another baby in the family. This one is even smaller, with a mop of wild, curly brown hair, looking at Pop... Wait, no, he's Uncle Jethro to Jimmy's kids, with big blue eyes. "her mom and older sister are around here somewhere. Glad to see he's finally brought you. The girls have been ragging on him for months."

"The _girls_?" Gibbs asks, raising an eyebrow, _cut the bull_ on his face.

Jimmy looks pretty satisfied as he says, "I have given you exactly no crap at all about when you were going to bring Abbi home."

Gibbs thinks about that and comes to the conclusion that might be right. "That's because Tim's been doing it for you."

Jimmy nods. "Division of labor. He nags you on stuff like that. I make sure you don't rip that knee out again."

Tim laughs.

Tony slips over. "Oh, good the Wonder Twins are here." He gives both of the girls kisses. "We fighting or house-building for Bootcamp this week? I've got a new move I want to try out."

Abbi's got _Wonder Twins?_ on her face as she looks from Tim to Jimmy. Okay, they look, similar...ish, maybe. Nope, she's not seeing it.

Jimmy catches it before Tim does. "We have the same birthday. Since he found that out, he's been calling us the Wonder Twins."

Tony shrugs. "Can't really call him Probie anymore; he outranks me, and these days you've got your own Autopsy Gremlin, so I needed something new."

Those seem like decent points to Borin. "What's the move?"

"It's really cool. But I could explain for a week and won't get it right. Happy to show it to you if we're fighting this weekend?" He looks to Gibbs. "Well, Jefé?"

"Thunder storms all day tomorrow and Sunday, I'm good with fighting."

"Excellent. You come, too, Borin, okay?"

She looks at Gibbs, not sure if this is something he wants to share. He nods.

"Sure. I'm on call, but if I don't get pulled away, I'll come."

"Uncle Jetro!" A small blur of curly brown hair came tearing in and tried to tackle Gibbs.

He picks her up and kisses her, one girl on each arm. "Hello Molly. I'd like you to meet someone, this is Abbi."

Molly looks over at Abbi and smiles at her for a second before starting to bounce on Gibbs' arm. "Horsey!"

"Let Uncle Jethro breathe for a moment." Breena scoots in to give Gibbs a hug and a kiss. "Hey, Jethro."

He kisses her back. "Hi."

Breena turns back toward Abbi and hugs her as Gibbs says, "This is Molly and Anna's mom, Breena Palmer."

"We're so happy to have you here. He hasn't been telling us nearly enough about you; you know him, he doesn't talk, but he's been _glowing_."

Were it not for the fact that he's got a baby on each arm, Breena would have gotten a very gentle headslap for that. Instead she gets the Gibbs look of death, which she turns to face, and absolutely grins at, letting Gibbs know that she purposely timed that comment for a moment when he could not properly retaliate.

"Your wife's getting sassy, Palmer."

Jimmy snorts. "What do you mean, getting?"

Breena laughs at that and kisses Gibbs' cheek again. "We get a shot to tease him once a blue moon, this is Christmas and Easter and all of our birthdays at once."

"I see, once again, we are the last ones here," Ducky's voice cascades over them.

"You have the longest trip," Tony replies. "Not that it's so far milewise, but they've got to get from Chevy Chase to here, and traffic's always insane."

"You brought her, Jethro! Wonderful. Abigail, may I present my wife, Penny Langston?" Ducky asks as he introduces Penny.

"She's also my grandmother," Tim adds, stepping over to hug both of them.

A second later Penny offers Abbi her hand. "Hello."

"Hello, Penny, and please, call me Abbi."

Abby McGee bops over, taking Kelly, who is getting pretty squirmy, from Gibbs. Two little guys at once when one of them is determined to try and leap out of your arms is a bad plan. "That's going to be interesting. He already calls me Abbs, so how about if both of us are in the same room, I'm Abbs and you're Abbi?"

Abbi nods. "That'll work."

"Almost time!" Ziva calls out.

Gibbs looks to Molly. "No time for Horsey now, how about a piggyback ride to your chair?"

She nods at that, and he lifts her to his shoulders, she gets settled, little toddler hands and arms holding tight around his forehead, chin resting on the crown of his head.

* * *

Dinner starts, as always, with Ziva lighting the candles, the Kiddush over the glass of wine, ritual hand washing, the blessing of the children, and then the blessing of the challah.

And then it's dinner time. Which with this group is chaotic and noisy, usually with a few conversations going on at once, for the first few minutes, but after a few minutes they settle into the somewhat traditional what we all did this week, where generally one, maybe two of them talks, and the others listen.

So, they got up to date on Tim's newest hire. ("Wait, we have a jet?" Tony asks. "Yeah!" "Why the hell are we always hopping military transports?" "Because Craig has it reserved 300 days a year, and Leon's got it another 30. Craig's so used to it being his own personal jet that he didn't bother to reserve it ahead of time, so I snagged it out from under him. He's got it reserved now, and no one else is ever going to see the damn thing again.")

Abby's court date. ("Oh, no…" she ran her fingers over her neck, smearing the makeup, in response to Abbi asking if she'd gotten the tattoo removed. "Lawyer thought I'd look more _professional_ with it covered." She rolls her eyes. "Two advanced degrees, I've run my own lab for sixteen years, three guys reporting to me, expert witness on more cases than they can count, and a book full of publications to my name, but apparently all that flies out the window when jurors see a black spider web." "At least he didn't make you bleach the pink out of your hair," Breena adds. "He tried. I explained where he could shove that idea.")

Tony told his tale of Bishop and Draga crunching some numbers, looking for a pattern in a cold case, completely absorbed in what they were doing. When Tony and Ziva got up to go home, that triggered Bishop's awareness of her coffee cup being empty, and she decided to get a new drink for both her and Draga. Unfortunately Draga's Red Bull was not empty, so when she grabbed both cups and quickly whipped around to go get refills, she managed to spray Red Bull all over Tony, which is why he was getting out of the shower when Gibbs and Abbi got there.

Jimmy told them about quizzing Dr. Allan on possible causes of death, which amused Ducky to no end, because he remembers doing that to Jimmy, and told them about it.

Then he told them about him and Gibbs taking more siding off the house, and how, with any luck, if the weather would be kind enough to comply, one more day without rain should get the whole house done. Penny took over from there, talking about how they're hoping to do the bottom three feet of the house in stone, gray limestone and granite, that'll look a lot like the back patio, and the top section will be done in something that's a lot lighter and lower maintenance, but will look like split logs.

"So, we're build Gibbs his log cabin?" Tony asks.

"Bit bigger than any cabin I ever dreamed of."

"To say the least. Sounds like it'll look really cool. We doing the roof in shingles or slate or wood?" Abby asks.

"Shingles that are not cedar, but look like cedar," Ducky replies.

"Thinking none of you guys are going to want the work involved in real wood," Gibbs adds. The kids nod, from everything they know real wood seems like a lot more work than whatever this stuff'll be.

"How about you, Abbi, what's new and interesting at Coast Guard?" Abby McGee asks.

Borin sighs. "Not much new or interesting. No case for me this week. So, I handled reports. I made sure the paperwork got done. I bickered with legal about what we can do about the guy from HR who was embezzling from us. Then I made sure we were following our document retention compliance procedures."

Tim shudders. "Give me a simple murder any day."

Abbi nods vehemently in agreement. "Yeah." She gently touches Gibbs' hand. "Starting to think he had the right idea. Piss the higher ups off enough so they don't promote you, but be so good at your job you get all the cool cases."

Gibbs smiles at that and kisses the back of her hand. (It's possible that Abby and Breena cooed at that, but they did it quietly enough not to get the Gibbs glare of death aimed at them.)

"So, he tells me you're in charge of Cybercrime now?" Borin asks.

Tim nods. "Whole department. That's why I get to grab the jet. Last time you worked with us…"

"It was still the same team."

"Lot of change since then. Abby…ss." He stumbles on Abby versus Abbs. "Okay, I'm not going to be able to switch like that. She's my Abby and always has been."

"You've called me Abbs before."

"Like, what? Twice?"

Abby nods.

"Anyway, she has three LabRats working for her. I've got my Minions. You've heard about Tony's new team and Jimmy's new Autopsy Gremlin."

"I prefer assistant and so does Dr. Allan."

"Okay, _assistant_ ," Tim says. He thinks for a second. "You've got an Autopsy Mogwai." Tony laughs so hard at that he practically chokes on his wine.

"It feels very different there, now," Ziva adds, whacking Tony's back as he gasps for breath.

"You aren't the same people," Breena replies.

"No, we are not. Speaking of becoming new people, has any of Ed's recent lesson sunk in?" Ziva asks Breena

Breena tilts her head toward her food and groans. Jimmy gives Abbi a brief re-cap on the great Ed drama, but holds off on the latest installment so Breena can tell it.

Breena sighs. "What Jimmy's left out is, just like you've all got a family business, we do, too. Our family runs eight funeral homes in the area, and my mom, dad, Amy, and I all work out of the same building. So, to say things are tense is an understatement. Dad's shut up, which I suppose is a sign of inching in the right direction, but if Amy walks into the room, he walks out."

The rest of the table winces, groans, and commiserates on that.

"He's driving Mom buggy. And Amy wants to scream. So, after two weeks of that, Collin comes in, wanting to have a 'man to man' talk." Another long sigh. "Obviously, I didn't get invited along to that chat, but the version I got went something like this: apparently Dad went off on him for just using Amy, and he went off on Dad for hurting her and then doubled down on a long rant on how Amy's more than just a body and if he actually loves her he'd put just as much value on her happiness as her virginity and… how a mutually beneficial relationship can't be 'using' someone. When Dad got back from that 'chat' he was bright pink and there was smoke pouring out of his ears.

"So, Sunday should be week three of no Collin and Amy at Sunday dinner." She looks to Gibbs and Tim and Abby. "Look, we're not going, either. So, if you want to… I mean, my mom would love to see you there, but…"

"We're going on strike in support of Amy?" Abby asks.

"Yeah. If you would?"

Tim nods. "Not a problem." He looks at Jimmy, "You already let Collin know he's invited to Bootcamp?"

Jimmy nods. "Making sure he knows all the future in-laws aren't jerks? Yeah, got it covered. He's more enthusiastic about MMA than carpentry, but whichever, he's signed up for." Then he squeezes Breena's hand. "Wanna tell them the good news?"

Breena smiles. "Did have one bright spot at work this week. Since I started working there, I've been saving ten percent of my salary, and using that to buy shares of the business. As of Thursday, I own fifty-one percent of the Brandon Street Slaters' Funeral Home."

That got many congratulations, wrapping up with Penny asking, "Does that change anything?"

"Not really. Suggested Amy work out of Uncle Wes' building for a bit. Told Dad he was going to be taking a vacation soon if he couldn't pull it together. But the day in, day out stuff is all the same. Our clients are having significantly worse days than we are, so that helps to keep things in perspective."

Dinner conversation waxes and wanes from there. More stories of the week interspersed with feeding babies, dessert flavored with stories of cases.

It was a good meal.

* * *

At the end of it, Borin joins the clean-up team. By mutual accord, once everyone knew their way around Tony and Ziva's kitchen, the rule became that whoever cooks doesn't have to clean up. So, Ziva and Tony get some relaxing time while at least four of the crew is on getting dishes in the dishwasher, pots and pans scrubbed and put back, and the table all cleared.

It's a quick job with that many people on it.

Ziva's not helping clean up, but she was enjoying the clean-up conversation. So, she's leaning against the door-jam between the kitchen and the dining room, chatting with everyone.

As that wraps up, Borin drifts over to the far wall. There are pictures there, lots of them.

"I've seen this before." She points to the Gibbs clan crest. Gibbs has his in the basement, on the wall, where he can see it easily when he's working. "But I don't know what this is."

Ziva smiles. "That's our Ketubah, marriage contract. You'll find one of these in most Jewish households."

Borin nods, watching Ziva snuggle Anna, who is trying to grab Ziva's hair.

"And these?" Borin points to the pictures.

Ziva smiles at them. "Ahhhh… At the top, we have a shot from Jimmy and Breena's wedding." It's the picture of Tony and Ziva, Tim and Abby, and Jimmy and Breena all goofing for the camera.

"That's from before you were a couple, right?"

"Yes. Not a lot of pictures of us from then or before then. Abbs has a few, I think." She points to the next shot down. "Breena took that one." It's one from the day they moved Tim and Abby in together. The day after they started dating. It's a candid shot, neither of them knew she took it. It's Tony working on putting together their kitchen table, looking across the room at Ziva, peace and joy in his eyes. "That's right after we started dating. This one," she points to a shot of Tony in his best man's tux, and her in her red steampunk bridesmaid's gown, "Is Tim and Abby's wedding."

"Costume wedding?"

"Steampunk wedding. Has Gibbs not shown you pictures?"

Borin shakes her head.

"Oh, no. No no no! You _have_ to see pictures of that. Abbs!" Ziva calls out.

Abby McGee comes in a moment later. "Yeah?"

"He has not shown her pictures from your wedding, yet."

"Oh, you have to see the pictures! I've only got a few on my phone, but…" Abby hurries out, and a moment later she's back with her phone. "Okay. Do you know what steampunk is?"

Borin shakes her head.

"Really cool fantasy world. Steam and clockwork powered everything instead of internal combustion engines. Everything's all Victorian or Western. We knew we were going to have a Halloween wedding, and decided this was the look we'd go for. Here!" She hands Borin her phone, shot of Gibbs, in his morning suit, giving her away. "We thought he'd go like Old-West Sherriff look, but he kept it a surprise, and I step out all decked out in my dress, and there he is dressed to the nines."

Abbi stares at that, smiling. She flips through the shots, seeing mostly ones of Tim and Abby, but she finds another one of Gibbs and Abby dancing together. Everyone all dressed up and playing and having fun, and right this second, she would have really liked to have been there for that. She's smiling as she hands back Abby's phone. Then she looks back to the shots on the wall. There's Tony and Ziva dancing at their wedding, and the group shot of the whole family. The last shot is the two of them relaxing together on the beach. "Honeymoon shot?"

Ziva nods. "South Africa. It's a lot like California, but more interesting if you like safari."

By that point everything is cleaned and put away, so they wander out of the kitchen to join the larger group.

* * *

Abbi sees Gibbs on the sofa, he's got Molly on his right knee, bouncing her up and down while she shrieks with laughter. He's grinning at her, making funny faces.

Abbi goes to sit next to him, and quietly says, laughing, "You're such a goof."

"Is that a bad thing?"

She shakes her head, smiling at him. "No!"

* * *

"So, Ed and Jeanie are offering to take the girls for the weekend for an anniversary present. If you can scrounge up a babysitter for a night, the six of us could go out," Jimmy says to Abby and Ziva, as he strokes Breena's shoulder while she nurses Anna.

Abby immediately looked over to Gibbs, sending puppy eyes across the room. He has Molly on one knee, bouncing her up and down as she squeals with laughter and he talks to Borin. He's showing off, and that makes her grin.

But he's also into what he's doing and doesn't sense the puppy-dog eyes and look up. (Or he's dodging babysitting for a night.)

"We'll find someone, when are you thinking?"

"May 14th?" Jimmy half-says, half-asks. That's the day that works best for them, but it'd be great to get all six of them out, so if they need to adjust, they'll adjust.

"That sounds excellent, Jimmy," Ziva says.

"Yes, it does," Breena adds. "You know, it's finally Tim and Abby's turn to pick the club."

All three of the girls grin. Tony, who came over at the words, 'six of us could go out' sighs elaborately and rolls his eyes. "You're going to let _him"_ he looks over to Tim, who's talking with Ducky and Penny by the piano, "pick the club we go to for _your_ anniversary?"

"Technically, I'm going to let Breena pick, and she's decided that she wants to play Goth for a night, which means they're picking."

Ziva kisses Tony. "I have been wanting to see you in eyeliner and leather trousers for a while now."

"Oh God."

"Afraid of a little leather?" Jimmy asks, wicked grin on his face.

"No!"

"Wonderful." Ziva smiles even wider and happier.

* * *

"You're really good at this,"Abbi says to Gibbs. He's got Kelly in his arms. They've talked about his girls, and she's seen pictures, she knows about the room that's pink and has the bed for them along with the toys, but she's never seen Pop in action, let alone really grasped the fact that there were tiny people who would crawl all over him calling him Pop or Uncle Jethro.

She certainly likes seeing this, but it does come as something of a surprise to see him playing on the floor with babies.

Like she said, there's this, warm, soft, friendly, playful goofball hiding deep inside Gibbs, and apparently the magic ingredient for getting it out is baby girls. She likes it, likes seeing him so happy, but, it just really wasn't anything she was expecting to be in there.

"You want to hold her?" Gibbs asks her. Kelly's probably about half asleep, she just finished her pre-bedtime nurse, and in a few minutes he's going to be heading into the bedroom to put her down. But she's pretty easy and would probably go along with Borin helping out.

"Sure."

And in a moment she had a tired, but restful baby in her arms. It's a nice sensation. Not the sort of thing that's making her want to rush out and have six of her own kids, but it's still pleasant.

He leads Borin to Tony and Ziva's room, furthest one from the hubbub. Anna's already sleeping on the bed, Molly will be in here soon.

Borin's standing in the center of the bedroom, watching him rooting through Kelly's bag, he comes up with a onesie, wipes, and clean diaper.

He pets the back of Kelly's head and quietly says, "Abbi's going to help with bedtime. That okay with you, love?"

Kelly appears to approve. At least, she's not crying, but she's awfully sleepy, so she just might not think complaining is worth the effort.

"Good. We've got to be quiet, Anna's already asleep. She's on Aunt Ziva's bed waiting for you and Molly to join the sleepover." While he's talking to Kelly, he gets the changing mat on the floor and gestures for Borin to put her down. He takes care of the diaper, and gets her into her sleeping onesie, and then hands her back to Borin. "Back in a sec," he kisses Kelly's forehead, "Gotta wash my hands."

And a few seconds later he is back, and he takes her from Borin, Kelly on his lap, snuggled in close on his chest, sitting on the edge of Tony and Ziva's bed, Borin next to him, leaning against his shoulder listening to him recite Good Night Moon from memory while gently petting Kelly's back.

He kisses Kelly one last time, and then lays her down next to Anna.

"Good night, Kelly."

She yawns around her pacifier. "Papa."

And if that isn't the most ridiculously cute thing Borin's ever seen, she doesn't know what is.

* * *

On the ride home Gibbs asks, sounding a bit uncertain, "Was that too much? Everyone and everything all at once. Can be a lot."

"Oh. No. That was fine." Abbi wonders why he asked that, and realizes she's been very quietly watching the road go by as they head toward his place. "Just thinking."

"About?"

She shakes her head. "Sounds dumb, but… You're a dad. You're really a dad."

He glances at her quickly with a _Well, yeah. Did you think I was kidding about that?_ sort of look.

"No. But… Didn't expect you to be _that_ dad."

_What did you expect?_ is on his face, and she reads it.

"More like at work. More team leader, less… playful."

He shrugs. "They don't need a leader anymore."

She shakes her head, watching the street slip by. "No. They don't. It's been a hell of two years, hasn't it?"

He smiles at that. "Yeah, it has."

Another few quiet miles. He probably shouldn't ask. They already talked about it once, but, especially if she's seeing him as an entirely different sort of dad…

"Making you think more about kids?"

She turns away from watching the street to him. "What? You mean, have I seen you in action now, and suddenly am I jonesing for a pile of my own?"

Yeah, he shouldn't have asked. He feels dumb as hell on that.

She catches that on his face and squeezes the hand that's on the gear shift, letting him know the question wasn't out of bounds. "No. Look, if anyone had ever asked me before tonight if the words 'cute' and 'Jethro Gibbs' could belong in the same sentence, I'd have said 'No.' And I'd have been wrong. You and the girls are painfully cute. If I had a biological clock to tick at me, it'd be bonging away like Big Ben chiming the hour. But, no. I'm not feeling that. I'm a good Aunt, and maybe… I'd be a good… step-grandma?" She winces a little at that, and he shakes his head, kissing her hand.

"Gotta earn some gray hair before you get Grandma. That's why even Tim calls her Penny."

"Uh huh." She says dryly, appreciating that he's trying to be sensitive to the fact that she's not even forty yet, and that's awfully young for Grandma, but not shut her out of his family. She shakes her head again. "I can't let the job go enough to be a good mom. Not the kind of mom I'd want to be. And that's always going to be true. No matter how cute you are with a pile of little, squirming rugrats."

"You need the job."

"I do."

Gibbs squeezes her hand. "I understand."

She smiles at him. "I figured you would."

Several quiet minutes go by. They get to his house and head in. Mona gets her petting and cuddles. Gibbs isn't entirely sure how to say this, not sure exactly what he's feeling, but once he gets Mona settled down, he turns to Abbi. "I know the job comes first. I know it has first call on your time and love. I get it. I lived it. And I don't begrudge you that life—"

They're standing in the foyer. Abbi's hanging up her coat. "Sounds like there's a huge 'but' coming up."

He licks his lips, staring at her, eyes earnest. "There is, but I don't think it's the one you're expecting. But… in the time you've got for me, the time you've got that isn't owned by the job… I'd like a co-grandparent. I'd like another person sharing my home and my life. I'd like that person to be you. And, for as much of it as you're willing to give me, I'd like to be in your life, too."

Once it came out, he found himself thinking _so much for taking it slow. Damn it, Jethro, you need middle gears._

She blinks, staring at him, and says, quietly, "You're right, I wasn't expecting that."

_God, please don't run away!_ "I wasn't expecting to say it, but it feels right. Here." He steps closer to her and places her hand on his chest. "You know?"

"Yeah, I do." And that's terrifying, because she does know, and it did feel right, and she felt a frisson of joy arc through her as he said it, but… It's been three months. Actually, no, it's still a week shy of three months. He's got ex-wives out the ears. _This is stupid_ resonates through her head. _Too fast!_ But it feels right. Feels so right. "So, what are you actually asking me?"

He smiles, shaking his head. "Would you believe I don't really know?"

_Yes_ is very clear on her face. Of course, a big part of that is she doesn't know what the hell she's doing either.

"Keep a toothbrush and some clothing here? Move in? Get married? Or at least…" He licks his lips again, very aware of the fact that she's standing a step away, staring at him, hand still on his chest, his hand over it, but beyond that, not touching him. "Make it clear that that's my endgame? That's what I'm looking for. Hell, put that little heart thingy on your Facebook profile?"

She laughs at that last one, steps into him, and kisses him, then steps back, still holding his hand. "Won't work if you don't have a profile."

"Okay, not that." He smiles at her. "I'm not getting a Facebook profile." They stand there, quiet for a moment. _Well, if you're not going to go slow…_ "Abbi…"

"Yeah."

"I think I love you, and I haven't said that to a woman in decades, and I'm terrified of screwing this up, and I don't know what I'm doing and probably never did. I've got three ex-wives, and I don't want you to be number four. But I'm happy when you're here, in a way I haven't been for a long time, in a way I never was with any of the ones that didn't work, and I hope, pray, that I make you happy, too. Make you happy like that."

She thinks about that. "You do make me happy. In a way I haven't been in a long time."

"I know I'm going too fast."

"Ya think?"

He appreciates getting that back from her. "Yeah, _I think_. So, from here I'll slow down. I love you. I want a future with you. I want you as part of my family and home. I've been divorced three times, and that's off the table now. Next time's 'til death do us part.' And I'm willing to take as long as needs be to get there."

Borin smiles at that. "Preferably of natural causes?"

He chuckles. "Depends on if I'm really as bad at this husband thing as my track record suggests."

She kisses him gently, touching his face. "You make me happy, Jethro. You make me want to shut off my brain and let my feelings take over, make me want to just jump in feet first, and let everything else fade away. But I can't do that. But I'm not going anywhere, and I like where you want this to go, so we'll take the time to get it all figured out."

He smiles at her and kisses her again.


	89. Enoch's Cove

Goth clubbing night. Tony rolls his eyes and sighs.

"Come on, it'll be fun!" Ziva's looking really enthusiastic about this.

He's staring at the pile of black clothing she just handed him, stuff for him to try on, see if it fits.

Another sigh. He's a DiNozzo, he's elegant, refined, attractive. Good suit, high end cocktail lounge, maybe a jazz club, not… black and grunge and whatever this stuff is.

"Go, try it on."

He starts pulling off his clothing with the enthusiasm of a man about to face a firing squad.

"You know, if I could see your outfit—"

"No. It is a surprise. But you will like it."

He smiles. "I know I will, but…"

"Pretend it is an undercover mission."

"This is a mission I'd send Draga and Bishop on."

Ziva smiles at that, while Tony finishes stripping. He eases into the trousers, leather pants. Tight, black leather pants. They're actually not bad at all. The texture against his skin is pleasant, but he does like good leather. Good leather the way leather is supposed to be worn, as belts, shoes, or the occasional jacket.

He's less thrilled with exactly how much of him is on display with these pants. Sure, he doesn't mind when women check out his package, he actually likes it, but… like with a Christmas present, he likes to keep it well enough wrapped you can't tell exactly what's under there. Right now, he looks like a guitar under the Christmas tree, the only person who can't figure out what it is, is the person who's never seen one before.

He's also a bit less than thrilled at the inch of flub that's muffin topping over the waistband of said pants. He stands up a bit straighter, and that helps.

"Size up?" he asks Ziva.

"This is how they're supposed to look."

He picks up the shirt, it's… wrong. Shirts are supposed to be made of solid fabrics and this is… he puts it on, yeah, it's mesh. Black mesh, say quarter inch holes all over the shirt. And sure, part of him is aware of the fact that Ziva's looking at him like he's the most perfect chocolate cake ever, and she's going to eat him alive, most of him is aware of the fact that his chest hair is sticking out of those holes in what he considers ridiculously stupid little tufts.

He looks at himself in the mirror and mutters, "I'm killing McGee for liking this, and then I'm killing Palmer for going along with it."

"Oh, hush, you look great." She's standing behind him, hands on his shoulders, and kisses him.

"I look like a dork." He touches one of the little tufts. "And I'm going to have to shave if I do this."

Ziva's eyes light up and she tackles him into their bed.

* * *

On Thursday, Tony heads down to Autopsy.

He sees Jimmy working away, but doesn't see the Autopsy Mogwai (he'll have to give that to McGee, that's a killer nickname) anywhere, so he says to Jimmy, "Really, Goth club?"

Jimmy shrugs. "Why not? It'll be fun."

"You and I have very different definitions of fun, Palmer."

"What's the problem? Loud music, good drinks, dancing with our girls? Last I checked you were in favor of all of those things."

"Well, yeah, but… Leather pants? Eyeliner? Ziva bought a mesh shirt for me." Tony looks really uncomfortable at that. Mostly because, if you wear a mesh shirt, and you happen to have a lot of chest hair, it sticks out in really stupid-looking little clumps. Which means, if you are going to wear a mesh shirt, you have to shave off said hair, and if you shave off said hair, while say, your wife coos at you with great enthusiasm about it, it's suddenly abundantly clear that you have not done nearly enough in the way of crunches or push-ups in the last ten years, so to say he's not enthusiastic about that mesh shirt, in addition to all of the rest of this, is a vast understatement. (Yes, attending Bootcamp every week for the last three months has improved things, but, like they say, most guys gain fifteen pounds in the first year of marriage, and well, he was already at least ten up when he got married, and yeah… mesh shirt. Ugh. Tight leather pants, double ugh. If they push this off until, say, November when he'll be another fifteen pounds down, he'll be a hell of a lot more enthusiastic about it.) "Last time I dressed up in a ridiculous costume for a girl I looked like a dork, felt like a dork, and the sex wasn't nearly good enough to make up for it." (Okay, it's not like the post-shaving sex was bad, but he had a really hard time getting out of his head enough to really enjoy it.)

"Wear what you're comfortable in. Abby says it's a private club, and any guest of a member is welcome. Put on your James Bond tux if you like. I haven't seen what Breena's got for me, but she tells me it's not strictly Goth."

"They're members?"

"Of course."

"You're really going to do this? Get all dressed up? Wear makeup?"

Jimmy shrugs at that, too. "Wouldn't be the first time. Like Tim said to me, 'Not like your dick'll fall off if you put on mascara.'"

Tony acknowledges that with a tilt of his head. "Gonna feel like a moron."

"It's for a good cause."

"Getting' you laid isn't a good cause!"

Jimmy smiles brightly at him. "It is to me!"

Tony laughs, shakes his head, decides to ask McGee about the tux, because that would feel a lot more comfortable, and wanders out of Autopsy.

A few minutes later, he finds McGee, at his computer, fingers flying away. Like usual, he waits at the door for McGee to look up from his work, and wave him in.

"Hey," Tim finally says, noticing him there.

"Hi."

"What's up?"

Tony explains, glossing over exactly how dumb he feels in what Ziva picked out for him, and if he could do something else.

"Yeah, sure. Goth comes in lots of flavors. Just because I go for a punk version of it doesn't mean you have to."

"Jimmy suggested my tux."

Tim thinks about it and nods. "If you like. If you've got what you wore to my wedding, say with a black or red button down, you'd be perfect. Even the red sunglasses'll look right."

Tony lights up, feeling a lot better. "That, I can do."

* * *

On Friday, during Shabbos, all three girls vanished for about fifteen minutes to chat about it. (They dragged Abbi and Penny into that conversation, too.) They returned giggling, happy, _looking_ at each other and the guys, and very much looking forward to Saturday.

* * *

On Saturday, Tony chickens out. Or as he put it in his phone call to Jimmy, "Oh, so sorry, you know, crime..." and off they go on a case that takes him and Ziva, Bishop, and Draga to London. Jimmy's suspicious that Tony may have specifically called Dispatch and begged them for any case in the Western Hemisphere, but he's fairly sure Ziva wouldn't have gone along with it if it wasn't a real case. Plus, he had seemed a lot more enthusiastic about this after Tim pointed out that he didn't have to look like Trent Reznor.

So, on May 14th, two days after their fourth anniversary, the Palmers head over to the McGees' to get ready to Goth themselves out, just the four of them.

Since Jimmy and Breena have never done this before, they agreed to head over to Tim and Abby's before getting dressed, the idea being that Tim and Abby would be able to help them get into costume and look authentic, or at least as authentic as they could get.

(Jimmy's a little fuzzy on why they need help getting dressed. He's been successfully doing that since he was a child, but if Breena and Abby want to have a BFF makeover slumber-party thing ahead of time, it doesn't bug him. Hanging out with Tim is good, and having another adult to spend time with always makes baby wrangling more fun.)

* * *

They get to Tim and Abby's and Breena and Abby vanish. He and Tim hear occasional, loud, laughter from upstairs.

He and Tim are just hanging out. Nothing they're going to do to themselves is going to take nearly as long as whatever it is the girls are going to be doing to themselves. But, eventually, Gibbs, and Borin, her presence makes Tim and Jimmy smile, come to pick Kelly up.

Borin looks them both up and down. They're both in their gelling at home on the weekend outfits of t-shirts and jeans. "Aren't you supposed to be all dressed up?"

Tim shrugs. "Doesn't take too long to get into a kilt and t-shirt."

"You really wear kilts?" Yes, Jethro had mentioned that, but she's having a difficult time wrapping her head around the idea of McGee in one.

"I own and wear several kilts."

"I've got to see this."

Tim nods a bit. "We got invited to Senior's wedding, too. I can swing it."

"It's black tie," Jimmy says.

"It's a formal kilt," Tim shoots back.

Borin chuckles at that. "Okay."

Gibbs has Kelly in his arms, as she babbles at him. "Have fun."

Jimmy grins at him, "Oh we will. And I'm sure Abby and Breena'll get pictures if you want to see them after."

Gibbs looks at both them, squinting a bit, and then shakes his head. He doesn't need to see them all dressed up in whatever it is the girls have planned.

Tim kisses Kelly as Abby heads down the steps in her bathrobe with her hair in curlers. "Hi. Thank you so much for taking her!"

"No problem." Gibbs says, allowing himself to be hugged.

Kelly gets petted and kissed again, and then he and Borin are off.

Abby links arms with both of the guys and begins to pull them up the stairs. "Come on, time for you two to get ready."

* * *

In 2002 when Tim met Abby, he liked Goth. He appreciated the aesthetic, and the danger, and the whole forbidden aspect of it. He did not, however, grasp the concept that Goth came in many flavors and nuances.

However in the fourteen years that he's been 'Goth Adjacent' he has come to understand, respect, and enjoy the nuances.

His own personal flavor of Goth tend to go for straight rock and roll/punk Goth. This is probably a result of not much liking velvet or lace (on him. Abby wants to coat herself in the stuff, and that's fine with Tim, though she also prefers a more punk goth aesthetic.) helped along by the fact that he is awfully fond of leather.

Plus part of the point of tattoos is for other people to see them, and ninety percent of the time when anyone other than Abby is around, Tim's are hidden. If he goes for the more dressed-up styles of Goth, his will be covered.

So he doesn't. Part of nights when Tim goes Goth is about letting the hidden parts of himself out. And tonight, everything's coming out.

He steps out of the bathroom, toweling off his hair. "You're sure this is temporary?" he asks Abby, who's doing her makeup. He's going all out tonight, so he dyed his hair black.

"Yeah. I know lots of people who have worn it. Your hair'll be its natural color again by next week."

"Good." Sure, right this second, he thinks black hair looks cool. He's not sure he wants it forever, though.

His t-shirt is black, and sleeveless. Not a tank top. It's a regular t-shirt, he just carefully ripped the sleeves off of it. That way two of his tatts are visible. There's a name of a band on it, and some very intricate artwork, all in gray and white. He doesn't much like the band, but the art's cool, knotwork that has a similar feel to the knot on his arm.

And, of course, he's putting his black kilt on. (Means half of number four is visible. His boots are high enough they hide the bottom half of his dragon.) No way he'd skip that. DC isn't exactly prime kilt-wearing territory, so when he has the chance, he takes it.

The wrist cuff and the boots are a given. So, number three is, like usual, hidden.

Nail polish, also black, of course! Hell, he's hit the point where he wears it to work one week out of four, so he's got to be wearing it for clubbing.

He's waiting for his nails to dry when Jimmy and Breena head into their room. He sees Jimmy glance around, look at the mirrors, and then smirk at him. Tim inclines his head and smiles.

Tim likes Breena's outfit. Likes it a whole lot. She's got her hair in a high ponytail, red and black streaks cascading down, and had borrowed Abby's black and pink dress with the halter top and very low back. He knows Abby can sew, and wonders if Breena can too, because that dress fit Abby perfectly when he last saw it, and now it fits Breena just as well, but Breena's six inches shorter than Abby.

Breena or Abby, that dress is a winner.

She's done this really cool thing with her lipstick. It's patent-leather-glossy blood red, but lined in black, and it looks awesome, but he's wondering if she'll be able to eat or drink at all tonight. Not a lot of eye makeup, she wants attention on her lips, and she didn't try to tamp down the beautiful golden shade of her skin, which Tim approves of. Nothing looks more fake than ultra-pale foundation on a woman who doesn't have skin somewhere in that range.

Abby usually wears that dress with high boots. Breena's got small black pumps and two very long, very intricate tattoo transfers that still need to be on her skin. And he'd be lying if he said he wasn't eagerly enjoying the idea of what that's going to look like all put together.

But for as much as he loves how Breena looks, it's Jimmy he's staring at in amazement. He knows that Jimmy will wear clothing vastly tighter and a hell of a lot smaller than he will. But… They're jeans, blood red, tight, nothing to the imagination, clinging to every single inch of his skin all the way down to the black boots he's got on. And sure, Tim has worn and still owns a few pairs of skinny jeans, but… okay, he _never_ leaves the house in pants so tight you can see his dick. He just doesn't.

And pants so tight you can tell he's not wearing anything between those pants and his dick? NEVER!

But Jimmy in those jeans, you can practically tell if he's circumcised or not. They're really, REALLY tight.

Add in the white button down, completely unbuttoned, bow tie, undone, just sort of draped over his collar, and Jimmy's a whole lot more straight rock and roll than anything he'd think of as Goth.

"God, Jimmy, what the hell are you trying to do, smuggle a hamster into the club?" Tim says when he gets his words back and stops just staring at Jimmy.

"Guinea pig," Jimmy says with a smirk.

Abby and Breena laugh hysterically at that.

" _Baby_ guinea pig." Tim says when they quiet down a little, and that sets off another round.

When Breena can talk again, she asks, "Tim, you have a black leather jacket that'll fit him, right?"

Tim nods. "Yeah. I was going to say it might be a little snug, but I guess that's the idea."

Jimmy smiles. "So, my wife tells me."

"So…" he's looking at Jimmy while Abby shows Breena his jackets and she messes around with them. "What's the Goth part?" Jimmy opens his hand and Tim sees he's holding a contact lens case.

"You're not wearing your glasses."

"They're silver. Got some sunglasses, too. And Breena and Abby said something about eyeliner."

Tim nods. That'd be pretty subtle, other than the incredible pants-of-show-off-everything-you've-got, and cool.

"You two almost ready?" Jimmy asks Tim, half-sitting, half-leaning against Tim's dresser, so he can use the mirror to get his contacts in.

"Almost." Abby's still in her robe, but her hair's "almost done" and her makeup is. Theoretically all she has left to do is get her dress on and take her hair out of the curlers.

Tim's almost entirely dressed. He's sitting on their bed, waiting for his nails to dry. Abby kneels behind him on the bed and slips the last piece of his outfit on.

It's true that there's nothing intrinsically Dom/sub about Goth and vice versa, (though there is a bondage-goth sub-group) but there does seem to be a fairly large overlap between the two groups. So one thing Tim has noticed is that, while he did get felt up at Zephyr, that's never been an issue at any of the clubs they go to in DC. (Well, yeah, he gets felt up when he goes clubbing with Abby. All the time, _by Abby_. Zephyr was the first time a stranger did it.) And he's fairly sure there's a reason why he's never been felt up at any of the clubs they go to in DC.

Abby's fastening it around his neck.

It's a nine strand braid of the softest, most supple black leather he's ever felt. It ends in a belt buckle, which works better than snaps because the size of this is more easily customizable. And yeah, he's not a bound submissive, won't ever be one, but he doesn't mind playing one when they go to what he considers Abby's territory.

Breena's watching Abby pull it snug, quest for the perfect jacket temporarily forgotten, as black leather slips through the buckle. She seems really curious, looking from Tim to Abby and back again, as Abby kisses the nape of his neck, right above the collar, before hopping off their bed.

Finally Breena says, "What kind of club are we going to?"

Abby catches the different layers of meaning to that question and smiles. "A Goth club. Nothing else."

"Really?"

Tim nods. "Really."

Breena steps closer to Tim, standing in front of him, fingers brushing lightly over the leather around his throat. "And... um... yeah... You know what you're saying, wearing that, right?"

Tim laughs. Yes, he does. He didn't realize Breena would know, though. "And what do you think I'm saying by wearing this?"

"That Abby's in charge."

Tim smiles, feeling pretty flirty as he says, "And when we go to one of her clubs, she is."

Jimmy, who had just been quietly listening to this says, "So, it's not actually a sex club?" (He's possibly rethinking his choice of pants.)

Abby gives Tim a long, questioning look, and he shrugs, at no point did he actually tell Jimmy it was a sex club. Though, thinking back to what he actually did say, two years ago, he can understand why Jimmy might think it was.

She answers, "No. Though people will be having sex there. And there are private rooms where anything and everything goes. But mostly, it's a place where the music is loud, the lighting is dim, and no one stares if you like black and leather and pretending to be a vampire."

"So, why the collar on Tim?" Jimmy asks.

Tim looks at Abby; he's never asked that. The first time they went, she had suggested it. He thought it looked cool and knew exactly what it meant, and since it didn't bother him, that was fine.

"I just like the way they look. Same reason I always wear one."

"So being told what to do doesn't make you all tingly?" Breena asks Abby.

"Not saying that." She smiles hot at Tim. "Just saying that isn't why I wear them."

Tim watches Breena think about that. He looks over at Jimmy, who is watching them in the mirror, finger with a silver contact frozen en route to his eye as he stares at the girls, and figures they are both wondering exactly how far tonight is going to go, and what they might all be comfortable with. He's also wondering how much of this the girls planned with each other ahead of time.

"So, you do like being told what to do?" Breena asks, smiling.

"I do if the right guy is saying the words," Abby says, looking at Tim. "You?" she asks Breena.

"Oh yeah." She sighs it, eyes caressing Jimmy, as she smiles at him.

Tim takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, bites his lip, and tries to clear his mind of the suddenly very explicit image of telling Breena to get on her knees. When he opens them, he notices that Jimmy's squirming a little at this conversation, as well. And he also gets the sense that neither of them are entirely sure if this is I'm-so-turned-on-I-can't-think or this-is-getting-really-close-to-outside-of-my-comfort-zone squirming.

"Do you like telling him what to do, too?" Abby asks.

Breena shrugs. "It's okay. I'd rather be told what to do. Would you do the transfer on my back?" Breena picked a large dragon tattoo. The dragon's face would go on her bicep, and the rest of its body would twine around her arm, onto her shoulder, and down her spine. She had borrowed Abby's black and pink halter dress because it had the right cut for the entire dragon to be visible.

"Give me a hand, Tim. I'll hold it in place, you press the wet paper towels into it," Abby says, heading into the bathroom to wet the paper towels. A second later, she's handing them to him, and then he's watching his and Abby's hands on Breena's skin. Abby gently smoothing the transfer into place while he presses the wet towel over her skin.

Breena and Abby are talking about something. It's probably not even sexy, right now. But he can't focus on that. He and Abby are touching Breena. Pretty much his number one fantasy for the last four years. He's watching their hands working together over her skin, across her back and arm, and when they finish that one, she's got a long abstract spire of curly-cues that'll go from her right ankle all the way to her hip. He and Abby do that one, too. Smoothing the tattoo transfer up her leg. She's coy with her skirt, so he can't see anything besides her leg, but touching her skin, her very soft, very beautiful, very _naked_ skin all the way up to the crest of her hip, drops of water from the wet paper towel he's using on the transfer meandering down her leg in slow, swollen rivulets, (And yes, he wants to lick them off, bad.) and he's very, very glad he's not wearing anything as tight as what Jimmy's got on.

He's wondering if the four of them are going to have sex tonight. And right now that's the hottest thing he can think of and more terrifying than being locked in a room with ten German Shepherds and foot deep maggots.

He makes a quick promise to himself. He's not drinking tonight. No matter what happens, he wants his head clear. It's hard enough to make good decisions when your balls are doing the thinking, it's even worse when they're drunk.

"I'll be the driver tonight."

"Okay. Cool." Jimmy says, two beats too late, sounding distracted. Tim looks away from Breena's leg and sees that contact is still there, balanced on his finger, and he knows Jimmy hasn't moved since they began this. He'd just sat there, watching it, probably just as confused between _God, too damn hot_ and _Freak out, now?_ as Tim is.

Abby peels off the transfer. "And I think you're done, Breena. Your nails dry, Tim?"

Probably should have made sure of that before they started rubbing all over Breena. He gently touches his thumbnail. "Yeah."

"Jimmy?" she asks.

"Not quite." He quickly faces the mirror and gets his contacts in, then turns to them, eyes flashing sliver.

Abby grins. "That looks so cool. Okay, give me a few minutes, still got to get my hair done."

"Thanks. Still got to do my makeup, too. Breena?"

"On it." She crosses to Jimmy, and begins to rifle through the bag of cosmetics she had brought. After a second, she has eyeliner and mascara. He's full on sitting on Tim's dresser now, and she stands between his legs. "Hold still. I'm not used to doing this on people who move."

Jimmy grins, hands settling on Breena's hips. "Staying still."

A few minutes' work has Jimmy's eyes rimmed with kohl and lashes darkened. Jimmy glances at himself in the mirror and says, "'Line my eyes and call me pretty.'"

Tim's standing next to them, doing his own eyes, and he smiles wryly at that.

Breena, rubs against him, smiles hot and dirty, then pets his face, "Pretty, James, so pretty." Then she kisses him, very quietly saying, "Laid's not just going to be a song title, tonight."

Jimmy grins at her, and she runs her fingers through his hair, tousling it.

A second later, Abby steps out of the bathroom, her hair down.

Tim looks at her and sighs. "Oh, baby!" It's the Marilyn makeup, lips black instead of red, and hair, this time her real hair, in soft, blonde and pink-tinged curls. Instead of the white Seven Year Itch dress, she's got on something with a similar feel if not the same cut, sleeveless, strapless, drapy black lace that swirls around her when she twirls the same way the white dress did, and when she stands still the hem kisses the back of her knees the same way. Cute, little black pumps finish it off.

"Good?" she smiles at him.

"Fuck, yes," he answers, stepping to her, kissing the nape of her neck.

"Are we ready to go, then?" Abby asks.

"Oh yeah," Breena answers, pulling Jimmy up. "Let's go!"

* * *

There are club, _clubs,_ and **_clubs_**. When they went out to Ziva's club, it was just a place with music and drinks. The only reason anyone got turned away was for being underage.

Jimmy and Breena's place was a _club._ There was a dress code, and the guy at the door was keeping out anyone who didn't look like they fit. Tim in his kilt did get a bit of the hairy eyeball, but the girls were cute, and he did have a jacket and tie, so they got in.

Enoch's Cove, Tim and Abby's club is a **_club_**. You have to be a member or a guest of a member to get in. And you can only get a membership by being invited by another member.

It's not that it's a heaping cauldron of illegal activities, (Though this would be a vice cop's wet dream or nightmare depending on if he's the one getting credit for the busts or having to do the paperwork.) but the clientele here deals with enough shit for being counter culture in the rest of their lives, and this is a place to relax and have fun, not get ogled as freaks.

It's a Goth club. It's dark. The décor is sumptuous and baroque, lots of detail work and everything is covered in silk and velvet. The music is loud, live, and unless you're really into the scene, you won't know the bands. The men wear just as much (if not more) makeup than the women, and everything about the place has been designed to cater to utter decadence. (For example, this is the first place Jimmy's been to where not only can he get Absinthe, real Absinthe, but he has options from six micro-distilleries from different regions of France, and if he wants his sugar cube with refined white sugar or raw sugar or stevia. If it wasn't for the fact that he doesn't want to mess with insulin tonight, he'd be really interested in trying them _all_ out. The party animal he was at twenty would have _loved_ this place.)

Abby's been going here since she moved to DC. It's pretty far off the beaten path, in a strip mall of all things, and everyone here knows her.

And for that matter, they know Tim now, too. He'd gone with her once the first time they dated, and enjoyed it once he got enough alcohol into him to shut down the part of his brain that felt like he stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb. (Though part of the reason for going to Enoch's is that it is a private club, and they do tend to be fairly kind to newbies who don't exactly fit in, because those newbies are the guests of someone who does.) The second time they started dating, they went back, and by that time he was more than comfortable enough in his own skin to enjoy it.

And enjoy it he did.

They made it back a few times a year until Kelly was born. But this is their first time back since. It's his favorite of her clubs, but not the only one they go to. But like with choosing this one to introduce Tim to the scene, it's the one they both thought Jimmy and Breena would be most comfortable with, too.

* * *

"Are we the only married people in here?" Jimmy asks Abby as they stake out a booth. As Abby said, there are private rooms here, and there are booths lining the dance floor. Unlike the private rooms they provide a view of the dancing, and in some spots whoever's playing, but each booth has high walls reaching to the ceiling on three sides, providing a certain level of privacy.

"I'd doubt it," she replies. "We're not the oldest people here, either. Goth's just like everything else, lots of people who do lots of things."

Tim and Breena head over with their drinks and snacks. Absinthe for Jimmy, Cosmopolitan for Breena, Abby's got mineral water, and Tim has a Diet Coke. Enoch's offers tasting menus of chocolates, caviars, and oysters, and Breena had opted for all three, as well. Dinner was light, and they'll want snacks for dancing.

"I'm out about it a lot more than the rest of the world. For a lot of people, especially adults with real jobs, Goth only gets to come out at play time. But just because you can't do it every day doesn't mean it isn't real. Oh, you got all three, didn't you?" Abby asks Breena as she sees the stacked trays.

Breena nods. "Going all out tonight." The top tray had three bites of six different kinds of chocolates, second tray held four mother of pearl spoons, and six shot glasses with tiny mounds of different caviars, bottom tray was larger, with a two inch high lip, filled with ice, and sixteen oysters (four different types) sitting among the crushed ice.

Tim sets the tray with the drinks down, puts each of the "easy" drinks in front of their owners, and then points to an assortment of things that he's set in front of Jimmy. "Okay, Jimmy, how does this work? I've seen complicated drinks before, but this is the first one I've dealt with that's required equipment."

Jimmy smiles about that and wonders how it is, with that bottle Jethro got him for Christmas, Tim's never seen him do this before, but… Oh, yeah. Said bottle is still in his closet with the rest of the Christmas presents he opened, looked at in a pleased sort of way, and promptly forgot all about because Anna was two weeks old and he was completely fried from no sleep. He needs to go open that thing and see how it tastes.

There's a small decanter, crystal (All of these are on what looks like a silver tray. Abby's not kidding about decadent, everything in this place is silver, Victorian, and expensive.) with what looks like about three shots worth of Absinthe in it. "How much did you get me?"

"Three. We're going to be here for a while," Tim answers. "That's what you normally do, right?"

Jimmy shakes his head. It's not that Tim's wrong. If they're out for a night and he's not driving, three is right, but three is usually wine with dinner, (which he's already had) and two mixed drinks, that are usually low on the alcohol and high on mixers. If this is as strong as he thinks it is, that's probably the equivalent of six or eight of his usual drinks sitting in front of him.

He really should have already done this with them. He takes the first decanter and pours a bit in the long stem glass that's also sitting on the tray (of course it's cut crystal) and takes a quick sip. It's way easier to tell what he's getting himself into if he tries it straight. "Wow." He exhales, fast. This is STRONG. "Absinthe 101: it's somewhere between fifty and seventy percent alcohol. For reference that stuff Jethro drinks is forty percent alcohol." Jimmy takes another tiny sip, holds it in his mouth, and feels the alcohol expanding on his tongue, "And this stuff's at the high end." There's a silver slotted spoon, and he places that on top of the glass, removing one of the stevia cubes from the little silver bowl on the tray and setting it on the spoon. "You don't drink it straight. The alcohol content's so high you can't really taste it if you drink it straight." There's a larger decanter of water, also crystal, and this one is the somewhat traditional fountain shape (It holds about a pint of water. Given how strong this is, Jimmy's appreciating that, he's going to be adding a bit more water than he usually does.) with a small spout to dribble the water. Jimmy sets the glass under the spout, opens it gingerly, but it's well-calibrated, the water eases out a few drops at a time, meandering through the stevia cube into the absinthe.

After a minute the cube's crumbled, and the water and stevia dripping into the Absinthe have turned what was a clear, slightly yellow-green liquid into a cloudy light-green liquid.

"Once the Green Fairy's appeared," Jimmy says, stopping the flow of water, "It's ready to drink." He offers the first sip to Breena, knowing she's not a huge fan of licorice-flavored things, but the sip he took ahead of time told him this was more of a sweet, green, herbal flavor than overwhelming anise. She smiles, it's good, better than she expected, nods, and hands the glass over to Abby, who decides a taste is unlikely to have much effect on the on-going quest for the next baby McGee. It's okay, probably really good for absinthe, but she's not a huge fan of that flavor profile. She hands the glass to Tim, who also tries it, and is quite surprised at how good this is, he's also not a fan of anything with a heavy anise flavor, but this is really nice, and he needs to stop now or he'll give Jimmy all the help he needs to deal with the fact that this is more alcohol than he'd normally drink.

From there the music shifts, and Abby takes both Tim and Breena's hands. "Come on, dancing, now!"

And so they dance.

* * *

As a medical doctor, Jimmy is well aware of the fact that the hallucinogenic properties of absinthe are vastly overrated. Thujone in the quantity you can get from absinthe just isn't going to do all that much. He's also well aware of the fact that the active ingredient in absinthe is the boat-load of alcohol in it.

And as a medical doctor, he's well, well aware of how the brain can react to suggestions, how the psychology of an event is in many cases just as powerful as the pharmacology, if not more so.

(Plus, back in the day he actually got his hands on some real hallucinogens, so he knows how that feels, and this is not that.)

But _this_ is awfully nice. He's feeling very… he doesn't have a word for it. The mood is genteel, sensuous, pampered. The music is loud, sinuous, beat shifting from a heart's throb to a languid pulse, ebbing and flowing like the pace of really good sex. The lighting is dim, reds, purples, and golds, washing everything in a dull-warm hue.

Everyone in costume, the perfumes both of the girls are wearing, faint incense and musk of the club, the slightly narrowed frame of vision courtesy of his contacts, the buzz he's got from his drink, and the pleasure of Breena sitting next to him, feeding each other tiny bites of chocolate (for her) and caviar (him) between kisses, he feels like he's dreaming. Like this is the easiest, most intense, lucid dream he's ever had.

She's kissing him, deep and wet, and his hand finds her thigh, slipping under her skirt, brushing higher, feeling her moan into his mouth. And right now, all of this together, is absolutely excellent.

* * *

"Do you and Breena have anything planned for tonight?" Tim asks as he and Abby dance slow and close. Jimmy and Breena had headed back to the booth about two songs ago. This one right now is finally soft enough that he can actually talk to Abby, on her own, for the first time this evening.

"What sort of planned?"

"The sort where you ambush Jimmy and I and all four of us end up in bed?" All four of them had been dancing together, as a foursome, and as two couples in every combination but the guys with each other, and especially the dances where the girls were with each other were scorching hot.

(Tim knows why Jimmy headed back to the table. There's only so long you can dance like that without getting hard, and those pants hide nothing and have to be painfully tight. He glances over, and can see that Jimmy and Breena are necking, and if he's not already out of those pants, if for nothing else than ease the pain, Tim'd be stunned.)

Abby smiles at him, pressing in closer yet, her body stroking his as she moves in counter point to him, effectively drawing his attention back to her. "Would you like it if we did?"

"I honestly don't know. Half of me loves the idea. Half is scared shitless."

She kisses his neck, just above the collar. "Don't worry, we wouldn't just spring something like that on you. We're just playing, pushing the line a bit further than we've been before, see how you two do, but we're not going that far. At its most, tonight is just a dry run to see if you two look like you can handle something like this."

"And how's it looking?"

"Like your both half-terrified/half-so-turned-on-you-don't-know-what-to-do-with-yourselves." She glances over to the booth where Breena's gone from sitting next to Jimmy to sitting across his lap.

"Yes!" He kisses her long and deep. "Talking with Breena about subbing while having me rub a tattoo onto her was torture!"

She leans up, speaking into his ear. "I was thinking about having you and her sub, and letting Jimmy and I play with you. Tie you down on the bed, arms above your head, her on your cock, leaning into your chest. Her hands tied together behind your neck. You don't get to move. She doesn't either. Jimmy's behind her, fucking her ass, and that's all the direct friction you get, the way he moves in and out of her, and the way she moves on you as a result of that."

Tim can see that in his mind, feel it on his body, and right now, he's hard as a rock. He bites his lip, looks over to the table, where Jimmy and Breena are, and maybe they're just making out, maybe they're having sex, the table is in the way, so he can't tell for sure, but he knows what that rocking motion means when he and Abby are doing it, and for them it certainly isn't just making out. He swallows, hard, and asks, "What are you doing?"

"Gently petting your hair, letting you watch Breena and I kiss slow and deep from an inch away, then passing her lips to yours, saying something extremely dirty to you and Breena, and holding the remote on the vibrator in your ass, pulsing it every time Jimmy thrusts."

"Oh..." That's a recipe for an orgasm so intense he'll pass out.

"Yeah." She grins at him. "Still scared?"

"No." He shakes his head for a second and kisses her hard, holding her face in his hands, grinding against her, then pulls back so his lips brush against hers as he says, "The part of my brain capable of fear left the party as soon as you said 'having you and her sub.'"

She doesn't pull back any further, her lips still brushing his, kissing him with her response, "So what's the problem?"

Now, he does pull back, a few inches. They're still close but he wants to be able to really look her in the eye for this, and that's almost impossible if they're lip to lip. He needs to be able to read her face, and let her read his. "It'll come back when I'm not insanely turned on and things'll get weird and uncomfortable and shoot our relationship with our best friends to hell and gone."

"No way to know if we don't try." He can see she's hopeful.

"You really want to?" At first this is a question about the four of them and the fact that she thinks it'll go well and that it'll be happy and fun and the scared part of his brain isn't coming back and they can handle it.

"Yeah." She's smiling, reassuring him, and he can feel that she's certain they can do this, that it won't cause problems.

But he's not sure, afraid that that little, jealous, MINE voice in the back of his head will hop up and bite them, so he takes it a step further, making her say it, seeing how that feels. "You, with Jimmy?"

"Yes." She kisses him again, rubbing against him. "Want both of you, together. Me in the middle, rocking between you."

He expects to feel a flash of mad jealousy and wanting to kill Jimmy, but it doesn't happen. But he's not feeling any sense of ease from not having it happen. Maybe because he's not sure why it didn't happen. He certainly felt it before when Jimmy was joking about sleeping with Abby, but he's not feeling it now.

No, if he's feeling anything right now, it's turned on, really turned on. But the rational part of his brain is still in control enough that… he's not afraid so much as afraid of being afraid.

She sees him thinking about it, and pets his face. "Could be all four of us together, and you know it'd be so good."

Tim sighs. He knows. He can imagine it. He can look over and see Jimmy and Breena, and yeah, his dick's all in favor of heading over and joining in. On a purely physical sensation level, it'd be amazing. But the fear is still there. "I don't know if I can. If there's a guy I can share you with, it's Jimmy. And, the idea is insanely hot." He ground against her, getting the point across. "But I don't think I can."

"Then it'll stay a fantasy." And he can see she's not disappointed and this isn't a problem for her.

"Thanks." He kisses her long and hard, his hands gently running over her arms. "Got any other fantasies for me?"

He can tell the look in her eyes is asking if he wants to hear one with all four of them, or if Jimmy involved with her is still off limits. He nods a little, _all four of us, sure_. After all, fantasy is one thing, something where you can explore anything and everything. Not like telling stories ever hurt anyone.

"How about this one?" she says, turning so her back is to his chest, and he bends to kiss her throat, keeping his ear near her mouth. "Jimmy's on the sofa, I'm on my knees between his legs, sucking him down, while you fuck me from behind. Like that image? My tongue, wet and soft on his cock while you get to slip in behind me?"

Yes, he does. Just the image of it has him groaning. He shouldn't like it. It should make his blood boil, and not in a good way, at all. But he does like it, likes it way too damn much. He swallows, throat dry. He can see it, the look of Jimmy's cock slipping between her lips. He'd be behind her, setting a slow, steady pace, one hand holding her hair out of the way, letting him watch, matching his pace to hers, and Jimmy'd be sprawled out, eyes closed, hands in fists, legs quivering, breathing hard, so turned on.

He looks toward their table. Breena's skin is flushed, even in this light he can see it, and Jimmy's kissing her neck, hand on her breast, under the dress, both of them rocking slowly against each other, rhythm utterly unrelated to the music throbbing through the club.

He pulls his eyes away from them, back to Abby.

"What's Breena doing?"

She turns again, facing him, letting a few beats of music flow through them as they dance, and then grins, sexy, dirty, so good smile on her face, and licks his bottom lip before saying, "You, with a strap on. You slip into me, and she slides all the way into you, and when you pull out she does, too."

She knows the look on his face isn't pain, but a casual observer wouldn't. That's very intense sexual arousal. "Are you trying to just talk me off?"

"Do you think I can?"

"No, but you're going to get me awfully close."

"How close?"

"Wet spots on the inside of the kilt close."

"Ohhh..." She grins. "I like that. Wanna lick it off and then kiss Breena, let her suck it off my tongue."

He groans at that image and kisses her, long and hard, while her hand traces up his leg, feathering gently over his balls and pulls away much too fast.

"Anything else you like?" he asks.

"You in charge. Seeing you take Breena and I in hand and making us both all happy and tingly." She presses in even closer, grinding against him. "Wanna see you run the whole show. Want you to get us both off while Jimmy watches, tied up, unable to touch himself, so hot he doesn't know what to do with himself, and we don't let him get off until you're done with both of us."

"Fuck!" he breathes it quietly while grinding into her. Then pulls back, kissing her, quick and hard. He unbuckles his collar, and slips the leather slowly off his neck, trailing it over his skin, knowing she likes to see it, likes leather and his flesh, and better yet leather and hers. He fastens it onto her, snug and smooth on her skin.

His hands trail down her back, settling on her thighs, and then snake up, under the skirt, cupping her ass and pulling her flush to him.

He hisses at the pressure of her pelvis right against his, and grinds against her.

Another long, hard, searing kiss, then he says to her, eyes hot, on hers. "I want you to know who owns you. Me. My collar on your throat." His fingers skim the collar. "My marks on your skin." He lifts her arm and bows his head, kissing the tattoo on her arm, then licks the one on her throat. "My rings on your finger." He squeezes her left hand. He pulls the edge of the kilt up, hitches her leg over his hip and slides into her in one fast thrust. "My cock in your pussy. My cum on your lips. You are mine."

She nods, leg tightening on his hip, pulling him closer, deeper. "Yours."

"And if I want you to fuck my best friend, you will."

"Yes." She's grinning as she says it, kissing him, then looking over to Jimmy and Breena, who are staring at them, moving even faster now.

"If I want to get off on seeing you eat out his wife…"

She looks back to him, tongue flicking over his lower lip. "I will lick her pussy until she's quivering, begging, keep her on edge until you give me permission to get her off. I will make her scream and make you proud."

He's got to back his mind away from this, or her words will get him off. He's stroking her neck, kissing, biting, hard enough there'll be little pink marks for a while, not hard enough to bruise.

She takes his hand in hers, guiding his fingers to her mouth, and then gently sucks on two of them.

"Tell me to, and I'll do that for Jimmy."

His teeth grit, and he's replaying BioShock 3, trying to ease back from the edge. It's not working.

Time for the big guns. He looks over, and yes, Jimmy and Breena are watching them, and they are definitely fucking now. Nothing about the way they are moving suggests frotting. He catches Jimmy's eye, knowing that'll do it. If he and Abby are the entertainment for the night, he is damn well going to be worth watching.

Jimmy watching him cools him down again. Competition is good for a lot of thing, and no way Jimmy's lasting longer than he is. And no fucking way he's getting off before Abby does.

He looks back to Abby, and he can see by the smile on her face that she knows what he just did. He shrugs quickly, breaking character for a second, and she winks, as long as it keeps the game going, she's good with it.

He kisses her quickly on the nose and gets back into character.

"We're going to the table, and I'm going to lay you on it. Back against it. Your legs up over my shoulders, head leaning back over the edge, so you can take Jimmy to the root. You've been looking at it all night. I wanna see you take it out and taste it. And you're going to suck him so good he won't know his own name."

"Look at him." And Abby does, turning her face to Jimmy and Breena, keeping her eyes on them, seeing them flush and grind against each other, watching her and Tim. "He's about a minute from coming, and you'll be the one doing it to him, with your hot, soft, wet mouth sucking him down."

He grinds his hips against hers, thrusting deep and steady and scans the club. This is a fine position to start in, but it's not an easy one to get her off in, and if Abby getting off, really getting off, shaking, screaming orgasm ever mattered to him, it does now.

And then he has a plan.

"There's a support pillar over there." He nods behind them. It's deeper into the crowd, but not so far back they'll be invisible.

"I'm going to slip out of you, and we're going over there." And he did, smoothing down the kilt and her skirt, making sure she's covered before he steps back, and leads her over to it. Then he spins her, looks like a dance move, and it is, sort of, just maybe not the dance everyone else is doing, so she faces it, pressing her against it, facing the Palmers. His right hand strokes over her throat and shoulder, while his lips nibble her ear, and his left hand slips under her skirt to rub her clit.

"They'll be able to see your face, and mine, but the crowd will keep most of what we're doing hidden. They'll get little glimpses now and again. A tease here." And he bites the back of her neck just above the buckle of the collar as his fingers slip around her clit. She arches into him and moans. "A hint there." He fists his hand into her hair, pulling her into a hot, open-mouthed kiss.

"But mostly they'll just see your face," he says, lips brushing the words to her, "See the pleasure on it. See the way I'm making you feel, and imagine how good it is."

He slips into her again, a hard, sure thrust, and stills, savoring the sensation of her body clinging wet and tight to his. He kisses her shoulder and the curve where neck becomes back, feeling her hands reach behind her, rubbing over his sides and thighs. Tim set a slow, easy pace, feeling the rush of this, the rich, golden pleasure of her body on his and the ego trip of knowing Breena and Jimmy are watching, seeing him fuck her, seeing her enjoy it, and getting off on it.

He'd never thought he had this much of an exhibition kink. Yes, having Abby watch him makes him even harder. And yes, the risk of getting caught has always appealed to him. And fine, sure, in the club, in the dark and anonymous, two bodies writhing along to the music and maybe turning on someone else was fine too, but this…

Jimmy and Breena know them! After this they are going to go home together. Monday three of them will go to work together. Right now he's feeling Abby's body on his, hot and silky and perfect, and he can see Breena's face, the way her eyes have narrowed but not closed, she doesn't want to stop watching them, and her expression has gone tight, as her lips open into a small O.

Abby's close. He can feel it in the tension in her body, the way she's moving.

He's behind her, so he can't really see if her eyes are open. "Are you watching them?"

She nods.

"Like what you're seeing?" God, he does. Really does. This is better than any porn ever. They're real people, real people he adores having a _very_ good time. Breena's coming, flushed, shuddering and twitching on Jimmy's lap, beyond beautiful. Jimmy can't be far behind, he's moving fast and erratic, pumping into her.

"Yes."

He rubs her clit faster, little harder, thrusting faster. Won't be able to talk too much longer. "I'm gonna lay on the floor. You're going to kneel on my face. What I do to you, you'll do to Breena, while Jimmy fucks her. I'm going to show you exactly how I want you to eat her out, and if you get off before she does, or if you get distracted, I'll be disappointed."

Her hands are fisted in his hair, her body's tight on his, and she's balanced on the edge of what he knows will be a full-body, shaking orgasm, and he's so close, too, just a few more seconds.

He pulls her back against him, hard deep thrust, fingers moving even faster over her and he feels the tingles start deep in his dick, caught in that second before the rush begins.

"And if I don't disappoint you?"

"When you're done coming down, I'll slowly stretch you open, and Jimmy and I'll fuck you together. You get to pick who goes where."

And that does it. He feels her fingernails scraping against his scalp and the nape of his neck as her body shudders. Her body clenching on his takes him over the edge, too, dropping him into an insane mix of pleasure, pride, ego, fuck, and ecstasy.

* * *

It should be awkward, right?

Once his brain got back online he was expecting awkward. Awkward with a side of 'Oh holy fuck, what were we thinking?' and not being able to look Jimmy in the eyes for, by conservative estimate, nineteen years. There's a reason why the little head doesn't get to make decisions. The little head is _stupid._

His forehead is pressed to Abby's shoulder, and he's handing her one of the tissues he always has on hand when they go clubbing, and he's feeling no need to look up and face what they just did. But time doesn't just stop because you let your balls make the decisions. She slips off of him, and he takes a second to make sure their clothing is hanging properly again. He feels Abby slip the tissue back into his pocket, (he makes a quick mental note to find a trash can), and then she turns to face him, smiling, face flushed, lazy, happy, _approving_ grin on her lips, and, okay, yeah, that helps.

She kisses the tip of his nose, gets a little smile out of him, takes his hand in hers and squeezes it, and starts to dance again.

And he can do that.

* * *

It's a bit later, two songs, maybe three, when the real acid test for awkward shows up.

Breena and Jimmy bop over, and yeah, Jimmy's looking sheepish too, but the girls are smiling and laughing, and it's contagious, because that's just how happiness works, and then he has Abby on one side and Breena on the other and they're both dancing with him and Jimmy kind of looks at him and shrugs, and Tim sort of half-nods back, and Abby sees it, grins again, kisses him, gooses Jimmy, who looks really startled for a second, and then smiles, and both of them start to laugh too, and, well, everything is okay again.

Tim feels the freedom of that. The girls already know where the lines are and have promised not to cross them until they're all on the same page.

Which means they can play. He heads back to the table to grab a drink. As he's there, taking a gulp of his Diet Coke, it hits him, this is like subbing, he can relax into it and enjoy it, let them run the game, knowing that he's made his line that can't be crossed clear, and they'll respect it.

Something else hits, these people love him, absolutely. He can safeword out of this if it's ever too much. If it gets freaky or uncomfortable he can say the word and they'll stop and that'll be it.

 _Maybe all we'll ever be is good friends who dance too close and flirt too hard, and we enjoy it because it makes us feel good and sexy. And if that's all this ever is, that's fine, that's more than fine!_ Breena had said that, or something close to it, and he's watching Abby and Breena and Jimmy dance, as he takes another sip of his drink, then takes a sip of Jimmy's.

There are rules here, and they won't get broken, because this matters too much to all four of them to fuck it up, which means he doesn't have to stay rock solid sober. (He's driving, so he can't have too much, but some…okay, Jimmy's absinthe is even better after a bit of time to breathe, and he really likes it, but yeah, driving… not too much. Next time they do this… This is already expensive as hell, adding a limo or something so they can all drink won't break them.)

He takes his shirt off, because it's hot, and they're dancing hard, and this matches some of his fantasies, and he's not the only guy without a shirt in the room, and hell, Jimmy's is completely undone, so…

So, it doesn't matter why, he doesn't need to justify it. That's the freedom of this, the joy of love. It feels good, the girls'll like it, and he likes it, and that's all that matters here.

They're playing, making themselves and each other feel good, and that's all that matters.

He goes back to the dance, smiling, Abby on one side, Breena and Jimmy on the other; it's going to be a very good night.

* * *

Tim wakes to the smell of coffee the next morning, which he finds a little confusing because he's the one who makes the coffee in the morning.

Then it clicks. Jimmy and Breena crashed at their place last night.

Which is also when the rest of last night hit him.

Abby's still sleeping, so he gently kisses her neck, eases out of bed, finds a pair of pajama pants, put them on, and heads downstairs.

Jimmy's sitting at his kitchen table, in his boxers and t-shirt, drinking his coffee, and reading something on his phone.

"You look comfy."

"I am, thanks." He pushes a second cup of coffee toward Tim. "Figured you'd be down less than ten minutes after you smelled it."

"Yeah." He takes a sip; it's the way he likes it. "Thanks."

"No problem."

"Sleep well?"

"Yeah, the bed in your guest room is good."

They sit there, drinking their coffee in silence, and that silence is significantly less comfortable than usual, finally Tim says, "So, um… last night, was that weird?"

Jimmy looks up from his phone, and Tim sees the hickies on his collarbone and throat, while realizing he's got fingernail marks down his back, no shirt, and he didn't bother to wash his eye makeup off last night, so he's likely got raccoon eyes to go with the rest of it. They both look _thoroughly_ fucked. "Getting off watching each other have sex at a club. Do you have to ask?"

Okay, yeah, there's some sarcasm there, but not as much as there could be. "Yeah. Cause I'm alternating between completely freaked out and totally okay with it. How about you?"

Jimmy takes a long drink of his coffee and then sighs. "Yeah, it's weird, but... maybe not in a bad way."

Tim's not looking at Jimmy as he says, "Yeah. Maybe in a I-really-liked-it-but-I-don't-want-to-think-too-hard-about-it sort of way."

"In a we-never- _ever_ -tell-Tony-about-it sort of way."

Tim's nodding almost violently in agreement with that, and Jimmy smiles at him, and uncomfortable fell apart. "So, we're good?"

"Yeah, we're good. Think the girls are?"

"If what Abby's telling me is right, they want to take this a lot further than just showing off for each other, so yeah, I think they're good."

"Err…" Jimmy looks really uncomfortable at that.

"Yeah." Tim drinks more of his coffee.

"I don't want to go there. I mean, showing off is one thing, but doing…"

"Yeah." Tim's nodding. Showing off was fine, it was fun, but _doing_... "Like, it's a hot idea, but…"

"But…" Jimmy nods. "I mean, we've talked about it, and it's a fun fantasy, but…"

"But…" Tim's nodding; he gets 'but' in his bones.

"If it went wrong, it'd go really wrong."

"Yeah. I don't want to risk that."

"Me, either."

"But…" Tim says, figuring that this is in bounds, what with the 'showing off' comment, "Wouldn't mind being the guy in the booth next time."

Jimmy smirks. "That was fun. Being the guy dancing looked fun, too."

Tim nods. "It was."

* * *

A/N: Google Brian Dietzen Watch Magazine, and you'll find the outfit I described. If you're willing to risk the full on McPalmer version of this chapter, I've got a picture of it up on the blog.


	90. The Gathering Storm

A/N: I know some of you aren't Americans... In US schools grades are done A (Excellent), B (Above Average) C (Average) D (Below Average) and F (Failing.) Why is this important? You'll see in a minute.

Okay, on with the story…

* * *

Tim gets in a bit early on Monday, wanted to make sure he'd gotten everything clear before meeting with SecNav.

And yes, he did.

When he heads up to Vance's office, he's feeling excited about this. The test he's got planned is beyond awesome, and he cannot wait to put it in action.

He gets up there and there's the usual 'Hello-how-are-you-doing' pleasantries. And to some degree it blows his mind that he's been invited to refer to Jarvis as _Clayt._ That doesn't feel real, but it is, and he only stumbles over it the first few times. In addition to Jarvis, there's his secretary, a meticulously precise young man named Remy James, and, of course, Vance.

Tim's already sent the emails detailing how he wants the general flow of the test to work, but they still have to settle on a specific ship to put everything into play. He's going to run the first test, on the first ship, and then write up his notes, write up how he came up with the test and design a protocol for doing this to other ships, and from there he's handing it off to someone in the Navy.

He takes a moment to go over the idea of the test again for all three men, how he's got it set so that he'll be slipping a program from his computers here to Norfolk, and from Norfolk a sub-program will hit the target ship, making one of the computers on the ship produce a program that tells the ship to target another ship in whatever combat group he's got. Communications with the outside world will then crash. A second later, the techs will see that the test ship is targeting another ship in the combat group. The tested ship will see the targeted's ships sensors spring on-line and start to aim to fire back. From inside the computer stations, it'll look like a catastrophe.

Tim wraps up his explanation with, "The test will last less than ten minutes, and real targeting as well firing will be off-line. Don't want anyone completely freaking out and actually firing. But this should result in a complete all hands on deck situation while the techs try to figure out what's going on."

"Then once the main part of the test is done?" Jarvis asks.

"I keep an eye on them. Track what they're doing. Full passing marks is them noticing it's up and shutting it down before the test really gets going. Say, a B would be them getting it stopped before the ship "fires." C work means they don't manage to get it stopped but they stay cool and in less than five hours figure out what happened. And anything beyond that… Well, you know what's after C."

Jarvis smiles dryly at that. "Lt. James has drawn up a list of test ships. The first one you'll run personally, on site, and from there…"

"I'll write it up so I can hand it off. Not a problem," Tim says, eager to see the list. He's pulling his phone out of his jacket, because the number of ships he knows by name is smaller than five, as James slides the paper in front of him.

He's looking at the list. Of course. Because that's how life always works. He sighs.

When he'd written up his idea for the test he'd been thinking of a few cruisers, or maybe, if one could be found, a nuclear sub (Using a nuclear sub for his test would have caused literal pants-wetting. Nuclear sub targeting a neighboring ship… That would have been fun.)

But it's not a nuclear sub. It's an aircraft carrier. And yes, if they scramble the jets, because they expect that one of the other ships in the combat group is about to fire on them… That'll be intense, too. Though, he's got to figure out how to safe guard this to make sure no one fires on the ship that's 'targeting' them.

So, on a logical level, he knows this is an excellent test ship. All the requirements are right. It'll work perfectly for the test. If he does it right he can get multiple ships all on full alert at once and see exactly how good an entire battle division is.

It's the perfect test.

That does nothing to quell his first response, which is an almost overwhelming desire to beg to not go on that ship.

It's the _Stennis._ The _Stennis_ is a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. It is _the_ operational hub of the entire Pacific fleet, and it is _the_ operational hub of the entire Pacific fleet because it is the flag ship of Admiral John McGee, Commander of the US Pacific Fleet.

Jarvis, his secretary Lt. James, and Vance are all sitting in Vance's office, waiting to see what he has to say about this, and maybe it's stupid pride, but he cannot make himself say, "That's my Dad's ship. I can't go on it without throwing up." So, instead he says, looking up at Jarvis "You can't let anyone on that ship know I'm coming aboard. Not if you want this test to work properly."

"Excuse me, McGee?" He sees the light start to flick on for Jarvis as he says his name.

"The _Stennis_ is my father's flagship. As soon as he sees my name is on the visitors' list he's going to get antsy and will put everyone on high alert. He won't know what's up, but he'll know it's something, because he knows I don't belong on his, or any, ship, and he'll know it has something to do with computers. He's going to figure out what's going on in a matter of seconds after he realizes I'm on the ship and his computer guys start yelling, but by then he won't be able to swing the test."

"Would he 'swing the test?'" Jarvis asks.

Tim turns his hands up in an _I don't know_ gesture. "If he knew it was a test, and he knew it was coming, he might not do anything 'intentionally,' but he'd probably beef up security and make sure his guys are on high alert. We're officially there for an inspection, right?"

Jarvis nods.

"Well, he'll be making sure everything's in ultra-ship-shape for that. And it's not like he's trying to swing the inspection, he just wants everything to look good, right?"

Jarvis nods.

"So, that'll probably be what his computer guys will be doing if he's got a hint of me on the ship." Tim feels pretty satisfied that that's a good reason for him to not be on that ship.

Jarvis thinks about it. "What would make this go best?"

"Probably work best if we picked a different ship. No one's going to know me on the Atlantic command."

Jarvis looks over to Lt. James. James spends a moment checking something on his phone. "Doable, but not a good plan if we want to keep this secret. We'd end up rescheduling everything, 'cause we can't do it the same day, and that'll cause scuttlebutt as to why exactly everyone's plans are upside down."

Tim nods. Classified ops work best with minimal scuttlebutt. So, plan B. What is plan B? "Okay. Just… stick someone else's name on the visitor's list. Someone who isn't a tech guy. Lt. James comes along on things like this, right?" James nods. "Put your name on the list, and then you take a few days off. As long as he," he nods to Jarvis, "doesn't mind carrying his own bag for a day or two, it'll work."

James smirks at that and rolls his eyes. Jarvis looks amused. "Lt. James does a bit more than just carry my bags."

Tim realizes how insulting that probably sounded. "Sorry." It's genuine, so James nods, accepting it. "I'm sure you do. Just… spinning my wheels looking for something."

"Unless you're also offering to keep my schedule straight, run my correspondence, and make sure the rest of the Navy functions while you run this test, it's probably a good idea for James to come along," Jarvis says with a smile.

"Point taken." He looks back to James. "I really am sorry. I don't have a secretary, so I don't actually know what you guys do. Who else usually comes along on things like this?"

"Usually a visitor or two." Jarvis smiles, if a new name needs to go on this, they should do it up right. "Do you have any undercover experience?"

"A very tiny bit. Been undercover fewer than ten times in fourteen years, and once I was playing myself."

Jarvis raises an eyebrow at that, and Vance doesn't look like he knows that story either. "Few years before you were here," Tim says to Vance. "We had to get into a club. No reasonable cause for a search warrant. Metro was working it with us, but they had someone leaking their moves. All of their people got turned away, 'not hot enough.' Anyway, my first book was out; I was on the New York Time's Bestseller list for the first time, so, Thom E. Gemcity and his three lady friends were able to get into the club. But most of my undercover work has been along the lines of being the guy who blends into the background and makes sure all the tech gear is working."

Jarvis thinks about that, looking at Tim. "Stand up."

Tim does.

"Can you pull off Navy posture?"

Tim tries, after all, not like he didn't get years of yelling at on how to stand up properly. He's got it, but it's fairly obvious it's not his natural posture.

"You hair isn't usually black is it?" Jarvis asks.

"Uh, no." Yeah, that looked cool Saturday night, but it's looking a bit dull and fake right now. According to Abby, it should be gone next shampoo or the one after.

"Will it be black on the eleventh?"

"I'd doubt that intensely."

"Good. Grow a beard. And… no nail polish, okay?" Jarvis is looking at Vance as he says that _you let him wear nail polish?_ on his face, and Vance has a _computer guys are weird, but this one is really good, so I humor him_ look on his.

"Not a problem."

"Wonderful. Feel like being a liaison to the British Navy?"

Tim smiles at that. He has an idea where this was going, and how he'll hide in plain sight. "What, Ireland doesn't have a Navy of its own?"

He'd meant it as a cute aside, but Jarvis' eyes light up and he grins. "Actually, it does. And it's tiny enough that just about no one knows anyone in it. So we don't have to worry about, the, 'Oh, do you know, Blah' trap." The smile gets wider. "James, add Captain T. McGee from the Irish Naval Service to the guest list. They've been expanding lately, looking at bigger ships, the _Stennis_ is still a few classes beyond what they're building, but maybe not beyond their dreams. I have a feeling Captain McGee is going to be coming along for the inspection and looking at the feasibility of an Nimitz-class aircraft carrier for the Irish Naval Service. My guess is that should float by whomever on your dad's staff actually checks things like that."

Tim's feeling pretty amused by that. "I'd imagine so."

They wrap things up from there. Test day is June 11th. They'll meet again on the 10th, make sure everything is in order, and from there…

Test time.

* * *

The more he thinks about it, the more calm he feels about it.

By the time he's back in his office, doing the coding, putting the test into play, nervous is bleeding away with the pleasure of doing this.

It is an awesome test. And getting an aircraft carrier involved does mean he's got an extra challenge, which he's looking forward to. He's got to make sure they don't scramble the jets and shoot the… according to his notes the _Borealis_ and the _Aether_ will be nearby, so that'll be the ships the _Stennis_ targets.

He spends two hours messing with the code, and finally decides the easiest way to make sure that the _Stennis_ doesn't send any of the planes after the _Borealis_ or the _Aether_ is to make sure that the _Stennis_ doesn't see themtargeting. If their tech guys are calm and alert, that'll probably make them notice something is wrong, but… It's more important to make sure no one gets killed on this than making sure it's a _perfect_ replica of an actual attack.

He takes a break, heading to grab himself some more coffee, thinking about why he's so nervous. After all, he's not walking into his dad's ship naked and alone. He's walking in as the personal guest of _Clayt,_ the freaking Secretary of the Navy, besides the President, he's pretty much the only guy left who outranks his dad.

Nothing is going to happen.

Okay, that's not true. His dad'll see him, and then he'll try to play that slightly sarcastic version of the happy family charade they always used to live under. It'd be annoying and uncomfortable, but that's it. Just like it was when he was sitting there with Gibbs. There's no way the man is going to flip out on him when he's standing next to his Boss following Jarvis' orders.

That's who he is. Assuming there's someone around who's keeping an eye on things, that's _always_ who he is. God forbid anyone see them not being the perfect, happy family.

Tim thinks about it more. This is a covert test. He's not Tim McGee, NCIS Director of Cybercrime, not on this mission. He's Captain T. McGee, Irish Naval Service, as long as he's on this test, as long as someone else is around, The Admiral can't even admit to knowing him.

Tim smiles at that as he heads back to his computer. That'll drive the old man buggy.

* * *

So, why does his voice sound nervous when he says to Abby and Gibbs that night as they have dinner, "I talked to SecNav today. Got the official time for the test."

"Great." She's excited for him, because as the only one of the group who gets all the ins and outs of what he's doing, she knows this is mad difficult and stratosphere-level computer geek sexy, so she, also, can't wait to see how it goes. "When are you going?" She puts the fajita vegetables on the table in front of them, while Tim grabs cheddar cheese and sour cream from the fridge.

"June 11th."

Abby smiles at him. "You excited?" Gibbs looks happy for him as he pats Kelly's back.

He half-smiles back, and she looks at him, curious. He should be having a better time with this. Gibbs catches it, too. He might not get all the ins and outs, but he knows Tim's been enjoying this. So, getting to show it off should be fun. "What?"

"It's on the _Stennis._ " Tim says as he pours the tortilla chips into a bowl, not looking at either of them.

"Oh." Abby says, stopping in the middle of the kitchen, bowl with grilled chicken in her hands, staring at Tim. Gibbs' eyes narrow. He doesn't know what John's flagship is, but he's not having a hard time figuring it out from the way Abby's looking at Tim.

"Yeah." All the nervous Tim talked himself out of comes back in a rush as he sees both of them looking really angry and sad. He sort of half smiles at them, taking the chicken from Abby, and putting it on the table, and the grabbing the tortillas.

"Don't go!" Abby says hot and fast, stopping him mid-stride, holding him by his shoulders. "You can do it from land. Do it from land!"

"It's already set."

"Unset it. Do not get onto his ship! It'll be bad."

He's looking at Gibbs for help, figuring if anyone'll get the whole 'just because it won't be fun doesn't mean I can't do it' aspect of this, but Gibbs is shaking his head, too.

"Don't go."

Okay, at this point nervous is back, and it's brought it's buddy, fear. Tim closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, tries to kill the butterflies dancing in his gut, and doesn't really succeed. "Look, I don't want to go, but, come on, nothing's going to happen. Sure, he'll be annoyed, but… He's not going to cuss me out in front of the Secretary of the Navy for doing the job he's asked me to do."

"Tim…" Abby looks scared, and scared is making her angry. Gibbs is just flat out angry.

"I know." He caresses her face. "The little kid part of my brain is scared, too. The rational part knows this'll be fine. I'm an adult. I will not allow myself to be alone with him. It'll be fine. Call it practice for the wedding or something like that. I'm sure we can be in the same room for a few hours… We did it before, remember," he looks to Gibbs, who was there, "during that case. It wasn't fun, but nothing really bad happened."

Gibbs eyes narrow, he was there, so he saw the kind of shit John pulled during the twenty or so minutes they were together. And yeah, it wasn't fun, and nothing 'really' bad happened, but… "Don't go. Call it… a conflict of interest. Hell, tell SecNav what happened to you as a kid. But don't go."

Tim shakes his head, hard. "I am _not_ talking to SecNav about that! Look, this is the job. I have to do it. He's lived his whole life for the Navy. The Navy is sending me to him. It'll be okay."

Abby doesn't look convinced, probably because he's not exactly doing a great job of being convincing. Probably because he's not convinced. Gibbs is shaking his head. "I'll go with you."

Tim's turn to narrow his eyes. He kisses Abby, and then goes to sit next to Jethro, putting his hand on Jethro's shoulder. "You go with me, you'll pick a fight with him, and it will become a problem. Might screw the test, and will get you arrested. Let's not do that. I want you home for Kelly's birthday party, not in jail for punching the shit out of The Admiral."

"He deserves to have someone pick a fight with him."

Tim lets that go. He agrees. But if anyone is going to pick a fight, it'll be him. "He's never disobeyed an order in his life. He'll be ordered to secrecy because it's a classified op. Being seen doing anything that blows my cover as Capt. McGee of the Irish Naval Service would violate that order. It'll be fine. When we're on the ship, he won't even be able to admit he knows me."

"Captain McGee?" Abby asks.

"That's the official reason I'll be on board. Jarvis is getting it squared away with the Irish Navy so they don't get any surprises with this, and if The Admiral's people check, my background will pass. I'll go in. I'll be 'inspecting the _Stennis_ and working on a report about the feasibility of adding one to the Irish Naval Service.' Get there, do the test, monitor their progress until they find out they were hacked, and then, depending on how long it takes, helio or fly back to land. Won't be there a minute longer than necessary."

"You better not be," Abby's staring at him, looking worried.

"I won't."

Gibbs doesn't look any more secure about that.

Tim shrugs. There's something here, something he needs to say, but he's not sure what. Picking the fight himself triggered some faint understanding of what's going on… and then he gets it, knows why nervous fell away before, and how to make it go away again. "The test is perfect. It's…" he smiles shaking his head, thinking of a way to translate this into Gibbs, "It's a dead center head shot at three klicks out in high winds and the target has cover. And I _want_ to do it to him." And beyond anything else, beyond nervous, there's that. He thinks about it more and knows that's why he didn't press for the Atlantic command. "He always thought the computer stuff was a waste of time, literally told me that MIT was 'me fucking away the best years of my life,' and I want to hit him with that. I want to do it. Once I get onboard, all he'll be able to do is sit there and watch as I throw his entire fleet," he makes a note to check and see exactly how many missiles are on the _Stennis_ , because he's going to target every ship even remotely near the _Stennis,_ and as he thinks about it more, if he can do it, he's going to have the smaller ships start targeting each other. "into disarray, with a computer, while his Boss sits there and _smiles_ at me while I do it."

Gibbs and Abby both get that. And Gibbs remembers Tim saying that if he was ever going to do anything about his dad, it would be _his,_ his tools, his attack. He'd own it from top to bottom.

So, Gibbs says it before Abby does but only by a second, he's still nervous about this, it feels bad in his gut, but he gets it, and she's getting it, too. "Okay."

* * *

They're getting ready for bed, brushing teeth, doing that traditional last pre-bed moments of the day routine.

When she's done with her teeth, Abby puts her brush back in its holder and stares at him. He finishes his teeth and says, "What?"

She sighs, steps in close, rests her head on his chest, wrapping her arms around his waist. "I get it. Saw the way you were looking when you were talking about the test. I know you need this, but… God, Tim, be careful. I've got a bad feeling on this, and Gibbs does, too."

He squeezes her tight, kissing her forehead. He's not sure how 'careful' he can be. Not like this is something where a vest'll come in handy.

He tilts her lips towards his and kisses her again. "All he ever had were words and my fear. His words can't hurt me anymore because you make me fearless."

She kisses him, and then nips his bottom lip. "You're being sweet, and I appreciate that, but I also know bullshit when I smell it, and that's a dairy farm's worth."

He shrugs. Of course she can read when he's 'trying to be brave.' "Yeah. I'm nervous, but…" He sighs again. The more he thinks about this, the more he wants it. He's got extra code dancing in his head. By the time this test is done, PacFleet will be so thoroughly fucked over The Admiral'll walk bowlegged for a month.

"I know. Like I said, I can see it. I know you need to be able to pull the rug out from under his feet and get some of your own back. I get it. But, be careful, stay near Jarvis, make sure you're locked in your quarters or you've got people around. Don't let yourself be alone with him."

"I won't. I'll be with Jarvis or James or in my quarters the whole time. I'm not going to spend a minute longer with him than I have to."

She's holding his face in her hands, staring into his eyes, "Okay."


	91. Karma

"Sure, I'll see her." Tony says, putting down his phone. Usually calls on his desk phone mean dispatch wants them to go deal with a dead body. Not today.

Today there's a call from the front desk, with a visitor.

One he really doesn't want to see.

"What is it, Tony?" Ziva asks. "You look like ghost just walked over your grave."

"Something like that."

"DiNozzo?" Draga asks.

Tony shakes his head. "Later. No way this isn't going to be a long story."

Ziva looks worried, but he shakes his head. He is worried. Why on earth would _she_ want to see him?

* * *

She's older now, of course she is, not like she found some sort of magical time stopping device. He could have walked by her a thousand times in a thousand grocery stores and never noticed. After all, they only met the one time, not like he burned her face into his mind. But she's here, sitting in the break room, staring, _glaring_ , at his wedding ring.

"What can I do for you, Helen?"

Dr. Helen Berkley, Jeanne Benoit's mother, looks up from the ring. Seems to be debating if she should even be here. But finally, glaring at him, she says, "Are you a bone marrow donor?"

"Excuse me?" Of all the things she could have asked, could have needed to see him about that, was… nothing he could have even possibly thought of.

Her voice is crisp and precise and slaps him with each word. "Not a single word of what I said was unclear. Are you on the bone marrow registry?"

Tony shakes his head. "No."

"Get on it! _Fast_. Before the end of work today. I am a doctor. I can and will take care of the blood work."

He feels the ice down his spine, knows there's only one reason why anyone would ask that of him, but he's got to hear the words, has to know it's really true.

"Why?"

Her eyes narrow, but she seems to think he probably is stupid enough not to figure this out for himself, so she says, "Because in December of 2007 my grandson was born. He has brown hair and hazel eyes. After what you did to her, his mother never spoke your name, but I can do simple arithmetic."

_Oh shit!_ He nods. "Okay. And I take it he's sick?"

" _Yes_." The heat in her eyes could boil him alive.

"She said she went to Africa."

"She did. Nothing about Africa prevents people from having babies there."

"I didn't know."

"No, you didn't. And the second she learned you had a real name, you lost all right to know."

"Yeah. Okay," _Fuck!_ If this isn't every worst nightmare he's ever had of the hookup who's got news for him, all combined and multiplied by twenty, he doesn't know what could be. "What do you need?"

"You to get on the bone marrow registry. I didn't think I was unclear about that."

"Won't that take a long time? Couldn't we just… do the test straight up?"

"Mr. DiNozzo, you are _not_ my grandson's father. You are, at _best_ , a stranger who may be able to provide him with the bone marrow he needs to survive. He will never meet you. He will never speak to you. You don't even get to know his name."

Tony holds up his hands. "Set whatever rules you like. I'll abide them. But, just, let's get it done as fast as we can. There's no need to jump through the hoops or whatever. Jeanne's not here to see me herself, even to save her son's life, then she must still hate me pretty fiercely."

Helen bit her lip.

"Helen?" That's a warning sign. Something about this really isn't right. Everything about this isn't right. He has a son. With Jeanne. Who's sick and… _Shit!_ He can't think about that right now. There's something else there, something about Jeanne, he's hit a nerve for Helen. _Think about that._

"You lost the right to know about that when she learned you had a real name, too." But her voice catches on that.

"Is Jeanne all right?"

"You don't get to know! I have privileges at Washington General. We can get the blood work there."

"That's… Okay. We've got a fully functional medical suite less than a hundred feet from here. If you'd like to do it even faster."

Helen shakes her head. "Washington General is close enough."

"I'll get my coat and be there in half an hour."

"Fine."

* * *

He skirts the bullpen, going out the back. He sends a quick text to Ziva. _It's a mess. Got to go for a bit. Back this afternoon. We'll talk._

_How bad is it?_

_Bad. Not in danger, not that kind of bad, but it's bad._

_Okay. This afternoon. Do I need to…_

_No. Nothing for you to do. Few hours, I'll be back._

* * *

He doesn't know what he's feeling as he drives. Numb. Numb is probably right.

_"Was any of it real?"_ Jeanne'd asked him, scared, angry, hurting, hurting so bad, and it was all on him.

_"No."_ God, he thought he'd done the right thing. Thought it'd be better to let her hate him. He wonders what would have happened if he had said 'Yes,' because, after all, it was real. He tries to imagine the life if he'd dropped the job and gone with her to… What? That apartment they were moving into, eventually a home in the 'burbs with a little boy who looks like him and a ring that matched one on Jeanne's finger?

Still be a cop? Moved onto something else? He sure as hell wasn't a Professor of Film Studies.

He tries to will that image to form in his mind, but it won't. He is who he is, and Jeanne's husband was never in the cards for him.

* * *

December of 2007, he'd be eight now. Brown hair, hazel eyes, and eight-years-old.

Eight-years-old, and no dad.

Of course Tony doesn't know that, not really. Jeanne may not have come because she married. There could be a guy who is this child's dad, but…

No.

He can't believe that she could hate him so much she'd let her son die rather than talk to him again.

But she could hate him enough to send her mom to do it. She could be sitting in a hospital room, holding his hand, worrying for him, husband, the man this child calls Dad by her side, hoping that somehow he's the Hail Mary that'll get her boy through this.

That works.

He pulls into Washington General, looking for a space.

* * *

He probably deserves Helen jabbing him three times before getting a good draw. Deserves a lot more than that. There are a lot of questions he'd like to ask, lots of things he wants to know, not the least of which is whether the child is actually his or not, but…

But he's already hurt this family enough, and even if the child is his, it's not like he's got any claim to him.

It's not enough to be the guy who broke your mom's heart. Even if she broke yours, too. Though, really, Jeanne didn't break his heart. He broke his own heart by not being enough of a man to choose her over the job.

Helen tosses him a band aid. "If you match, I'll let you know."

"Okay. Is there… I… I know you don't want me to have any contact. That's… Not fine… But I'll respect it… But, anything you need for him, anything I can do, anything I can ever do, call."

"How noble of you," Helen says, her voice indicating he would't know noble if he tripped over it.

"I can't change what I did—"

"No shit!" Her voice is scalding hot with anger.

"I didn't know about him. Didn't even suspect. And I won't go tromping into your family. But, just, anything..."

She's staring at him, furious, and he feels his body go on high alert, because this is a woman who will physically attack him if he so much as breathes wrong. "Here's what you can do: if you match up, you can provide my grandson with bone marrow, and after that you can remember that somewhere there's a child with your eyes who you will never know. You can spend the rest of your life knowing how you hurt his mother, and how, because of your lies, he never knew his father. You can go to sleep at night with your wife and maybe your kids and know that you failed your son and fucked his mother while lying to her about every single thing in your life, including the fact that you loved her. You can spend the rest of your life hurting for what you did to my child. And you can spend the rest of your life knowing your son is sick, but never knowing if he got better, never knowing if he's alive or not. You can _steep_ in the torture of that, and have it eat your insides out. That's what you can do!"

Tony swallows, wanting to step back, away from this rage, but not doing it, pressing the band aid to his elbow instead. "How long before you'll know if I match up?"

"Day after tomorrow."

* * *

He's been thinking of ways to say this to Ziva as he's driving back to the Navy Yard, but nothing feels right.

She knew about Jeanne. They've talked about it a little. Some at the time. Some since. She had a few Jeannes of her own in her past. She gets that that's the job, sometimes you hurt people, but you say it's for the greater good and you get up the next morning and you keep going.

But he can't for the life of him figure out how to start this conversation.

He heads through the metal detector at the front desk, strides toward the elevator, and finds himself hitting the B button instead of the 3 one that leads to the bullpen.

* * *

"I fucked up," Tony says, slumping into the chair next to Tim's desk.

"Mmm…" Tim's not listening, he's working on making sure that the test makes three separate ships look like they all began the programs on their own, while firing at each other. His fingers are flying over the keys and he's, at best, tangentially aware of the fact that Tony's in his office.

Tony stares at Tim, looking really hurt. "Way to show some sympathy, man. How 'bout you kick me in the balls a few times while you're at it?"

"Huh?" That gets Tim looking up. What Tony actually said hits him, and more than that, the look of utter desolation on his face, breaks Tim out of programming mode. "What's wrong?"

Tony told him. And wrapped up with, "Can't go to Gibbs with this; he'll snap my dick off for getting her pregnant and not sticking around long enough to find out. Don't even know where to begin how to say this to Ziva. I mean, she knows about the Jeanne thing, but…" Tony lets that trail off.

"Gibbs isn't going to be that hard on you. Franks didn't find out about his son until he was in his twenties, and Gibbs didn't have a fit about that. You do right by this kid, and you're not going to have any problems with Gibbs."

"Besides opening a vein and offering whatever he needs, what is doing right by him?"

Tim blows out a long breath. "I don't know. If Jeanne had been a one-night-stand or something, I'd say try to get involved in his life. Be a dad, or as much of one as she'll let you."

"But she wasn't. And she still hates me enough she sent her mom to come talk to me."

"Yeah."

"And she made it very clear that I am never to have anything, at all, to do with this child."

Tim nods.

"What would you do?"

The idea of being in this situation is so ridiculously foreign to Tim that he's got no idea, at all. "I really don't know."

"He's eight now, so he's got to wonder who his dad is. Of course, he might have a dad. She might be married, there might be a man who he calls Dad and if that's the case…"

"You want me to check her out, see what I can find?"

"Please." Tony sits there, glances at the door, seeming to think about moving, but doesn't. "What the hell am I going to tell Ziva?"

"Same thing Helen told you? That there was a very good reason why she took a year off before trying to get revenge?" It sounds lame as Tim says it, and he knows that, but he doesn't have anything better for Tony.

"Don't think that's going to cut it."

Tim shakes his head. "No. It's not."

* * *

The idea that there would be a downside to Tim's paperwork software never really hit anyone at NCIS until the software was up and running.

But, there is. Namely, they suddenly have way more agents then they need. When you go from, on average twenty hours a week of paperwork to an hour of database entry and five minutes of printing, you suddenly have a whole lot more time.

On the upside, the case backlog is dwindling rapidly. The cold cases are seeing more attention than ever before.

But, well, lots of time means lots of pranks. And Tinkerbell and Flyboy are right now in the middle of what, until this morning, was a vastly enjoyable prank war of epic levels, but is now, as Tony heads to Ziva's desk to talk to her and somehow triggers some sort of shrieking menace that one of his Junior Agents planted to prank the other one, rapidly becoming VERY annoying.

Tink's looking sheepish and shutting whatever that thing is up. Flyboy's grinning, very satisfied. Tony's eyes narrow. "If you have this much free time, you can go back to filling out the forms by hand."

Both of them look properly chastised and move so quickly to find something useful to do that they practically dematerialize.

Ziva's watching him, coolly, knowing something she's not going to like is about to hit her. "Here or at home?"

"Home."

* * *

"Home" actually translates to their car.

"Do you remember what I told you about Jeanne Benoit?"

She nods, pulling out of the parking lot.

"Her mother called me, today." Ziva's carefully holding her face, keeping her expression neutral, and beyond knowing that that's a coping mechanism for her, a way to shut things down so she can process, he doesn't know what precisely she's feeling. Probably dread, she knows the next sentence can't be good. "Her eight-year-old grandson is sick, and she asked me to give blood and see if I'm a match for a bone marrow donation."

She stops the car. They're at the entrance to the parking lot, not a good place to stop. People will want to get in and out. So she drive eight more feet and parks them in a new spot.

"You and Jeanne have a son?"

"I think so. She told me he's eight, and has brown hair and hazel eyes."

She doesn't say anything.

"I didn't know, Ziva. Didn't guess."

"I know." And she does know. Even if this wasn't something they talked about before they got married, granted not for Jeanne in specific, she can do the math, knows, as best as he can guess, how many partners he's had, and how careful wasn't how you would have described him for the first twenty years he was at it. So, for the whole time they've been together, she's known a day like this was possible. "Is he really yours?" Obviously he can be Tony's. They had sex. A lot. She knows that; it's not what she's asking. "Were you careful with Jeanne?"

He shakes his head. Usually they were. But there were a few times. He thinks back. Twice. There was twice, and they were just in it, and everything was going right and it felt right and… "Not always." He thinks more. "The last time was a few days before everything fell apart."

She nods. "And he is sick?"

"Yeah."

"Did she tell you anything?"

"Just that there's a child, he's a boy, he's sick, and she wanted to know if I was on the bone marrow donor list." He takes off his jacket and shows her the bandaged crook of his arm. "I gave her some blood. If I'm a match, she'll get back to me."

"And if not, you will never hear from her again."

"Yeah. She was very clear about this not being my child, and that I do not get any say in the matter."

"No, you do not."

She's still holding her face very carefully, and he doesn't know what she's thinking.

"Are you angry?"

"I don't…" She shakes her head. "Some. Yes. You should have been careful. Missions like that are hard enough on the people you leave behind even if you are careful. She should have told you. But it is long, long past. Long before there was an us. And I know, have known, just like you, that today was always a possibility. So, not too angry, but there is some. Sad, maybe? You have a child, and he's not mine."

"He's not mine, either, not really."

"But now that you know about him, you'd like him to be?"

"Yeah. No. I don't… His mom hates me, and she's got every right to. I told her it was all a lie, that there was never anything between us, that I'd faked the whole thing because I thought it'd be easier for her. Because then she could just be angry, and I could be the bastard, and there'd be a nice, clean break. And that's probably why she never told me.

"But he's sick, and he might want a dad. He might need one. He might already have one. I know nothing about him, nothing about them. And I don't know what the right thing to do is. I've got Tim hunting Jeanne down, looking into her. If she's married… If her son already has a dad, I'll leave them be."

"And if he doesn't?"

"I don't know. She still hates the idea of me so much her _mom_ came to see me. She didn't want to be in the same room with me long enough to ask for blood. I can't imagine how 'Hey, how about you let me spend time with our kid' would go. For all I know, Helen might not have told Jeanne she was coming to see me about it. Or Jeanne may have told her not to, knowing that if she asked, I wouldn't be able to leave it alone."

Ziva shakes her head. "Her son is sick. She'll go to whomever can make him better. And if that's you, it's you. I'm sure she knows Helen called you."

They sit there, in the car, people walking past, looking at them curiously.

"I don't want to rip up his family. He's sick, and that's as bad as it gets for parents. I don't want to add me to the mix and make it worse, more stressful. I don't want him thinking that he was just abandoned. Don't want him thinking I found out about him and couldn't be bothered to look him up. I don't want him wondering about me, and why I wasn't around. If Jeanne's been telling him I'm an asshole his whole life… I don't know what to do."

She squeezes his hands, and then turns the car on again. "I don't know, either."

"Where are we going?"

"Home, eventually. I'm taking you to Gibbs' house."

"You think he knows what to do?"

"No. I don't think anyone knows what to do with this. But I think some quiet time with him will make you feel a bit better."

He nods. "What are you going to do?"

"Learn about bone marrow transplants and donations."

He kisses her. "Thanks."

She nods.

* * *

Ziva drops Tony off and heads away, quickly.

He doesn't really notice that because he's feeling awfully scattered.

He heads in, and it's once he's in the house that it hits him, he's alone. It's a brilliant, sunny day out, mid-70s, birds are chirping. It's everything a spring day is supposed to be. Gibbs and Ducky, and maybe Penny, are at the house, putting up masonry or something.

So he's at Gibbs house, alone, with no car.

He's about to call Ziva back, but… Actually, alone time might be a good thing. He heads to the basement, currently empty, but the bourbon's down there, and pours himself a glass. Then he heads back up.

Tony takes a sip. For a second he's fully in right now, taste of bourbon on his tongue, awareness of the room around him, the feel of his clothing on his skin, and then the next second it's washed away by this: _I have a son!_

He feels dizzy at it, having to sit down. He has a son, and he's missed his whole life, and he's sick and hurting and in need and probably dying and his mother and grandmother will likely never let him see that child, won't let him try for a paternity test, won't…

He rubs his face. DiNozzo men don't cry, so he's not crying, he's wallowing in the epic fuck of all fucks this is.

His son was born, and lived, and got sick, and if he's not a match, may die, and he will have never seen him, never spoken a word to him, and yesterday none of that mattered but today it does. Today it burns.

Numb falls away, replaced by scalding pain, heart wrenching failure.

His son is dying, and he can't so much as walk in and hold his hand.


	92. Unfinished Business

Ziva did not go to research bone marrow donation. She will, eventually. But not yet, not now.

No, right now, she is driving back to the Navy Yard.

Right now, she knows that Jimmy is without a client. Tony asked Tim to check up on Jeanne and this child, so she heads for Autopsy and not the basement.

And right now, she wants to hit something, hard, a whole lot.

"Hey, Ziva," Jimmy says as she heads in, sounding and looking chipper. He's got a huge book in front of him, and from the looks of it is in the middle of studying something. Probably those continuing education credits he was talking about.

"Do you have a few minutes?"

Jimmy stares at her. Dr. Allan doesn't twig to it, but he does. Ziva is often cool, but right now, she's cold. Something's gone wrong.

"Sure. What's up?"

"It's private."

Jimmy nods. "Dr. Allan, can you get those reports filed and then all of the glassware sterilized?"

"No problem, Dr. Palmer."

"Thank you." And with that Jimmy steps out with Ziva, following her to the elevator. As soon as the doors shut, she hits the off switch and tells him what's happened.

"Oh." Jimmy starts to offer her a hug but she steps back. "Not hugs then. What can I do? Anything and everything you ever wanted to know about bone marrow donation?"

"Yes, eventually. Right now I need to fight. She should have told him."

Jimmy nods. "Grab your go bag, I'll get some scrubs, and we'll meet in the gym in five?"

"Good."

"You want me to grab Tim?"

She shakes her head. "He and Tony have talked, and he's supposed to be looking up Jeanne. I do not want to take him away from that."

"Okay."

* * *

Scrubs aren't great fighting gear, but it's what he's got, and it's a hell of a lot better than going in and trying to fight in a suit.

Ziva has her gym clothes handy, so she's looking about normal, and Jimmy had about nine seconds to notice that before she started hitting, and he started dodging.

It's entirely likely that people wondered what the hell was up when the Medical Examiner and Senior Agent DiNozzo were in the middle of a drop down, drag out, no-holds-barred fight on a Tuesday afternoon, but no one asked them.

They did, apparently, go in search of Tim, because less than twenty minutes after they started, he was leaning against the ropes, waiting for them to notice him.

Eventually, Jimmy's focus widened enough to see him there, and for him to call time.

Ziva's breathing hard, fire in her eyes, posture tense and ready to leap. Jimmy's looking grateful for the down time.

Tim looks at her. "He talked to you, huh?"

She nods.

"Want me to get in there, too?"

"I want you finding out what's going on."

"Computer's doing that right now. It doesn't need me hovering next to it. I can take a few rounds, let him catch his breath."

Jimmy's looking thankful for that. He hasn't tried one on one with a pissed off Ziva in months, and had forgotten how fast she is. The only good thing is that she's still in enough control to pull her punches and aim a bit wide, otherwise he'd be a walking bruise right now.

Ziva shakes her head. She's feeling calmer, has fought off all the first, major spike of fight or flight chemicals. "I've always known this could happen. When you marry a man who can only give you a stadium figure for how many women he's slept with, you know that there's a good shot that sooner or later a child will show up, but…"

"You didn't expect it to be Jeanne?" Jimmy asks.

"No." She bites her lip. "And I did not expect it to feel like this." Then she swallows, pushing that down and away, and turns to Tim. "Have you found anything?"

"Locked Facebook page I've got my computer hacking, a few newspaper articles about the vaccination outreach program she was doing in Ghanna back in '09. Tony was wondering if she was married, but I haven't seen any mention of a husband or her son, and her name is still Benoit. I've got the request in for her records, they should be up in the next hour or so."

"Thanks, McGee."

"Where's Tony?"

"Left him with Gibbs."

Tim does a little math in his head, how long they've been fighting, how long it takes to get to where Gibbs is and back, and… "How? I mean, I know you drive like crazy but, it's been less than two hours since I talked to Tony."

That's when Ziva remembers that Gibbs isn't at Gibbs' house and she winces. "I dropped him at Gibbs'."

"Oh." Jimmy says.

"Yes. I need to…"

They both nod at her.

"You will call when you know something?"

"Sure," Tim says.

"By the time you get there, I'll have links to everything you've ever wanted to know about bone marrow donations in your inbox."

"Thanks, Palmer."

* * *

When it rains, it pours.

All day Gibbs has been worrying about Tim. He's trying not to. Everything Tim said about that test makes sense. He will be with the Secretary of the Navy. Nothing is going to happen to him.

More than that, he needs to do it. He needs that shot to prove to his Dad… that he can beat him. That he's as good if not better than John ever was. That he made the right choices for himself, and then force his dad to see it.

So, he gets it.

And he talked with Duck about it. (Penny didn't come to the house today, she's prepping for her next classes, which begin the week after next. Some sort of high level grad-seminar where she gets together with each student before they begin the work.) Ducky gets it, too. He was talking about how this is a metaphorical slaying of the monster under the bed, and that it should be deeply cathartic and all this other psych stuff that Gibbs took to mean that it'd be a really good thing for Tim.

But his gut won't stop yelling. The last time it was yelling this loud, he was begging Shannon not to testify. With just as much luck as he's having with Tim. (He's also sure that Tim will not, in any way, shape or form, appreciate him heading over to Jarvis' house and saying he's coming along on this trip.)

To that, Ducky pointed out that he's already had one experience where he had to trust the safety of someone he held dear to someone else, and it failed miserably, so of course, he's on high alert. He felt that way about Abby before Kelly was born, and it turned out just fine. And that's true, but not particularly comforting. When Tim's back, in one physical and emotional piece, then he'll be able to settle.

So, he's already on edge when he gets home and finds Tony sitting on his sofa, alone, clutching a drink, and crying.

That hits him like a Mac Truck, ice down his spine, knees going week, because the only reason he can think of for Tony to be, _alone_ , at his house, crying, is that Ziva took a bullet. So he sits next to Tony, who jerks when he wraps an arm around him, seeming to notice him for the first time, not even trying to not cry.

Tony sees that, and tries to smile, tries to say, something, but his voice cracks before he can get anything out. Finally he gets himself together enough to say, "It's not Ziva. She's okay."

Gibbs is staring at him, lost. There's a rush of relief, but obviously something is really, really wrong.

"What?"

So Tony tells him, and Gibbs listens.

"Fuck." He says as Tony gets going. Not terribly elegant, but it's heartfelt.

Gibbs hates that mission. Hates the fact that it was stupid. He gets a revenge mission. Gets that in his bones, and he's run them, so he knows how to do them, _right_ , but that one… It wasn't stupid because it was about revenge. It was stupid because he's got no idea how it was supposed to work. Some sort of 'magic' or something. Because when it came down to it, as a way to get The Frog, it made absolutely no sense at all and there was way too much collateral damage.

And then, he thought about it, and it did make sense. Maybe. He hopes not. It's possible torturing Jeanne was always the entire objective of that mission. That would have been revenge for Jen: a 'Hurt my daddy, well look at what I can do to your daughter. Suck it, Frog, you can't protect her' scheme.

He can see the look on Tony's face, utterly haunted, wrecked at the idea of this child, and he hopes that wasn't what Jen was trying to do. Hopes she wasn't that cold.

He hates that she picked Tony for it. Once Gibbs found out what the mission was, if you could say that mission _was_ anything, it was clear that Tony wasn't cold enough for it. Ziva might have been able to pull it off, back then. He could have, back when he and Jen worked together the first time. But not Tony. Part of why he was the king of one-night-stand was that if he got to know a woman, he'd start to feel for her, and _feeling_ was the surest root to heartache for that sort of mission. For everyone involved.

But, of course, once again, if torturing Jeanne really was the point of that mission, Tony was the perfect guy for the job, because he would feel for her, sooner or later, and she'd feel it, too. Jeanne's emotions would feed on his. That would draw her in deeper, hurt her that much worse when it was time for the reveal.

He hates the fact that Jen was cold enough that he doesn't know for a fact if she planned her mission perfectly, got her target and inflicted maximum pain, or if she was reckless enough to plan a mission that half-assed.

Either way, that mission bit everyone it touched. And now, almost a decade later, it's still biting them in the ass.

When Tony's about three quarters of the way through the story, they hear a car pull up, door open, door shut, and light footfalls on the front step. Mona hops up, barking happily, (she loves Ziva) as Ziva head in.

"Hey," Tony says to her.

"You're home," she says to Gibbs.

"Got in ten minutes ago."

She looks to Tony. "I just realized you were here alone."

"It's okay. I needed some thinking time."

Ziva heads over to the sofa, sitting on Tony's other side, getting a kiss from Gibbs as she gets settled.

"What are you going to do?" Gibbs asks.

"McGee is checking to see if she's married. See if this child already has a dad," Ziva replies.

Gibbs stares at Tony and then shakes his head. "Cop out."

Tony stares back at him. "I wrecked her life and hurt her once. Barging back in again if she wants me nowhere near her or her kid…"

"Didn't say barge on in. I said seeing if he's got some other man in his life is a cop out. He's your kid. Your job is to be there. You didn't know about him before, fine, not your fault. You do now, so you do something about it. Doesn't matter if there's another man there."

"Okay. But, what? What's good for him? What's best for _him?_ Yeah, I want to know him, for me. But… is that being selfish? Is that good for him? For Jeanne? Her son is hurting; it's got to be killing her, me running back in won't make anything easier. And if there is another guy, and if he thinks that other guy is his father, I don't think me running in now and saying, 'Guess what?' is going to help. Hell, he's eight, I don't know if he even knows how the dad thing works, yet. So, I don't know what to do." Tony stares at the fireplace. Ziva's gently rubbing his neck.

And Gibbs, who can usually be relied on to have some sort of plan, for once, has no clue what to do, either.

* * *

"Is Agent DiNozzo all right, Dr. Palmer?" Dr. Allan asks when Jimmy gets back.

"She will be. I think." He stares at Allan for a moment, sure this is probably over the line, but… the whole thing will be all over the office soon, you can't suddenly end up with a kid and not have NCIS notice.

"Dr. Allan, condoms are your friend, use them, with spermicide. Protect your future wife from becoming an over-night surprise step-mom. Protect yourself from becoming an instant parent, having to deal with a co-parent who wants nothing to do with you. Protect your future children from the heartache of a family where mom hates dad."

Allan's eyes are very wide. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, not sure what to say to that. He settles on shutting his mouth and not saying anything. Jimmy nods. "Is the glassware sterilized?"

Allan swallows hard and then says, "Should be out of the autoclave in three minutes."

"Wonderful." It's fifteen minutes to traditional quitting time. "Feel free to take off a bit early. I don't think we'll have any guests today."

Allan nods. "Thank you, Doctor." He goes to gather his things, and then, as he's at the door, he stops, and turns to Jimmy. "Uh… Thanks for the advice, too, but… It's medically impossible for any of my partners to get pregnant."

Jimmy blinks at that, about to ask _why?_ when _why_ hits him and he feels like an utter moron. "Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't…"

Allan shrugs. "I didn't say. I'm out. If I was dating, I'd have told you I have a boyfriend, but I don't have one right now, so…"

"Ah." Something else hits Jimmy, and his eyes go wide at it. "Your friend… the one who inspired the career change…?"

"Was he more than a friend?" Allan asks.

"Yeah." Jimmy nods, feeling like the pieces of Dr. Allan are falling into place. As Ducky said, justice served is a powerful motivator, justice served for someone you love deeply… even more so.

"He was. William Dawset. The ME was able to prove murder, and who did it. No CSIs or Forensics Lab like Abby's got out there, the ME covered the whole thing. But he couldn't prove it was a hate crime on top of that. All the evidence for that was 'circumstantial.' You'd think sixteen stab wounds would have made an awfully compelling case for hate, but apparently the standard for anti-gay hate crimes in rural Georgia is beyond any possible doubt at all."

"I'm sorry." And Jimmy really, truly is.

Allan nods, feeling Jimmy's sympathy. "Thank you." He nods again. "Tomorrow, then."

"Tomorrow, Dr. Allan."

* * *

Jimmy closes up shop at five, and heads down to the basement.

Tim's still on his computer, reading intently from the looks of it.

"Hey," Jimmy says, stepping in. "You close to done?"

"Yeah, just about. Abby's wrapping up some testing, so I'm waiting for her."

"You tell her, yet?" he asks, half-leaning/half-sitting on Tim's desk.

"No. She's been working full-out today. You know that drug bust Kimmle caught?"

Jimmy shakes his head. "No dead body."

"Okay. Lots and lots of samples. They're running something like three hundred samples to trace where the drugs came from."

"Busy work."

"Yeah. Has to get done, but not a matter of life or death. So, she's wrapping up and handing it over to whichever lab rat's on today."

"You find anything, yet?"

"Actually, yeah. Got Jeanne's vital statistics back about ten minutes ago. It's…" Tim hands over the print out he's made.

Jimmy's eyes flick over it, and he sighs, feeling kicked in the gut. "That's why she didn't come."

"Yeah." Tim sighs, rubbing his eyes. "I'm trying to track down the boy. I've got a name, now, so that makes things easier, but so far, I can't find him."

"How hard can it be to find Aiden Benoit? You know he was born in December of '07."

"Yeah, well, name and birthdate isn't all that handy for a child who wasn't born in the US, and 'Africa' doesn't exactly narrow down the search. I'm coming up with nothing on the vital records for him. I'm even looking under Tony's name, thinking she might have filled him in as the father on the birth certificate, but… nothing, at all."

Jimmy stares at the obituary Tim printed out. It's the standard fare, picture of Jeanne, day of death (a week ago), no cause, a bit about who she was, what she did, when the funeral was (day before yesterday), the only line that's really standing out is the: Jeanne Benoit is survived by her mother, Dr. Helen Berkley and her son, Aiden Benoit.

Jimmy looks around Tim's office. "You've got a laptop in here somewhere, right?"

"In my bag. Why?"

"You find a cause of death. I'll find Aiden."

"How?"

"He's on the bone marrow registry. I'm a doctor. I'll find him. Let's see if we can get something useful for Tony."

* * *

It doesn't take long for Jimmy to smell a rat. Not long at all. He tries every spelling of Aiden Benoit he can think of, and nothing pops up. He widens the search to all of Virginia, nothing. He adds in Maryland and Delaware, still nothing. He double checks Helen Berkely in the Federal Medical Database, she's got admitting privileges at Washington General and Children's so she's got to live around here somewhere.

He checks Jeanne, she had admitting privileges at Washington General and Sibley. So she has to have lived somewhere in this area.

"Tim."

"Hmmm…" he scanning a police report.

"He's not in the bone marrow database."

Tim looks up.

"I'm breaking into his medical records. He's got to be somewhere here in DC, but he's not on the database."

Tim's eyes narrow. Jeanne's dead. Her mom's visiting Tony with a request for a bone marrow donation the day after her funeral. "This stinks."

"Yeah… it…" Jimmy's keying in his ID, requesting information, a few seconds later a selection of Aiden Benoits pop up, he clicks on two of them, finds the one with Jeanne Benoit listed as the mother, and he's found why Tim couldn't find him. "Aiden Benoit was born September 14, 2010."

And with that everything makes sense to Jimmy. Helen's angry, furious, grieving, and Tony's nearby and convenient, someone she can kick with impunity, and a way to feel like she's got come control back. "You find a cause of death yet?"

"Traffic report. Car accident, no witnesses. Car found in a ditch, upside down, she'd been dead for four hours. Blood alcohol level was .06."

"Not quite drunk."

"Just under the limit. It doesn't say how long they think she survived. It's possible she was over when the car flipped but under by the time she died."

Jimmy nods at that. "She ever marry?"

"Not that I can see."

"So, she's dead, maybe she's been spiraling out of control. Kid with no dad, driving drunk-ish… Maybe her mom blames Tony for that path. Maybe she's angry and just wants someone to kick, someone she thinks deserves it…" Jimmy, who until this point had been feeling mostly sympathy for Tony and Ziva, starts to shift. Starts feeling for Helen, the wall between him and the rage at a dead child isn't particularly thick. From there his brain heads to why Helen would hate Tony, what he did to her child. He starts to remember how he felt that night when he learned what Lee had been doing to him. Remembering that cold fear of being interrogated as a traitor, not knowing what was wrong or why, and then finding out what had happened, how he'd been used.

Tim's reaching for his phone, getting ready to call Tony, when Jimmy grabs his hand. Tim looks up at him. "Jimmy?"

"Don't call yet."

Tim's staring at him curiously. "Why?"

Jimmy's looking at Tim's desk, staring at the obit. "You ever meet her?"

"Not really. Think I saw her for a few seconds while she was framing Tony for murdering her father."

"That one never got solved, did it?"

"Kort said it was one of his. Don't think Gibbs bought that."

"But it wasn't Tony, right?"

"No. Thumb tap. Tony's big enough he wouldn't have needed to use that sort of hold on a person. You do that when you're a small person using pain to control a bigger person."

"Okay." Jimmy sighs, touching the picture of Jeanne's face. "That was a shit mission."

Tim nods; he agrees, sees the look on Jimmy's face as he stares at the shot of Jeanne and understands why this hits Jimmy harder than the rest of them.

"How many hours do you think she spent crying, hurting because of it?"

"I don't know, Jimmy. Enough so that she decided to try to get revenge."

Jimmy looks up at Tim. "She deserved something, Tim. Not life in prison for Tony, no, but… something, more than she got. He broke her heart on purpose. He used her... He fucked her, and he used her. Give it a night, please. Hold off until the morning to tell him."

Tim feels sympathy for what Jimmy's thinking, for the revenge he never got, but… "I say nothing, and we're hurting Ziva, too."

Jimmy stares at the ceiling; that's true, too. "I know. Twelve hours won't kill either of them."

"Jimmy…"

"Look, if it makes me a shit friend, I don't fucking care. He _deserves_ it, or something like it. I'm sorry it screws Ziva, too, but…" He's staring at Tim. "I was on the other side of it, Tim. Someone used me, and for a hell of a lot better reason, and it still hurt. You doubt everyone around you for… years. And I'll never get my own back. That bridge is beyond burned. And Jeanne won't either, her bridge is burned, too, but…" Jimmy shakes his head. "Look, I'll talk to Helen, make sure she never pulls any crap like this on him again, but, give him a night to deal with it. Please."

Abby walks in on both of them, Tim looking torn, Jimmy angry and earnest. "Oh, God, what did I miss today?"

They tell her, and sit there, her best friend and her husband, both of them staring at her, waiting for her to be the arbiter. She looks from Jimmy to Tim and back again.

"It's not kind, Jimmy."

"I know, Abby. That's pretty much the point. What he did to her wasn't kind, and it wasn't necessary, and… We're the good guys, right? It our job to protect the Jeannes out there, right? So, what kind of 'good guys' are we if this is okay?"

"Okay, Jimmy. I'll be quiet. Tim?"

Tim doesn't really like this. But… He can see how deeply this hits Jimmy. "Okay. First thing tomorrow morning, I'll let him know."

"Fine. Call him at the crack of dawn if you like. Actually, no. First thing, before work, before they usually leave, I'll be at their place and I'll explain. This is… my life and his intersecting in a crap way, so it's on me. I've got it."

"And you'll talk to Helen?" Tim asks. "I mean, if she's willing to pull this… She might be willing to go further."

"She won't, not after I talk to her."

"Okay." It's almost six when Tim says that. "Time for us to be getting home. Heather's going to start wondering where we are."

"Yeah." Jimmy says, agreeing. They're all standing up, getting ready to head out, when Jimmy says, "You didn't know about that op, did you?"

"Not until it was over," Tim replies.

"And you didn't approve, either, did you?"

Tim shakes his head. "I'm the only one on the team who's never slept with a suspect to get information out of them."

"She wasn't a suspect," Jimmy says.

"That's why Gibbs and Ziva didn't like that op, either," Tim replies.

* * *

Jimmy gets home, spends some time snugging his girls, hoping, as close to praying as he ever gets, that they never run into someone like Tony, explaining to Breena what happened today.

He'd told her, in a round-about sort of way, about Lee. That he'd had what he considered a serious relationship before her that went very, very bad.

And after the Fourth of July party, when he got thinking about Jeanne, and was feeling down, he told her the whole story of Michelle Lee, how she used him to get the information out, how for a while he'd thought she really liked him, but she got colder and colder and eventually he'd ended it, but, that was too little, too late, and for a while he ended up being a suspect in a treason case because of what she had been doing.

So, she knew that story. And she knows, as well as he does, the story of Jeanne, because he had to explain why that one set off his own feelings about being, basically, Jeanne.

And most of the time, he does a good job of not thinking about it. Most of the time, it's firmly in the past. But right now, it's not.

It's not that he wants Tony to suffer, not for too long. But he does want him to have a taste of that… fear, doubt, pain… anguish, that's probably the best word for it. He spent a night between finding out that Lee had been using him and learning that she had a damn good reason for it. And that night sucked.

Between the recriminations of how did he not see it, to whether it was all lies, did she even like him, ever, or was he just the easiest, stupidest, horniest target around, that night ached. People died because he was being led around by his dick. He opened himself up to that woman, relished her time and body and smiles, let her touch all of him, risked his job for her, cherished the quiet moments when they were both calming down and he could smell her hair against his lips. That's why they broke up, he wanted more of those quiet moments, and, apparently she didn't want any of them. Apparently, she didn't want the loud minutes, either, but… that was beside the point. You do what you need to do for your family, so she did.

And even when he knew why, which helped in that he at least developed some sympathy for why she would do it, he still had to wonder, why him?

They eat dinner, and put the girls to bed, and he's a million miles away through all of it. Michelle was an NCIS employee, killed by an NCIS employee, in the line of duty. The last time he saw her (though he wasn't supposed to, Ducky was supposed to handle that one solo) she was on a slab, in their morgue, dead.

And he felt stupid about it, but he cried for her, even knowing what she did to him, because he also knew why.

* * *

After dinner, he calls Washington General, and finds out that Helen's got a shift starting at eight.

Hopefully this can be in out and done. Because, while it's true that he wants Tony to hurt, some, for a night, he also doesn't want Helen deciding that now would be a spiffy time to try something even more intense. He wants her to know she's on their radar, and that this is her one free pass.

From here on out, anything she pulls will have consequences, and if she values her grandson, she will not risk them.

He pulls on his scrubs. Thinks about a lab coat to go with them, but all of his say NCIS on them. Scrubs and a clip board will do the job. Just one more doctor in a sea of doctors.

He kisses Breena and heads off.

* * *

"Dr. Helen Berkley?" She's talking to a nurse, wrapping up instructions for a patient when he says that.

"Yes…" She says, turning, not recognizing him.

"Dr. Palmer." He offers her his hand. "I'm with the bone marrow registry. I'd like to speak to you about your grandson, in private."

He sees the color drain from her face, and then she squares her shoulder, nods, and leads him off to a quiet corridor.

"I take it he sent you?"

"If by he, you mean Tony, no he didn't. He has no idea I'm here, nor will he. I sympathize with both your loss and what you're doing about it. So, I will not be informing Tony that your grandson is not only two years too young to be his, but not on the bone marrow recipient list." He doesn't mind lying to her, if she thinks her revenge works, there's no reason for her to ever try anything else.

"Why on earth not?"

He shakes his head. "As I said, I sympathize. Now: a warning. You are on our radar. If anything happens to Tony, if he sneezes, trips, and scrapes a knee, we're going to be checking you out about it. Assuming you like having custody of your grandson, you will do everything in your power to make sure we do not come to your house to investigate something bad happening to DiNozzo. Do you understand me?"

"No. I do not."

"Then I'll try this even more clear. You already know how badly my organization will fuck over an innocent bystander. You daughter already was that bystander. Do everything you can to make sure your grandson isn't one, too. Okay?"

She nods, eyes hot.

"Did you keep his bloodwork?"

She nods.

"Add it to the registry. Maybe we can get some good out of this mess after all."

Now her eyes are wide, and not hot, just puzzled. "You work for NCIS?"

"Yes."

"You're supposed to be arresting me, aren't you?"

"I wasn't aware that practical jokes are illegal. You do something illegal, we'll have a very different conversation. You think about doing something illegal, and I find out about it, we'll have that conversation. Goodbye, Dr. Berkley. I am sorry for your loss."

She rolls her eyes at that, and he leaves, hoping he's taken care of the issue.

Well, one of them, at least.

Tomorrow's soon enough to take care of the other ones.

* * *

He's pulling out of the hospital parking lot when he decides he wants to know more about that case. About how it was supposed to work.

Tim doesn't look very surprised when Jimmy just walks in twenty minutes later. He pauses the show he's watching and gets off the sofa. "What do you need?"

"Can you find Jeanne's case? I want to read the files on it."

"Come on." They head into his office. Tim pulls his writing chair over to his computer, and they both get settled. "Being a Director of NCIS should have some advantages, right?" he says as he starts digging into the case log.

Nothing comes up for Rene Benoit. He tries 'The Frog.' Nothing. 'La Grenouille.' Nothing.

Tim shakes his head. "They don't want anyone poking into this. It's probably all on paper, all is dotted and ts crossed and filed with the janitorial reports from 1956. Ummm… Okay…" He starts querying Shepard's records. "Yeah, they don't want anyone checking out Jen too closely. These are all locked down."

"You can get around that, right?"

Tim looks at Jimmy. "I'm the guy who designed the lock they're using to keep it hidden. Yeah, I can find a way around it." And he does.

They spend the next hour reading up on Jen, and having done so, it became very apparent why those records are locked. How she went from Probie, in '95 to Director in nine years was in there. And it wasn't pretty.

"God, she was ruthless," Jimmy says.

Tim nods. He didn't work with Jen much, and his most vivid memory of her was handing her his badge because he wasn't going to work for someone who valued looking good over doing good.

"Can't believe Morrow would put 'great ass' in a fitness eval. God, that'd get him fired so fast these days," Tim says.

What's not in any of those files is a mention of La Grenouille.

Tim looks up at Jimmy. "Whole thing was off the books from the looks of it."

"Okay. Tell me what you knew about it."

"Come on." Tim stands up. "You want a drink or something?"

"Got some tea?"

"Hot or iced?"

"Hot."

"Yeah, I can do that. Abby can kick in some of the story, too." Tim puts some water on, enough for Jimmy and him, and he's thinking Abby might want some, too. Yesterday and today she's been going through green tea like crazy. Jimmy's in their cupboard, rummaging through their tea stash. "Grab a green tea bag for Abby."

Jimmy nods, and a second later a tea bag is flying toward Tim's head. He catches it and puts it in a mug.

"What do you want?" Jimmy asks.

"Don't care. No caffeine."

Jimmy grabs two French vanilla chai blends, one for each of them, and Tim gets things set. "First thing I really knew was up was that Ziva was on his case. He kept vanishing, and didn't have good excuses, and it was bugging her."

"Didn't bug you?" Tim hands Jimmy his mug, and both of them go sit down.

"Not the way it bugged her." Tim puts down his mug. "Okay, I've never asked, and I do not actually know, but when Gibbs left, I think something happened with them. Tony's in charge; we've got these movie night things happening, but Lee and I were only invited to some of them, and every single one all four of us showed for, we left before Ziva did. Then Gibbs is back, and they're sniping at each other, and she's all pissed at him for ducking out and lying about it."

"You were working with Lee then?"

"Yeah, technically I was the Senior Agent and she was my Probie, for, I don't know, about two minutes."

"Did she ever… try anything with you?" Jimmy asks, looking vulnerable. Did she try another target first and fail, or did she aim straight for him?

Tim shakes his head. "Nah. Or if she did it was so subtle I didn't notice it. When did you two…"

"She started in what, May? June?"

Tim nods, it was something like that. "Think so."

"Before the summer was over, don't remember more specifically than that."

"Anyway, fast-forward to May, and Tony keeps getting pulled aside, and having 'meetings' with the Director, then next thing we know his car's been blown up, he's got this whole other job he's been working, and this girlfriend we've never met, and…"

Abby sits next to them, giving Jimmy's shoulder a squeeze as she does. "Getting up to date on the Frog?"

"That's the idea. What did you know about it?"

"Tony didn't kill him. That none of us thought he could even keep a secret until that job. That he loved her, or thought he did, but not enough to leave NCIS. That she loved him, but not enough to forgive him."

Jimmy snorts at that. He looks at Tim, Abby sitting on his lap, her arm draped over his shoulders as she sips her tea, and the easy way that his hand curls around her hip.

"Don't call that love." He points to the two of them. "That's love." He circles his finger to mean the three of them. "This is love. That was… lies and lust and… I mean, the whole time, he knew he was going in there to make her fall for him. That was the plan right? Seduce her, and then… Somehow get the goods on her dad?"

Abby nods, and Tim sighs. "Yeah, Jimmy, that's about it."

He stares at his mug. "First time I met Michelle, she had headed down to ask about something for Tony. Ducky wasn't in the office. It was just me, and for once, I knew the answer. He wanted to know if a wrench could have made that sort of fracture." Tim nods, he remembers that case. "And I got the x-ray out, double checked, outlined the fracture, said that it looked right for that, but if she wanted to wait, we could run it by Doctor Mallard, too. She looked up at me, smiled, then looked me up and down and asked if I'd like to get some coffee with her.

"I knew she wasn't in love with me. And I wasn't in love with her. But, it was nice, you know? She liked me, laughed at my jokes, made me feel special, and good. Made me feel desirable, ya know?"

Tim and Abby nod. Tim who also got asked out once a blue moon, and once by someone who was using him, and once by Tony pretending to be his ultimate woman, gets this intensely.

"And eventually there weren't any more jokes, and we stopped getting coffee or dinner, and I decided I wanted more from a woman than mechanical sex in the loading docks. So I broke up with her. But, I'd hoped, that when I said I wanted more, that she's have been okay with it. But she wasn't. So that was that.

"And then we knew what she was doing, but before I ever got to find out what had happened, if any of it ever meant anything, if she had ever liked me at all, she was dead. I never got to know if she seduced me from the get go, or if she looked me up and down and smiled because she liked what she saw."

Abby shifts off of Tim's lap, and he lets her go, easily. She hugs Jimmy from behind.

"She should have loved you."

He shrugs. "Not in the cards." She's gently rubbing his back, standing next to him while he sits. He leans his head against her side. "And I'm way better off with her not having loved me. But… I wish she had told me, or told you guys, or… I wish we could have gotten it fixed without anyone dying. If I had noticed what was going on… Been less stupid, less horny, at least four more people would be alive. God knows how much crap she got out of NCIS and what he did with it. Under my nose."

Abby kisses the top of his head.

He squeezes her hand gently. "Normally I don't think about it. It's not like it's always there, or even often there. It's been almost ten years. I don't dwell on it. But right now… I've forgiven her. Someone held a gun to her daughter's head and said 'Jump,' and if you do that to me, I'll say 'How high?' too. So, I get it. I don't like it, and it still hurts if I think about it, but I get it.

"But I don't get what he did. I don't get how he did it. I don't get it on a moral level, on a how on Earth you can possibly think this is okay level. I don't get it on a physical level. Jeanne was beautiful, but, I don't think I could get a hard-on if I knew I was lying to her like that. If I knew doing it would hurt her like that. I don't get how you do that and live with yourself.

"I don't get why it was necessary. There had to be another way to get this guy." Jimmy looks at Tim. "You said Kort claimed his people killed Benoit?"

"Yeah."

"So, that means the CIA was working the case, too?"

"Probably," Tim replies.

Abby thinks about it. "They'd have proper jurisdiction for it. He was almost never in the US, that's why you guys only got that one shot at him, right?"

"Think so. And technically, we were in Canada, and not really there, because he tried to stay out of the US."

Jimmy shakes his head again. "I don't get it." He looks up at Abby. "I was hoping he could get me the files, so I could get it…"

"But it was all off the books," Tim finishes.

Abby nods and hugs Jimmy again. "Only one way to get it, Jimmy, and that's talking to him."

"I will, but… unless Jeanne was actually part of the gun running ring, I don't there's anything he can come up with that I'll want to hear."

* * *

A/N: So, um, yeah, if you've ever wondered why I didn't much like Shepard and don't ship her with Gibbs, that cluster fuck of a mission of doom is why.


	93. Used

Hour to bed later than usual, hour earlier getting up, and a busy mind in between… Jimmy's had better nights.

Once he's up and moving he fires off a text to Ziva. _You on your jog?_

A minute later he gets back: _yes._

_Whole thing was a hoax. There is kid, but he was born in '10, he's not sick. Jeanne died last week, and Helen went a bit crazy._

Nothing comes back on his phone but he can imagine what Ziva's doing.

He gives her another few seconds, but nothing comes up. _I haven't told Tony, yet. Want to talk to him, in person, alone. Is that okay?_

_Why?_

_Got some things to say to him about this. He's not going to like them. You might not, either._

_Things about Jeanne?_

_No. Anything I know about her, I'll tell you, too. Things about him and me. You want to be there for this, that's fine, just be easier the two of us._

_Jimmy?_

_What do you remember about Michelle Lee?_

His cell stays blank for a moment, and then it rings. "Hi."

"Hi, Ziva."

"I remember Lee. I was the only one she didn't try to convince she did the right thing."

"Not the only one." After all, what could she have said to him? _I actually liked you._ That would have been nice. _I'm sorry._ Yeah, that would have gone a long way, too.

"I'm sorry. I… knew, but…"

"Didn't put it together?"

"Yes."

"Because I'm a guy? And as long as I got laid, I was getting what I wanted, so what's the problem? Guys don't get used, they don't feel bad about it after, not if they get sex, right?"

Ziva's honest enough, with both herself and the people around her to not dissemble. "That's part of it, yes. Mostly though, because _you_ ended it, before it blew up."

"Yeah. I did. Still bit me in the ass, though. Still got hauled in for questioning, for treason. Lucky Gibbs was running the investigation and he believed me. Still… had to deal with… all of it."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well… Anyway, got some things to say to Tony. About using people. About _sexually_ using someone. They aren't complimentary. He's unlikely to enjoy them. If you wanted to get yourself some breakfast, say for two hours or so, it's my treat."

He can feel her nodding. "It really is a hoax?"

"Yeah. It is. Jeanne was in a car accident last week. She died. Helen... I don't know how she came up with it, but making Tony hurt seemed like a good idea to her. I've already talked to Helen, she's not going to pull anything again."

Jimmy stops for a second there. "Ziva, I'm sorry this screws you, too. I really am. I'm sorry you're in the middle of this. I'm sorry this isn't just done, and we can't just all relax and kick back and let it go. I'm sorry, for you, to you, that _I_ can't just let it go. I want to. I'm a lot happier not thinking about this. But, right now, I can't get this out of my head, because I was where Jeanne was. So, I've got to go yell at him. And I know I'm going to hurt him, and I know that's going to hurt you, and I'm really sorry about that, because I don't want to be hurting you, but I don't know how I can stop hating him without it hitting you, too."

She doesn't say anything to that, and he wishes he could see her face, get a hint of what she's thinking. Finally she says, "You've already spoken to Helen?"

"Yes."

"How long have you known?"

"Since around six last night. I got into Aiden, the boy's, medical records around then. Couldn't find him on the bone marrow registry, so I went into the Federal Medical Database. Then I looked Helen up, found when she was on shift, and made sure she'd never pull anything on Tony again." She doesn't say anything. He has the sense that his apology is making a lot more sense to her right now. "Ziva?"

"You and McGee were working together to find Aiden?"

"Yeah. Tim was coming up empty because he had a name, but the wrong birthday, so... technically you aren't supposed to look up people who aren't your patients, but... any doctor has access to any patient, because you never know who'll roll in your door. It was the most direct way to get the information about him."

There's another quiet minute while she thinks about that. "I accept your apology, Jimmy." Her voice is tight as she says it, and he's got the sense there's something else in the background, something he doesn't know about, coming into play here.

"Thank you. Anything I say or do to him that you think is over the line, you get as many free shots as you want on me." As he says that, it occurs to him there's likely someone else hurting about this. "You want to give Gibbs a call? Let him know. Tell him I'm handling it."

"I can do that."

"Thanks."

* * *

Jimmy knocks twice, and after a minute, a tired, distressed, eyes rimmed red, bloodshot, and utterly fried-looking Tony opens the door.

He supposes he should be feeling sympathy for his friend. He supposes that if it was real, he would be feeling sympathy. His own attention didn't shift off of the grief Tony was dealing with until he knew it was fake.

But he's not feeling any sympathy. He's feeling satisfied. That tiny little voice in the back of his head jumping up and down shrieking, _You deserve this! Reap it, Tony, reap it!_ That little voice is making an awfully compelling argument to yell at Tony first, and then tell him it was a hoax. Because that voice remembers how he felt, how he looked, the morning after he found out what Lee had done.

Jimmy shuts it down. Twelve hours, one night, was enough. The first night is the worst. The first night hurts like fire and death, and that's what he wanted Tony to feel.

Jimmy follows him into their dining room, where the computer's on the table, Web MD, PubMed, American Lymphoma and Leukemia Association are up. Next to it is a bottle of bourbon, two thirds empty, a tumbler with about a quarter inch of bourbon in it, and a notebook filled with handwritten notes.

"Tell me you've got news," Tony says as he sits down.

Jimmy hands over both Aiden's birth certificate and Jeanne's obituary at once.

Tony looks from one to the other and back again. Eyes flicking so fast between them that he can't be actually reading what's on the pages. Confusion is written all over his face.

Finally he looks up at Jimmy. "These are real?"

"They're real. Aiden's five. He's healthy. Unless you and Jeanne had a one off for old time's sake 'round about New Year's 2010, there's no way he's yours."

Tony slumps with relief, shutting his computer, and then shoots back what's left of the bourbon in his glass. Then he stares at the obit. "What happened?"

"According to the police report she was driving, just over the limit or very close, car flipped, by the time anyone found her she was dead. Ruled an accident." Jimmy keeps his voice neutral, but as he sees Tony relax, sees the tension fade away, his own anger surges forward.

Tony's fingers gently touch Jeanne's face, and then he stands up, fast as it really, fully hits him what just happened, "That fucking bitch! I'm going—"

Jimmy's hand shoots out and he pulls Tony back into his seat. "You're going to do precisely _nothing_ , at all, about Helen Berkley."

"She—"

" _Nothing, Tony."_ This would be when Tony notices that Jimmy's holding onto not falling into full on rage by his fingernails. "You're going to sit here, and you're going to listen to me. And you're going to talk. You're going to take me through what the hell it was you thought you were doing, and then you're going to listen some more, because there's a shit ton of stuff I never got to say to Michelle. So, you didn't fuck me over personally, fine. But you don't get to complain, because you fucked Jeanne over the exact same way, and you did it for a hell of lot worse reason that Lee did. So start at the fucking beginning and make me understand how this could have _possibly_ made sense to you."

Tony shakes his head. "Can't be done, Jimmy. It was a bad case and it was a bad plan and everything about it went wrong."

"So, you what? Went in with your eyes open and fucked her knowing it was a bad plan?" Jimmy's staring at him, horrified. "I know you aren't a sociopath, so… what the fuck, Tony?"

"I… no. Not from day one. René Benoit was an arms dealer. Very security conscious. Very slick. No one could get close to him. No one could get enough for a conviction. Jen had spent a decade going after him, but he was a ghost. So, she hit me with a plan. He had a daughter. They weren't exactly close, but from everything they could find out he visited her a few times a year.

"He was a bad guy, Jimmy."

"Uh huh. That's why Ducky was so fond of him, so intrigued by him. Tell me about all the other murdering psychos Ducky liked."

Tony opens his hands… He can see this would be an especially bad time to bring up that one psycho Ducky was dating. "He sold guns to the murdering psychos, and he didn't care who they were or what they did with them."

Jimmy nods. He doesn't want to debate if René Benoit was a bad guy. He was. Fine. Doesn't justify what he did to Jeanne. "Why was NCIS even on the case? He was French, right?"

"Yeah."

"Arming people fighting against us?"

"No."

"Operating in the US?"

Tony shakes his head. "Rarely."

"Stole weapons from us to sell?"

"No."

"Killed a member of the Navy?"

"Technically, no. Shepard was sure he killed her father, who was a Marine."

"What was the official story?"

"Colonel Sheppard was taking bribes from Benoit, it was found out, an investigation opened, and he killed himself."

"So… Jenny had a full morgue at her disposal, the power to order her father exhumed, could have had us go over the whole thing, top to bottom, proven that he'd been murdered, or not. She had an entire Federal Agency at her beck and call, that could have been tapping Jeanne's phone, keeping her under 24/7 surveillance, just waiting for Daddy to show up and swoop him up."

Tony nods.

"But she didn't. And this guy's a complete ghost, but they were able to indict her daddy for taking bribes from him? How'd they know that, Tony? He's an arms dealer, you guys knew his name, that he had a daughter, and an ex-wife apparently, knew what he looked like, had at least some sort of money trail on him… How much of a ghost could he have possibly been?"

"I don't know," Tony shakes his head.

"So, it was, what, you and her?"

"I think Cynthia knew what she was doing, too."

"Oh, good, you and her, and the secretary. That's a brilliant plan. Just the three of you. That didn't, I don't know, tip you off to the fact that there was something intensely wrong about this? You've got Ziva and Tim sitting right next to you, someone who used to do missions like this all the time and the guy who can find anyone with a computer, and you didn't use them. Why?"

"Orders."

"Bullshit. We break dumb orders when we get them. We especially break orders to lie to each other about what we're up to."

Tony shakes his head. "Gibbs left. Last thing he said to me was, 'You'll do.' Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Shepard made me _Acting_ Team Leader. That was a kick in the balls, too. A month and a few cases later, she calls me up. She's impressed with how well I've been doing. She's got a case. A case that only I can do." Tony flashes his patented DiNozzo charm smile. It looks ghastly on his tear-puffy face. "A case straight out of a James Bond movie."

"James Bond is a sociopath, not a hero!"

Tony ignores that. "The bad guy even has his own code name. La Grenouille. The Frog. Everyone else who has tried to take him down has failed. He has made, spotted, outed everyone else who's gotten close. But me, I'm Mr. Charm. I'm smooth, and dapper, look damn good in a tux, and it's my job to go in and be the one he'll never see coming. You want to know why I took it? Because it played perfectly into the image of the guy I wanted to be.

"I was smooth, and cool, and perfect." He licks his lips, very uncomfortable. "I was Jeanne's dream man. Warm, flirtatious, attentive, romantic. Over the top romantic. And she fell for me, and I fell for her, and… and then I didn't know how to get out of it."

"You didn't know how to get out of it?" Jimmy couldn't look less impressed with that if he tried, and Tony looks so embarrassed by it, he wants to squirm out of his skin.

"No."

" _You tell the fucking truth_ , that's what you do! That's how you get out of it. You didn't know? You didn't _want_ to get out of it! You wanted her to keep adoring you, and you knew she'd hate you when she found out, so you just kept it up, digging in deeper and deeper, cutting her heart out that much further each day you were there."

"It was my job…"

"Bullshit. Bull fucking shit, Tony! We're the good guys, right, Tony? I mean, that's why we do this, right? That's why you've got that badge, right? Because at the end of the day, we're the guys who fix up the mess; we're the guys who protect the innocent, right? _That's_ the job. We've got all these laws, and all these regulations, and ideas and... and if we need to we say 'fuck 'em' because we do what we need to do to protect the people who need protecting. _Always._ That's who we are. We're supposed to be the goddamn white fucking knights who come to the rescue. We're supposed to protect the Jeannes, not pray on them!" Jimmy unclenches his fists, makes his breathing and heart calm down.

"You were getting a place together, right?"

Tony nods.

"How was that going to work, Tony? You couldn't get out of it… How was it going to work? You going to lie to her forever? You think she'd be stupid enough to not notice when Dad goes missing?"

"I didn't… I loved her and—"

"Stop. Stop right there. You loved you. You loved how she made you feel. You're married now. I'm married now. Hopefully we both know enough about love to know that's shit, so don't even try that on me. If you had loved her, you would have told her who you were. You would have picked her over Shepard, over the job. I know if Vance walked in today and asked you to fuck over Ziva, you'd introduce his ass to your foot so hard you'd have to pry your shoe out from between his teeth. 'Cause that's how love works. You would have cared about how she felt, and you would have rather ripped your own heart out than have made her face that night where she knew who you really were alone, by herself, sitting on the floor crying for being stupid. You would have handed in your badge, and then gone to her, and told her everything, _that's_ what you would have done if you had loved her.

Jimmy's not looking at Tony as he says this. He's looking behind him a little. "You know how that night feels Tony? Got any clue?

"I already knew Lee was using me. I felt it change. Playful vanished, fun fell away, we stopped spending time together that wasn't sex. It happens. She didn't actually like me, I guess, but liked what I could do for her, and that wasn't enough, so I broke up with her, told her I didn't want to be her fuck buddy. That getting laid wasn't enough." Jimmy sighs. "You break up, and… you've got all the why didn't it work, why didn't she like me, blah, blah, blah. At least I could scratch _an_ itch for her. Maybe she didn't want to have dinner with me after, maybe I was too goofy for that, but hey, I'm good at sex, so there's that, right? But, you know, being a great fuck, that's really hollow when it's clear that she doesn't think you're a good enough person to get coffee with after.

"And then there's not even that." He's shaking his head while he says that. "There's not any of it. I had access to something she needed, and my dick was the easiest way to manipulate me into giving it to her." He bites his lip, still not looking at Tony.

"You feel used. You feel violated. You feel dirty. And so goddamn fucking _stupid!_ She played me for more than a year. That's almost as long as you played Jeanne, for, right, Tony?"

Tony nods, curtly.

"And the what ifs… Hours of what ifs. What if I had headed back and seen her messing around? What if I had stayed with her a bit longer? What if I had broken up with her sooner? What if I had been smarter? What if… Jeanne must have had a million of them, too.

"I've wondered if that's what it feels like to be raped. 'Cause I sure as hell didn't consent to what she did to me, and Jeanne sure as hell didn't consent to what you did to her. Sure, no force, no bruises, and you're not scared when it happens, so, not the same as violent rape. You're not sitting there, shaking after. Maybe not. Maybe Jeanne wasn't. I was. Shaking that is. But I was shaking mad, not shaking scared, at least, once I knew I wasn't going to go to prison for treason; I was shaking scared, then. But, for me at least, force would have been easier; force would have been out of my hands. Someone holds a gun to my head, there's nothing I can do about it.

"But she didn't do that. She was warm, and cute, and sexy. And I was lonely and horny. And then a beautiful woman was smiling at me, listening to what I had to say, kissing me… I have to live with being the stupid son-of-a-bitch who let someone else use my desire, my need for affection, and body to turn me into a tool. I have to deal with being the one who was so bad at reading another person that I couldn't tell I was being used until it was way too late. I've got to live with the fact that people literally died, her among them, because she was able to play me. Because I wasn't smart enough to figure it out sooner.

"Jeanne never married. What a shock! All of your relationships after, there's that tinge of this hanging over it. Is it real? Am I reading this person well? You don't want to even guess how long it took before I could relax enough with another woman to even get a hard-on. And, I wasn't in love with Lee. I just liked her. But Jeanne, she loved you, right?"

Tony nods again.

"Part of Breena and I working was that she wanted to take it slow and wouldn't sleep with me until we were married. I wasn't just being good to her on that one. She didn't know it, not then, but those first few months, until I was sure about her, she was giving me the space I needed to be comfortable enough in trusting someone like that again."

Jimmy stops at that, watching Tony, who is sitting there, silent, letting him vent.

"We're friends, right? And I can see it, this pisses you off. What happened to me makes you angry. You've got a lot going on in your head right now, but some of it is that you really hate Michelle Lee because of what she did to me, and how bad it hurt me."

Tony nods at that, too. Because that's true, and he does, and he had no idea it hit Jimmy that hard, but… they barely knew each other back then. Been out for drinks a few times, but that was it.

"Jeanne was a person, just like me. She had friends. I bet they missed her when she ran away to Africa. I bet they hate you, the way you hate Lee right now." Jimmy rubs his eyes, noticing for the first time he's been crying as he's been saying this. "How did you do it, Tony? You're naked, in her arms, in her body, and she's so in love with you. You could feel it, right? The way she adored you. You couldn't not see it in her eyes and feel it in her touch. How do you lie to her, day after day after day, month after month?"

Jimmy waits a few beats to see if Tony will try to answer that, but he doesn't.

"Lee was saving her little girl. I hate what she did to me, hate that she didn't immediately go to you guys and get it fixed, 'cause you guys would have fixed it. Moved heaven and earth and killed everyone who needed to be killed to fix it, because that's what you do. But I can live with what she did, because I can understand it. Because if I didn't have you guys, I'd steamroller whoever I needed to to keep my girls safe, too.

"But I don't understand what you did to Jeanne. I can normally just not think about it. Usually I'm unaware of it. Literally didn't put it together until last July, 'cause you and her were over and done before the stuff with Lee and I. And I like you, and I want you in my life, and you're not that guy anymore, and I know that, I do. So… It's like there's a wall in your life, and anything before 2010, I just don't look at too hard. But right now, that wall's down, and I can't not look at what you did to her, because someone did it to me, too."

Jimmy stands up, back against the refrigerator. "So, no. You're not going to do anything about or to Helen. You literally and figuratively screwed her little girl and right now, she's out of her mind with grief because she just buried her daughter, and I know all about that, too. That's something else, I never wanted to know anything about…" Jimmy swallows hard. "But life didn't work out that way." He rubs his face again. "And, um… you're on the bone marrow registry, and from everything I know, donating hurts like hell and takes you out of commission for a long time, and if you come up as a match for someone, you're going to donate bone marrow, even if I have to hold a gun to your head to make you do it. And I know it was a long time ago, and I know you can't change it, and that you wouldn't take that mission now. I know you're not that guy, not anymore. But… until I can get that wall back up in my mind, I don't want to see you. You need something from autopsy, Ziva can get it."

And with that, Jimmy left.


	94. Disconnect

Okay, so apparently the last few chapters aren't hitting right. I've been kind of blindsided by the response I'm getting here, because to me, how this works is really, really obvious.

Unfortunately a lot of the 'I hate this' type responses were done on guest, so I couldn't ask questions and get a better sense for why it wasn't working.

Fortunately Marlex (thank you thank you thank you) responded to me off anon, which means I got to ask her some questions, and get a sense for what's going on out there in reader land.

Now, obviously, she doesn't speak for all of you, but I was at least able to get a general sense of why this isn't working.

Anyhoo…

Apparently, out in reader-land, especially reader-land who are not happy with the last chapters, there seems to be this consensus that A: What Tony did to Jeanne was, unfortunate, kind of icky, but all in all, not that bad/not really his fault, he was being manipulated too, other people have done it, undercover work is emotionally messy, so on and so forth. B: Because Tony did not personally do it to Jimmy, Jimmy has no right to be mad at Tony. And C: Jimmy needs to calm the fuck down, he's WAY overreacting.

Now, I'll admit that hit me as a complete shock. I did not expect that at all.

Here's why.

To me, what Tony did to Jeanne was despicable. It was completely unwarranted. There is no possible way to justify what he did. By the end of season four, Tony no longer qualifies as a good guy, and working his way back there is his major NCIS character arc.

Becoming a good man is half of Tony's character arc for this story, too. I feel like I started with him in spitting distance of that goal, and I'm going to get him there. However, he's got some back issues that have to be dealt with before he can get there, A: He was a bully. B: Jeanne. C: Commitment issues left over from past emotional trauma.

A's dealt with in Shards, and 9/10ths done in STAW. C's two down and one to go. Which means we're on B.

Now, look, as an author, I fully believe that the text should stand on its own and that if you've got to explain what you're thinking as the author, you've got a major problem.

But judging by the comments I'm getting, we've got a major problem. So, let's get this worked out!

I'm going to break down season four here. If I'm wrong, if I'm missing something, if you've got something cannon you think needs to be considered that will change my understanding of what happened, hit me with it. As you probably all know, when I get done with the whole thing, I'm going to rewrite and if there's something I'm really missing here, then I can and will re-do. (Or, if it's really hardcore what I'm missing, I'll drop this.)

Okay, the Jeanne mission as Keryl (and by default Keryl's characters) understand it:

Let's start with what Tony knows about the case on the presumptive Day One. Shepard wants help. It's an undercover mission. Deep cover. It will involve him doing surveillance, tracking people, placing bugs, taking pictures, and hunting down The Frog. None of that is the deep cover part, though. That's the shallow cover part and he'll get made by Trent Kort approximately nineteen seconds after Kort sees him for the first time. The deep cover part is that, in addition to all of that traditional legwork, Tony will also seduce the Frog's daughter in an effort to make her fall in love with him and introduce him to Daddy.

Now, I'm assuming that at this point he had to ask, 'And what happens when I meet Daddy?"

Good question, what was the endgame of this mission? We don't know what Shepard told him, but I'm going to assume it wasn't "You get me his location, and I murder him." However, given that when she had the Frog in her home, with Gibbs, who has, if not a gun, then at least a knife, standing there at the doorway, and Benoit is begging her for protective custody, she does not take him into custody. So, I think it's safe to say, her endgame for this was always the Frog's death. She never had any intention of taking him into custody.

All right, so she probably tells Tony something like, 'extraction team,' because there's no way she said, 'murder.' I may think Tony went darkside on this season, but I don't think he signed up for wetwork.

I'm sure he got some sort of dossier on The Frog. I'm sure The Frog was one awful son of a bitch. I do not doubt in any way, shape, or form that the world is a better place because he's not in it anymore. And I'm certain Tony didn't doubt that either.

Now, at this point, Tony should have asked some questions, like, 'Do we have jurisdiction on this?' (No.) 'How about a warrant?' (No) 'What information am I supposed to get from Jeanne? (Location of the Frog) 'Can't I do that just by following her?' (No) 'Why not?' (It screws my revenge plans) 'I've never run an op like this before, why me?' (You're easily manipulated, and don't appear to be bright enough to figure out that this plan is a disaster.)

He should have asked some follow up questions: 'Who is on this mission with me?' (No one) 'Will I stop doing my regular job?' (No) Can I tell anyone? (More on this later) So, really, I've got no real undercover training, I've only run my own team for a month or so (which you expect me to keep doing, by the way) are you really sure you want _me_ to do _this?_

All of these things should have been flags that this was a bad op from the get go. But at this point I'll give Tony the benefit of the doubt, and say that he believes this is a real, sanctioned, mission. The Frog is a bad guy. Tony's getting all of his information from Jen, he's likely got less than a third of the picture, and it's not like a seduction op has never been heard of.

So, he gets to seducing. Now, look, I'm already pissed at him at this point because there is literally nothing Jeanne can give him up close that she can't give him from afar. She has precisely one useful piece of information, and that's the location of Daddy. This information can be ascertained just as easily by watching her as it can by getting into her bed.

In fact, bugging her phone, keeping an eye on her, reading her emails, all of that might have provided even more useful information on the location of Daddy. But they don't do that. Why? Because that would require either A: A Warrant (see above about not having one, and more below on this as well) or B: Someone with some tech skills who won't ask any questions and has no moral qualms about doing this. (Apparently that someone was not available. Another question Tony should have asked: Why can't my team help with this? 'Cause, you know, we're a whole lot more likely to succeed if I've got back up.)

However, if any of you can think of any information Jeanne was supposed to have that Tony could only get from her in bed, I'm all for it. Give it to me, because I'd prefer not thinking of him as one of the bad guys. But, as I understand season four, I cannot come up with any other conclusion that this is the story of Tony going to the darkside and seasons 5-now is him coming back from there.

So, time marches on, he meets Jeanne, they get to know each other, go on some dates. He's also doing surveillance, bugging people, and running his team, and his team is starting to wonder what's going on. Why does he keep vanishing?

Now, my memory is that he tells them he's doing 'something' for the Director, and the only bit of this that he keeps top secret, hush hush, never mentions at all, is Jeanne, but I may be wrong about that.

I know we are given the impression that he has been ordered to silence on this mission; that he cannot talk about it. I know Gibbs believes that he'd been ordered to silence on this mission.

And I'm awfully certain that's a lie.

How? Why? Wait, what, Keryl?

When Tony's sitting there with Jen talking about sleeping with Jeanne, A: Jen knows the full context of this conversation. We in viewer-land don't, not until the second watch through, but she does. So B: There's no reason for him to beat around the bush or dissemble. And C: he says to her, 'I would have gone to Gibbs about this, but his track record with women sucks.'

Re-read that. 'I would have gone to Gibbs…' Uh, wait, he's talking to the person who, if he had been ordered to silence, would have been the one who ordered him not to talk. But he doesn't say, 'I would have gone to Gibbs…" and then let it trail off. Or 'I'd talk to Gibbs, but I can't.' He says he doesn't talk to Gibbs because Gibbs is bad at… relationships? Sure, that's how we're supposed to understand that, because the first time we see this scene we don't know the relationship between Jeanne and Tony isn't real.

Second watch, well, it's not a real relationship. Jen knows it's not a real relationship, hell, she's the one telling Tony, 'Go ahead, fuck Jeanne, it's fine.' (Speaking of Tony going darkside. This scene, where he's asking for permission to sleep with Jeanne, this one is chilling. He knows what he wants to do is wrong. He's asking for absolution. He's asking to not have to take responsibility for his actions because he knows it's a crap move. And of course, Jen's ready and willing to jump right on in and offer it to him. If he thought sleeping with Jeanne was right, he would have just done it. At no time in any of 250+ episodes of NCIS has Tony ever asked for permission to do the _right_ thing.) But, no Jen's telling him, 'Brain off, dick in charge, go have fun.' (Speaking of warning signs that this mission is a mess, _that_ should have been a huge one.) And he's saying he doesn't want to talk to Gibbs because he's bad at… Pretending to be in love? Not falling in love with his partner? Would rip Tony's balls off if he knew about this mission and how badly run it is? Pick whatever version you like, but three ex-wives isn't the issue, because they aren't actually talking about a love affair.

But don't tell me he was ordered to silence, because that conversation makes literally no sense _at all_ if he _cannot_ talk to Gibbs.

So, we've got this lousy mission, with a dumbass objective, that Tony is actively lying to his team about, especially Ziva, who is _worried about him_ to the point of researching the Plague and practically stalking him to see if he's okay. And he refuses to say anything, even, 'I'm on a mission, can't talk,' to ease their minds.

Now, at this point I'm out of doubt to give Tony the benefit of. To me he's gone full on darkside, but some of you may not be convinced, so let's say he still believes that getting the Frog is a really big deal, that the Frog is a very bad dude and that he _has_ to be captured.

Say that's true. Oh, wait, Shepard's back. 'Hey Tony, I've got a team waiting for you in Spain.'

'But, what about the mission?'

'Eh, don't worry about it, I've got it covered.' Yes, I'm paraphrasing, but really, watch that scene again and tell me you believe that this mission is so important, so vital, so… So bullshit. He's the only guy on the mission. The mission stops happening if he leaves. The fact that he doesn't have a team working on said mission is another hint that it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, _vital._

So, okay, he's lying to Jeanne, seducing her, knowing everything he's doing to her is a lie, and lying to his _team_ , for a _non-critical_ mission that can be dropped at a moment's notice. Am I missing something?

But, wait, he's falling in _lurve_ with Jeanne. While I do genuinely believe he cared for Jeanne, and I truly believe he enjoyed her, and I know he experienced pain because of the conflict between what he's doing to her and how it is going to hurt her, there is no way in hell that I will refer to that situation as love.

The only thing that was made clear by Season Four is that Tony loves Tony and will do whatever he can to keep himself as happy as he can be.

I haven't watched every episode of season four in a while (Hence the whole, if I am missing a critical piece of information that would sway my mind, please, bring it on. I'll stop this storyline dead if any of you can give me a _good_ reason for why Tony did what he did to Jeanne.) the only act of real, selfless love I can remember is Tim standing up for his sister. Though maybe Ziva and Sanders get close.

Tony doesn't have that sort of love for Jeanne, and he doesn't have that sort of love for his team, and he sure as hell doesn't have that sort of love for Ziva.

At this point in the season, he is literally screwing every single person he cares about for the sake of this God-awful mission.

Oh, and Cassidy departs her 'if you love someone…' message and promptly dies bit.

So he tells Jeanne he loves her. And I'm sure at that moment he has very intense feelings toward Jeanne. They are likely tender. Whatever they are, they aren't love, because Jimmy is dead-on right. If he had loved her, he would have turned in his badge, and then told her exactly who he was and what he had done, because 'I love you so much I resigned my job and burned my future with NCIS because I couldn't stand to spend another moment lying to you,' is the correct answer if you actually love someone. Digging in deeper and piling one lie on top of another lie on top of another is NOT LOVE.

And then from there it just gets worse. Trent Kort is on the job. Trent Kort is a hell of a lot further along on the job than NCIS is. Trent Kort is in actual danger of taking Benoit down, with no collateral damage. Trent Kort, who is always portrayed as being a villain who just happens to be, sort of, on their side, is doing a better job of this mission and he's doing it right. (Probably, because as a CIA operative, he's actually trained to do this sort of mission and has a _team_ backing him up.)

Now, perhaps, at this juncture, when we know that Trent has made Tony and Tony's made Trent, that possibly, in that NCIS does not, in fact, have jurisdiction here, and that their mission is, you know, kind of illegal, maybe Tony could have suggested that, in that the supposed love of his life is being hurt more and more as each day on the hunt for the Frog passes, that they could let Kort take Grenouille down?

But he doesn't do that, does he?

I've mentioned the illegal thing a few times, but I haven't made the case for it yet, so here goes. In the US it is not legal to just barge in on private citizens and keep track of their lives without a warrant. (We've been having something of a flap about this in regards to the NSA.) In the US cops are not allowed to muck around with people who are not suspects of anything in order to get information. They can ask questions, but if they are doing so, they have to allow the person being questioned access to a lawyer, and if they do not charge that person with any crime, that person can walk away whenever he so desires. If that person refuses to answer questions, they may charge that person with obstruction of justice, then we do the whole lawyer thing again.

Now, I know you've seen the undercover story lines before. But what do those storylines usually have in common? First off the target is actually guilty, or suspected to be guilty of something. (IE whoever is undercover actually has real, legal authorization to go after the person in question.) Secondly, they often happen outside of the US and/or do not involve US citizens. (There's a reason why the CIA is usually involved in this storyline, and that's because they operate outside the US with non-US citizens.)

But, inside the US, with a US citizen, the cops are supposed to let her know that they are messing with her. They are supposed to give her the option of not cooperating. She is supposed to have counsel available to protect her rights.

Now, look, I know saying fuck you to civil rights law is pretty much NCIS 101, (Season One, Eppy Seven, we watch Tony give the finger to the whole search warrant concept.) so it's not like this is anything new for this show, but add in that this is not an NCIS case, and this looks really bad. Shepard's been after this guy for ten years, but best I remember no one ever suggested there was a single, actual, open, NCIS case on the guy. (Once again, if there is one, bring it on. I'm not perfect, I don't have total recall, and if I'm missing a major plot point, I want to know. Remember though, officially, Jasper Shepard committed suicide, and even with an entire autopsy team at her disposal, Jen Shepard chooses not to reopen her dad's case in an attempt to bring up murder charges.)

Now, I can buy, in the beginning, that Tony did not know this. But, eventually, there had to be a point where, 'Well, what do I do with him if I get him?' had to come up. Because it did come up. They wanted to search Grenoulle's yacht, and shit, no warrant. Which means, when they set this up, they didn't bother to get an open warrant to cover all of Grenouille's things. Which means either Shepard never put together enough of a case to get one, or she never bothered.

Now, why does this matter? Because should Tony have gotten hold of Grenouille, what was he going to do with him? No warrant for his arrest. No warrant to search his stuff. Nothing. No legal authority to do anything to or about this guy. Remember, _officially_ Rene Benoit is a respected French businessman. And if he's just roaming around, minding his business, doing nothing illegal, if there is no warrant for him, he cannot be arrested. He's very rich, very well-connected, and if there was ever a case where every i needed to be dotted and t crossed, this would have been it.

And, in that warrants are literal pieces of paper, I'm going to assume that at some point Tony had to notice he didn't have one in his possession.

So, as we move toward the end of the season, and things get even muckier, we get Tony and Jeanne talking about getting an apartment together. We get her handing over an ultimatum. And we get him playing along.

He's digging himself, and her, in deeper every single episode. Lie after lie after lie.

And how does it eventually end? Even more lies.

So, look, that's my read on the Jeanne story. To me this was a massive clusterfuck of epic proportions and Tony officially joined the darkside on this one.

Here are some comments I've gotten, and how I understand those situations, but once again, feel free to add whatever I'm missing:

"But Keryl, Tony's being manipulated by Jen."

You are absolutely right. She's playing him like a Stradivarius. But, that does not absolve him of his own responsibility for his own actions. Tony is not a wet-behind-the-ears-green-newbie. He is thirty-sevenish years old, been a cop for about fifteen years, and is the protégé of Leroy Jethro Gibbs. No one has ever accused Tony of not having the balls to stand up for himself when he thinks it's necessary.

And remember, yes he is being manipulated, but he also knows what he's doing is wrong. 'Can't live a lie.' Remember him saying that to Jeanne's Ex? Remember all those scenes that look like fear of commitment, but in retrospect are Tony trying to deal with what he's doing? He's asking permission to sleep with her. He knows this is wrong. He knows it's illegal. He knows someone else is on the job and doing a better job of it.

And supposedly he LOVES Jeanne.

But he still keeps doing it. He's got literally dozens of opportunities to say, this is wrong, I'm done. He takes none of them.

And look, what's the main NCIS ethos? 'Team first. We work together, and we may be jerks, but we always have each other's backs when it comes down to it.' He does not have their backs. He's literally out of the office, out of contact, lying to them about what he's doing. He's got Ziva worried, intensely about this, and he doesn't care.

"But Keryl, Tony's been ordered to do this."

We never saw the scene where this job got set up. But, assuming Jen wanted some semblance of this actually working on some level, this is not a job she can order someone to do. She wants Jeanne seduced, she wants her hurting, and if that is going to happen, she has to have a _willing_ partner in this mission. If Tony is dragging his feet, feeling forced, he's not going to do a good job of convincing Jeanne he's in love with her. His acting will be off, and she won't fall for him.

But, say she did order him to take this job, he should have turned in his badge. That's it, cut and dried. Given this assignment, he should have said no. And if he didn't have what he needed to get to that decision on day one, he sure as hell should have been there by the time REM's singing Everybody Hurts and he's telling Jeanne he loves her.

"But Keryl, Gibbs said if Mike had ordered him to do the same thing, he would have done it."

My memory of that is that if Mike had ordered Gibbs to _not tell his team about a mission_ , he would have not told. But, once again, there's a compelling argument that Tony was not, in fact, actually ordered to silence. The 'deep cover' bit likely implied it, but… once again, if he was ordered to silence, why did he have to explain to Jen, the person who would have given the order, why he's not talking to Gibbs about Jeanne?

What I do know, and what is blatantly clear, is that Gibbs did not approve of this mission. He is not happy with Jen about how it was run. Now, could be that's all about him not being in the loop, but I like to think it's about the damage this mission did to Tony, to his team, to their trust in each other, and it was a damn stupid mission, to boot.

"Keryl, both Gibbs and Ziva said they'd slept with suspects to get information."

Yep. _Suspects._ At no point is it ever suggested that Jeanne's suspected of even jay-walking, let alone being part of her father's operation. And I do not remember any situation where Gibbs or Ziva intentionally screws over an innocent bystander.

Likewise, _information_ at no point is it ever suggested that a happy and relaxed post-coital Jeanne can provide Tony with any information he couldn't get by just tailing her.

And, if memory serves, Tim did not approve of the sleeping with suspects thing.

So, anyway, that's my understanding of the Jeanne situation. I'm getting the sense that a lot of you do not see it that way. What I can't understand is why you don't see it that way. So, help me out, fill my inbox with comments and PMs and show me what I'm missing. 'Cause, God, I'd like to see it. As I said, I didn't want Tony to go darkside, I prefer him an adorable cad, but from everything I can see he went full on evil in season four and literally screwed everyone who mattered to him.

* * *

All righty, now onto the Jimmy aspect of this, which is also obvious to me, but not to you guys, so, apparently I'm off with Don Quixote jousting at the windmills and didn't bring you along for the ride.

Once again, this is how I understand what is going on, and I'm not getting what the missing ingredient is, so, I'll lay it out, and you guys fill it in for me.

In season six, we find out that Michelle Lee was not just a pretty little Harvard grad with a taste for kinky quickies in Autopsy with a certain Gremlin.

We find out that Michelle has been using Jimmy. That she was literally fucking him so she could get information out of NCIS. She is also framing him for treason, making him look like the guy who is getting the info out.

She's doing this to keep her sister/daughter alive.

Now, to me, this is a direct parallel to what Tony did to Jeanne. And to me, Lee's got a vastly better reason for what she's doing than Tony did.

Both Michelle and Tony sexually used someone, lied to them, and pretended to care about them. Tony did it for career advancement. Michelle did it to save a life.

Jeanne and Jimmy are both innocent bystanders. They had no power to in any way, shape, or form effect the outcome of the situation they were dropped into.

All of this is cannon. I'm not embroidering anything. I don't have to play with the text on this.

Here is one other bit of cannon: In NCIS verse, the ME speaks for the dead.

* * *

Now, I wanted to deal with Jeanne. Like I said, she's one of Tony's major points. (She's the the eight hundred pound gorilla skeleton in his closet.) And Lord, NCIS wrote me up what, to me, looked like the perfect parallel to work on this issue, and to make Tony deal with the fallout of what he did to Jeanne. Because he didn't, not really. No one in NCIS actually deals with anything. They are gold medal champions of not dealing. That's why I've got a million words worth of story here, because I'm making them deal.

I suppose I could have brought Jeanne back, but Jimmy's got his own arc, and being willing to stand up for himself is part of it. And hell, he's the ME, so that role, speaker for the dead, is cannon, so, 'Bye, bye Jeanne.'

So, to me this is the perfect confluence of events. I can explore Tony's past and deal with one of his big issues. I can get into something that must have been traumatic for Jimmy, and I work them off of each other and bring both of them closer to where they need to be. Jimmy at rest with being used. Tony a bit wiser and a chunk of his karmic debt paid off. I started setting it up back in July (in the story July, not last month July, its chapter 255: Ten Minutes, and a bit more in 257: Bad Day, Bad Month) where Jimmy actually puts what happened to Jeanne in context of what happened to him.

But, at least, from what I'm getting in the comments, it seems like a lot of you think that Jimmy's anger is inappropriate. But I don't get why. This is a direct parallel. Tony did something (once again, to me) heinously bad, Jimmy's in a spot where he can't ignore it anymore. Tony didn't do it to Jimmy, that's true, but he did it to someone else.

Jimmy's got a lot of character traits, but I've always tried to write him as the one who's empathic. The one who does a good job of relating to how others feel. He has, throughout this story, always been the one who pops up with the 'what do you need' and then offers it.

So, I'd imagine him as being both very bothered by what happened to himself, and having a very easy time empathizing with Jeanne. And now she's dead. He's the one who suggests that she spiraled out of control, because he knows how bad he felt when this happened to him, and he didn't get played nearly as hard as Jeanne did, and when he got played it was to save a child's life.

And, though Jimmy rage is rarely seen, it comes out for this.

I'm an Angel (TV show, it's awesome) fan. And there's one scene where the two vampire main characters are talking with each other. Angel and Spike. Spike has just been kidnapped and tortured, badly, by someone who thought he killed her family.

He didn't kill her family.

But he killed a lot of other people's families. (Once again, he's a vampire.)

Angel asks him if he's in pain (once again, tortured and all) and they talk a bit about that, and then Spike says something along the lines of, "What am I going to do, complain? Because her family wasn't one of the hundreds I did kill?"

And to me that where Tony is supposed to be going. I want him to be able to look at what he did to Jeanne, own it, face it unflinchingly, know it was terrible and that he deserves to take heat on it, and then knowing that, move on wiser, more compassionate, and a better team leader.

I intended Jimmy to be how he got there.

Tony's arc is twofold. I'm going to make him a good man, and I'm going to make him a wise man, because one day he will be the Papa Smurf of this clan, and he's got to be ready for that.

But he can't get there without first getting smacked for what he did to Jeanne.

So… okay… how do I do a better job of taking you along on this? Like I said before, light up my inbox, PM me all you want. I'll shoot nothing any of you have to say down, though I may ask for further clarification, so please, if you're going to respond, log in so I can ask for further clarification if I need it.

* * *

One last note, I completely get all of the comments about how what is happening to Ziva sucks big time. This is an awful position for her from all sides, and I completely get that. But, maybe you've noticed, both in my fiction and in NCIS proper, these guys can be jerks, especially when they're hurting.


	95. Reconnect

Thank you all for the input. I've been reading, thinking, and enjoying your comments. It's good to know that most of you appear to be following along just fine. You might not like this, and it's not necessarily fun reading, but it looks like I've set it up properly and it's not just out of left field.

Most of all thanks for all the support and kind words. Love getting happy comments from people.

I'm going to leave the last chapter, and this one, up until tomorrow, when I've got another real update due. (In which we get back into Ziva's head!) Any other ideas, thoughts, bits of cannon, whatever, bring it on, I'm more than happy to read up and do some research.

I know some of you will be less than perfectly satisfied with how this shakes out, but I think (hope) most of you will be good with it, and what it sets up.

But, if you want to skip all of this, we'll eventually get to a chapter called 'Simple As A Wedding' where things will be back to normal(ish) enough, and get to do some light, fluffy stuff before the epic saga that is going to be Tim's Navy Test.

Some of you have also taken this time to comment about some confusion on what exactly is going on with Shards V. Shards To A Whole. So, here's the explanation. I know some people really hated the idea of McPalmer. Okay, that's not me, but I know some people think that's icky. So I split the story into a McPalmer version and a non-McPalmer version. (Did I ever make it clear that McPalmer refers to the foursome, not just Tim and Jimmy?)

However, in that I don't write meaningless sex, (Hahahahahaha, of course I write meaningless sex! Who am I trying to kid? You've been reading this for a million words, you know some of those scenes are just for kicks.) so maybe I should say, I don't write meaningless relationships, and there is no way we'll move into the McPalmer foursome without it mattering. So, McPalmer matters for the plot, it matters for how the story unfolds and how relationships change, which means I ended up splitting the story at least 100 chapters before we even get to the sex, so that things that McPalmer set in motion in STAW could be dealt with in Shards.

Or more precisely, it's not like I just whacked out some sex scenes to make McPalmer v. Not McPalmer work.

I know most of those 100+ chapters have been the same, that's going to be changing very soon. It's May in story time, and come June, come the Navy Test, there's going to be a major split. As of this point, the entire summer is going to be different for the two stories, and I don't see the lines converging again until October. (Yeah, there might be the occasional shared chapter, but, if there is, I haven't written it yet.)

Given how different these two versions are, I will likely have to stop posting chapters for both at once. I might (just to keep the story straight in my own head) end up having to follow the full plot on one side, and the on the other, but, with any luck there shouldn't be more than a week between updates on either side.

All right! Happy reading my loves. More stuff tomorrow. I hope you like it.


	96. Ziva

A/N: Last one of these, really. For reference, it might be a good idea to re-read chapters 255 and 257.

* * *

Running. Usually running is good. Feet moving forward, speed, wind, earth below, sky above, quiet mind in between.

Usually.

Today isn't doing it for Ziva.

She can't get into her running zen. Can't quiet her mind.

The last time she had this hard of a time getting out of her mind when she ran, it was the day after Lt. Sanders died. She ran the loop from his direction, mourned the lost opportunity of him, missed him, and then tried to make herself forget.

In that she wore his hat every time she ran until it was destroyed when her apartment blew up, it's safe to say she didn't succeed.

She's tired. That's part of it. It's always difficult to find peace when you're aching tired.

She's sad. There's no way this will work out well. There's no happy ending where Jeanne and Tony get along and they all get to be some sort of functional extended family. They still don't know what they're going to do about this child. If he wasn't Jeanne's Tony would be all for trying to get involved in his life, but he is Jeannes, so they aren't sure.

Tony researched bone marrow donation most of the night, and she had a long chat with Draga about what sorts of rights a father has. Apparently, a DNA match doesn't offer much in the way of rights. According to him, the only reason he's been able to have any luck on getting shared custody of Kevin is because his name is on the birth certificate, and since the day he was born, Kevin has been listed as one of his dependents.

But Tony and Jeanne were never married, and because they've got no idea what she's got written on this child's birth certificate, it's entirely possible that even if they go to court, they cannot get visitation rights. If she's got another man's name on that certificate, and if Tony does not match for the bone marrow donation, he likely won't even have standing to demand a paternity test.

Assuming they can prove paternity, given the story of how this child came to be, it's _likely_ they can't get visitation rights. Ziva knows how that case would go, she's spent more than enough time with lawyers to see that whoever Jeanne hires will make the defense that Jeanne was effectively raped, that the psychic damage on her of having Tony around will be too high, and that Tony has no rights to this child, at all.

And, since NCIS had no legal standing for the case against Le Grenouille, if said lawyer is really sharp, he'll counter-sue Tony for what he did to Jeanne. After all, there was no warrant, no court order, NCIS does not have jurisdiction over civilians engaging in civilian cases. A counter-suit on this would be horrendously embarrassing to NCIS and might actually land Tony in jail.

All of that is a heart ache.

Then there's fear. Jimmy sent them a list of links on bone marrow donation, another list on bone marrow diseases. They'd been online, pretty much all night, reading over everything he'd sent them. From everything they've been able to find, parent-child matches are rare, really rare. So the possibility that this might work is almost non-existent.

From everything they were reading, it would have made more sense to use the child's own bone marrow. They've got some sort of technique to suck it out, clean it up, and put it back in again. Or, suck it out, muck around with it, and grow new, clean marrow from the stem cells. Either of those is way more likely to work, no rejection issues, and if Helen's hunted down Tony for this, it likely means those techniques have failed.

And if they've failed… If the cancer (if it is cancer, that seems most likely though) has come back…

If they've failed, attempting another transplant, from a foreign donor… Either there's a piece they're missing, or Helen and Jeanne are torturing this child because they aren't willing to let him go.

More heartache, because if that's true… If that's true then you have to do something about it. You don't let a child suffer, not like that, not if there's not much shot of it actually working. You don't just 'do something' to do something. The potential for healing has to outweigh the pain.

But, Lord, coming in, now, with 'I want access to my child' will be hard enough. 'I want access so you can stop medically torturing him, and let him die in peace…' Just the idea of trying to make that case makes Ziva clench her jaw so hard her teeth ache.

Beyond all of that there's anger.

Jeanne should have told him. She's said that like seven times now and keeps repeating it in her mind.

Jeanne should have told. A child has a right to know his father. And as soon as she knew she was pregnant she should have found Tony and told him.

Ziva keeps saying that to herself, building up her own anger with it. But each repetition is more hollow. Each time she says it, she musters less outrage at Jeanne.

And she knows why it's not working. Because as time goes by, and hours pass, and the more she thinks about this child, the more she has to think about Jeanne, and how this child came to be.

She can hold a moment's rage at Jeanne for not telling, and she wishes she could hold more, but in the end, thinking about, feet pounding the pavement, if the same thing had happened to her… If she had been the target, and she certainly could have been… Not like her father didn't have enemies galore, and it's not like he was easy to get to. Part of her training was to make sure she never did trust anyone, because that way she couldn't be used, not the way Jeanne was.

Her father knew there were Tonys out there. Her father made sure her boyfriends had full, deep, background checks. Her father drilled into her head that trust is dangerous, and trust could lead to deep, deep pain, so it was to be handed out slowly, carefully, only to people who had earned it with blood. And as Bodnar proved, even after it is earned in blood, it can be lost, so easily.

But… If her father was less careful. Or if Tali hadn't died… She would have been a ballerina, dancing in Paris or Moscow or New York. She would have had boyfriends. Men who came to see the shows, and if one of them had been kind, paid attention, loved her… If he was charming, and witty, and funny. If he lavished her with praise and attention and desire… If she had been the target, if a man had used her, lied to her, and gotten her pregnant… Would she have told him?

No, she never would have told him.

Jeanne had her baby, and then came back and tried to frame Tony for murder.

Ziva tries to think about what she would have done, how she would have reacted. She slapped the shit out of Ray, arrested him, and walked off. But that is NCIS Agent Ziva, who believes in things like law. And Ray wasn't using her, not the way Tony used Jeanne. She knew who he was, she knew what he did. She knew she was getting involved with a professional liar. She had already detached from him, had already begun to grow some distance when he tried to use her.

And it still hurt. And she still burned her tears with hate, and made Gibbs drive her home, and she turned away from him, not letting him see the pain, headed into her place, and beat the hell out of her pillows, ran ten miles, and then forced herself to be calm.

Then she went back to work, and buried all of it in the job.

What if it had been from day one? If from day one everything with Ray had always been an act… If one day she had a man she loved who was moving in with her, and the next it he was out to kill her father and she was pregnant…

What if Ray had done that?

No, she wouldn't have framed him for murder. And she wouldn't have stopped at just hitting him. She would have killed him. And that would have been that.

Confusion trumps anger. If she was the target, she'd rage, but she's been on Tony's side of it, too. She's run this op, twice, and both times she used her looks, her charm, her humor, and walked into a the target's home and killed him.

One time she seduced the target. One time she seduced his son.

The time it was the target, it went fast. Third date, back to his place, he had certain expectations of how that night was going to go. It didn't go that way. In, out, done, clean. She got everything in his hard drive, all of his files, and hasn't been back to Prague since.

The time it was the target's son, it went slow. Deep cover. Took months before he invited her home to meet his family. She eagerly accepted that invitation. His family was Catholic, devout, or at least his mother and sisters were, so they each had their own room. When Philippe suggested it was bedtime, that first night, she'd smiled at him, said she was heading to the kitchen to get a bottle of wine, and that he should meet her in bed in an hour. He'd grinned and headed off, huge smile on his face, looking forward to sneaking around.

She'd headed to his father's office, knocked quietly, and when he opened the door, all he saw was a pretty girl, with long curly hair, wearing a sundress and cute, little sandals. He'd smiled at her, too, and she'd asked him some sort of question about the family, stepping in, closing the door, setting him at ease. By the time the door was closed, she had him in a choke hold. Ten seconds later he was unconscious. A minute later he was dead. Two minutes after that, she walked out, with a bottle of wine, going to get some fresh air and enjoy the countryside.

It can be very difficult to get into a place, but it's usually not very difficult, especially if you are willing to walk and leave all of your things behind, to get out of one.

She walked away, found the motorcycle waiting for her three miles away, and was gone before anyone knew she was missing.

She's never regretted that kill, never thought twice about Philippe. But right now, she is, and she hates the way that feels. He probably looked for her when he noticed she wasn't in her room. He may have been the one who found his father. It wouldn't have taken long after his family knew what had happened to start putting it together, blame him for bringing home the woman who killed Papa.

She wonders, now, how he dealt with that.

Papa led a branch of the Basque Separatists. Now, she wonders if Philippe, who studied sculpture and music in Barcelona, had been killed for bringing home the woman who killed his father.

* * *

Confusion and hate and regret slip to anger as her feet pound over the pavement. Anger at Tony. On one level, the big level, the one she feels stupid for, there's just the rush of 'How could you possibly be so fucking stupid?' It was a long time ago. She knows this about him. She knows his past is a wasteland of reckless sexual encounters, any one of which may have produced a child.

When they were talking about it, before they got married, and she asked how many women he'd slept with, his best guess was 'about a thousand.' She thought he was kidding until he broke it down. First time at sixteen. He was forty-five when they had that conversation, so almost thirty years. Five years with Wendy cut it down to twenty-four. Not much action from sixteen to eighteen. Call it twenty-two years of an active sex life. He got to college and got to be one of the stars on the basketball team. Two or three girls a week in college. Two or three a week for the year after Wendy. He figured those five years covered about five hundred girls. The other seventeen years worked out to about thirty women a year, or about one every other week. Factor in Spring Breaks in Mexico and dry spells, and that was about right for him.

She thought she was okay with that. At the time, she was okay with that. She's had more than enough partners of her own that she's not going to complain about what he did before they were together.

But right now, especially knowing that Tony wasn't careful with Jeanne, that's really pissing her off.

And she's pissed at herself for being pissed about that. It can't be changed. None of this is blindsiding her or a shock. But it still hurts. She's pissed that this hurts so much. Tony has a child. A child who isn't hers, and that aches.

He's so skittish about making a baby with her, but he spent twenty years more or less spraying sperm around at random like some sort of fertility garden sprinkler, but for her, for a woman he loves and has a future with... No, with _her_ , he's scared.

They talk about it in counseling. She knows rushing him is a bad idea.

And he's said that it's like standing on the edge of the cliff looking off. He can't make himself jump, but that, if he just got a good hard shove, once he landed, he'd be fine. But he needs the shove. So, she's shoving.

They're 'trying' for a baby. But she can feel he's not really comfortable with it. He can't fully relax into it, though he's 'trying.' And she can feel it's getting better, but better and good aren't the same thing and she doesn't know how to get him to good.

But with Jeanne, he could just be in the moment and 'forget.' With Jeanne, he could make a baby. And that hurts so much worse than she thought it would.

Her phone chirps at her, and she stops running. _You on your jog?_ From Jimmy.

She looks around, really noticing that she's about ten minutes from home. _Yes._

_Whole thing was a hoax. There is kid, but he was born in '10, he's not sick. Jeanne died last week, and Helen went a bit crazy._

She stares at that. For a good five seconds her head is completely blank. She's got no idea, at all, how to even begin to feel about it. Eventually, she feels like she can breathe. Like a huge weight is gone. And sure, some of this stuff won't go away just because this has, but the biggest part, the _what do we do now_ part, that's gone.

Her shoulders slump, tension spiraling out of her, relief washing over her, pulling away a lot, but not all, of the anger and fear and hurt that's been aching through her for the last day.

Her phone chirps again. _I haven't told Tony, yet. Want to talk to him, in person, alone. Is that okay?_

What would Jimmy want to say to Tony about this on his own? _Why?_

_Got some things to say to him about this. He's not going to like them. You might not, either._

Ice goes down her spine. There's no kid. It's a hoax… _Jeanne's dead_ … Did she commit suicide? Lord, did the thing with Tony screw her up that badly? Does Jimmy want to protect her from that? _Things about Jeanne?_ she texts quickly.

_No. Anything I know about her, I'll tell you, too. Things about him and me. You want to be there for this, that's fine, just be easier the two of us._

That makes no sense to her at all. Why would Jimmy want to talk to Tony about Jeanne, and what would it have to do with him? _Jimmy?_

_What do you remember about Michelle Lee?_

And then she gets it. What would she have done if she was the target? How would she react if someone had spent months lying to her? God, Jimmy _was_ the target. He can't be cool with this because it happened to him. She punches his number into her phone. A second later she says, "Hi."

"Hi, Ziva."

"I remember Lee. I was the only one she didn't try to convince she did the right thing."

"Not the only one."

She supposes that's likely true. She can't imagine what Lee might have said to Jimmy. "I'm sorry. I… knew, but…"

"Didn't put it together?"

"Yes."

"Because I'm a guy? And as long as I got laid, I was getting what I wanted, so what's the problem? Guys don't get used, they don't feel bad about it after, not if they get sex, right?"

She winces; he sounds so bitter and so hurt about that. The fact is that it never hit her, at all, that Jimmy got used, until two minutes ago. Why? Then she knows. "That's part of it, yes. Mostly though, because _you_ ended it, before it blew up."

"Yeah. I did. Still bit me in the ass, though. Still got hauled in for questioning, for treason. Still… still had to deal with… all of it."

She can feel the pain in his voice. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well… Anyway, got some things to say to Tony. About using people. About _sexually_ using someone. They aren't complimentary. He's unlikely to enjoy them. If you wanted to get yourself some breakfast, say for two hours or so, it's my treat."

She nods. The silence stretches for another second. She's got too much rolling around her mind right now, so she asks again, "It really is a hoax?"

She hears Jimmy sigh. "Yeah. It is. Jeanne was in a car accident last week. She died. Helen... I don't know how she came up with it, but making Tony hurt seemed like a good idea to her. I've already talked to Helen, she's not going to pull anything again." Jimmy stops for a second there. "Ziva, I'm sorry this screws you, too…"

Something feels off about that. He was sorry yesterday, too. Sorry that she was stuck with this mess, stuck with having to deal with the emotional fall out of her husband's stupidity. And yesterday, she definitely got the sense that Jimmy was not thrilled with Tony for having done something that would put her in this position, but that for the most part he was all about making sure they got through it as easily as possible.

But she's not feeling that anymore, and he's still apologizing. Ziva's starting to wonder what the hell just happened, because this is too much for sympathy.

"I really am. I'm sorry you're in the middle of this. I'm sorry this isn't just done, and we can't just all relax and kick back and let it go. I'm sorry, for you, to you, that _I_ can't just let it go. I want to. I'm a lot happier not thinking about this. But, right now, I can't get this out of my head, because I was where Jeanne was. So, I've got to go yell at him. And I know I'm going to hurt him, and I know that's going to hurt you, and I'm really sorry about that, because I don't want to be hurting you, but I don't know how I can stop hating him without it hitting you, too."

It takes her a second to sort through all of that, and find the relevant part. Jimmy's already talked to Helen. Which means he's known about this long enough to find her and have a conversation with her.

"You've already spoken to Helen?" Her voice is cold.

"Yes."

"How long have you known?"

"Since around six last night." Twelve hours. He's known for twelve hours. "I got into Aiden, the boy's, medical records around then. Couldn't find him on the bone marrow registry, so I went into the Federal Medical Database. Then I looked Helen up, found when she was on shift, and made sure she'd never pull anything on Tony again."

Her eyes close and her hand fists. Jimmy went out of his way to find the child for them. He went to see Helen to protect them. And then he let them stew for a night. She's smiling, but it's not a happy gesture.

_What would you do if it had been you?_

"Ziva?"

"You and McGee were working together to find Aiden?"

"Yeah. Tim was coming up empty because he had a name, but the wrong birthday, so... technically you aren't supposed to look up people who aren't your patients, but... any doctor has access to any patient, because you never know who'll roll in your door. It was the most direct way to get the information about him."

She forces her fist to relax. He broke the law to find the child for them. Because he's their friend. He talked to Helen, because he didn't want anything bad to happen to them. When everything was going bonkers with Tony last summer, he was the one she spent hours talking with. He was the one who suggested they try marriage counseling. It was his house she stayed at. He's asking her permission to talk to Tony about this. Because he's her friend.

And he let them sit, because he's hurting, and he wanted them to hurt. No, he didn't want _them_ to hurt. He wanted Tony to hurt, and he couldn't figure out how to do that without hurting her.

She exhales, loud. If Tony deserves any of this, she does, too. Jimmy doesn't know that, and she's thinking he's likely better off never knowing that, but…

And if Tony doesn't deserve this, and if she doesn't, then what is she saying to Jimmy? She's saying that what happened to Jimmy was okay. Because if it was wrong when Lee did it, then it was wrong when they did it. And if it wasn't wrong when they did it, then Jimmy's just got to suck it up and deal, because it was okay for Lee.

And it wasn't okay when Lee did it.

She hates this. She hates all of this, every single fucking second of this is torment. All of those hours… but… compared to what she would have done, if it had been her… "I accept your apology, Jimmy." Her voice is tight as she says it.

"Thank you. Anything I say or do to him that you think is over the line, you get as many free shots as you want on me." Of course, yesterday he gave her twenty minutes of free shots on him, because she was hurting. Yesterday, he let her literally hit him (well, he was dodging and moving around, too, but he put his physical body in the game, gave her the opportunity to beat it out on his skin) to make herself feel better.

And it's not the first time he's done that. Because, as of yesterday, anything she has ever needed from him, Jimmy has provided.

"You want to give Gibbs a call?" he asks as she's thinking about the fact that Jimmy will take literal, physical pain from her if it makes her feel better about herself. "Let him know. Tell him I'm handling it."

She sighs again. "I can do that."

"Thanks." He hangs up, and she puts her phone back in her pocket. Right now, talking to Gibbs sounds like a VERY good idea.

* * *

"Balance challenge." Gibbs says it like a swear word. _You're knee's all together, so new exercises, working on all of you, not just leg strength._ Jimmy had said to him the last time they had a Bootcamp in the gym. Then Jimmy stood on one foot, which didn't look hard at all, then he closed his eyes. _When you can do it, each leg, for twenty seconds, no wobbling, we'll move up to the next level._

Gibbs is horrendously embarrassed at how hard it is to stand on one foot with his eyes closed. He hasn't actually fallen over, yet, but he has had to touch the other foot down on more than one occasion.

He can do it with his eyes open, no problem at all. He can probably stand on one foot for as long as he can stand on two, _with his eyes open._ He just slips into sniper mode, patient, balanced, still, and it's no problem at all. Once those little bastards close, his weight starts to shift, his ankle goes wobbly, and two seconds later, he's got his second foot on the floor.

He's not exactly feeling great this morning, and teetering around on one foot is not improving things. Bad sleep, got some, but the ghosts of the whole Jeanne thing kept his sleep light and his dreams confusing.

But it is morning, and in the morning, he gets up, takes care of business, and then he does his exercises, so he's doing the damn things, and Mona's being 'helpful' by occasionally nosing one of his hands (he's holding them out to help balance, and she keeps thinking this is an offer for petting, so she noses him, and he tips over.) He spends five minutes on his left leg, trying to get to twenty seconds without wobbling, failing at it, and is getting ready to do five on his right when Mona looks up, and suddenly trots down the stairs.

Someone's coming in, fast.

Gibbs tosses on a t-shirt and some sweats and heads down just as Ziva walks in.

She's on her own, in her jogging gear, and he doesn't know exactly what's going on with her right now. Right now she's snuggling Mona, because it's easy to take comfort from a pet. He sits on the floor next to her, where her face is pressed against Mona's neck, and he strokes her back.

"News?"

She looks up at him and nods. "Yes. Jimmy called. The whole thing was a hoax."

Gibbs feels a hot flare of rage. "Did Jeanne put her mom up to it?"

Ziva shakes her head, sadly. "According to Jimmy, Jeanne died last week, and Helen…"

Gibbs nods, getting it, not needing more words. "C'mere." He wraps her in a hug and kisses the top of her head.

It's hitting Gibbs, as he's holding her, that this is not relief, there's some of that, but Ziva's doing her sad thing, and her angry thing, and her I-want-to-explode-but-there's-no-one-to-hit thing.

She's not talking, because she doesn't much like to talk about this stuff, but… there should be some happy here, right? He's feeling a lot more relieved right now, so she should, too, right?

Also, half the team is missing.

So, he quietly asks, 'Where's Tony?"

"At home. Jimmy's yelling at him."

Gibbs blinks at that. Ziva's got mad radiating off of her in all directions, so his first guess is that Jimmy is yelling at Tony for being a selfish dork who put his wife in a situation where she had to deal with this crap. Because that's a Jimmy thing to do.

Ziva pulls back, looks at Gibbs. "Can we run?"

He nods. She wants to run it off, that's fine with him. "Let me get my sneakers on." He gets up, grabs them, and sees Mona head back to Ziva and rub the top of her head against Ziva's chin.

He's laced up and they're on the porch when Ziva says, "He found out about Aiden, the child, last night. Didn't tell us until now."

Gibbs stops dead and stares at Ziva, he blinks slowly and licks his lips. He knows he heard what she said. Not like she mumbled or something. But, he can't make himself understand.

She can see him staring at her, trying to put the pieces together.

"I was running, thinking, too much thinking all night long, because we were sitting there steeping in this… torture… And I'd been making myself not… I kept saying she should have told Tony, because then I could be angry at her, because I don't want to be angry at him, not right now, not when he's hurting that bad.

"But I could not keep thinking she should have told him. I started to think about what if it had been me. It could have been me. So many men wanted my father dead, for so many reasons. If Tali had lived and… I could have had a life where I would have been a target.

"If it had been me, I never would have told him. Never. And I would have done much, much worse to a man if I found he had been lying to me for months, almost a year, using me like that. Ray used me for a few days, and that… that hurt. Weeks? Months? Everything, all of it a lie?" She shakes her head, and then meets Gibbs' eyes, saying, voice soft, dangerous, "I would have done much, much worse."

Gibbs is feeling very confused, but he's standing there quietly, waiting, letting her get it out.

"Then Jimmy calls, and it's all a lie. And I was starting to feel better, some, about the child and what we'd have to do, at least. There's still, our own… issues… And Jimmy is apologizing to me, which did not make much sense. Because, he had not done anything to me, but he is being very sincere and…

"And then it did make sense, because he has known since last night. He went to talk to Helen, to make sure she would not try anything again, last night. And he let us sit. And… And I want to hit him so hard. Because… the worry, and the fear, and the hurt… But… What if it had been me? What if I had been the target? What would I have done to a man who used me like that? If I had been a target, what would I do to any man who used a woman like that?"

Gibbs is still a step behind. He's getting Ziva starting to feel for Jeanne, but he's not seeing how Jimmy fits into this.

Ziva can see that Gibbs isn't putting it together on his own, either. "Do you remember Lee?"

Gibbs nods, pieces snapping into place.

"Jimmy was the target. And… somehow that never hit me before today. Somehow, I never put that together.

"He let us sit to get back at Tony. Because he knows Tony used Jeanne as a target. And, I want to hit him for it, hard. Want to break a hand on him, because it hurt." She's staring up at Gibbs, and her face is making it clear exactly how bad last night was. He'd offered to stay with them, but they left anyway. He should have gone with them.

"And I understand why he did it. Because twelve hours would not even _begin_ to cover what I would want to do to someone who did that to me. And… And I have my own Jeanne, but Jimmy does not know that. A man I never thought twice about, but… But today, I am thinking about him, wondering what happened to him.

"I hate this whole thing, Gibbs. I hate every angle of it. I hate every inch of it. I hate every minute of this. And I am so mad at _everyone_ right now." Ziva squares her shoulders. "Can we just run?"

"For as long as you need."

* * *

So they run. Running is good, because it's letting Gibbs get things into place. Sort of. Jimmy found the kid. Last he heard Tim was looking, but… Okay, Jimmy found him, which means… Medical databases, Tim doesn't have access to them, and Jimmy does.

So, Tim stalls out, Jimmy gets into the game.

He finds Aiden.

And then…

And then Gibbs stalls out because he's not sure how this works. He wants to ask more, but she very clearly does not want to talk.

So they keep running.

* * *

Round the block, through the park, down the side street, and back again. It's a mile and a half loop, he usually does it twice. But when they get back to his house, she stops, and goes to sit on the porch. Of course, judging by how she looked and what time it was, she's already done her full morning jog, on top of this.

He pats Mona. "That's it girl. Go play."

She trots off to the backyard. She'll probably be back with her ball, soon.

"I am so angry at him."

Gibbs nods. What Jimmy pulled looks like a shit thing to him. "Want me to go slap him upside the head?"

She laughs, a little, at that.

"He is already slapping himself right and left."

"Wait, Jimmy pulled this, but he feels bad about it?"

She blinks slowly. "I was talking about Tony. But yes, if you want to slap Jimmy, I'd approve."

Gibbs nods. A visit to NCIS just went onto the schedule for today.

She half-smiles, self-depreciating, not happy. "It feels stupid. I know all of this about him. I knew about it when it was happening. I've known about it since, and… I was okay with it. I had forgiven him for that year. I thought I was at peace with it, but…

"But it's back?"

She nods. "It's rule number one, Gibbs. Don't screw your partner! I was his partner, and that year... The lies, lie after lie after lie, and I was so worried for him, and he just left me hanging."

"He had orders."

"When do we ever follow orders to screw each other? 'It's a case. I can't talk about it. When I can, I'll tell you.' How hard would that have been?"

Gibbs nods. "And you two were more than partners, then, right?"

Ziva's mildly surprised to hear that, but only mildly. Of course, he figured it out. "Not once you got back. His team, his rules. Your team, your rules. How did you know?"

"The way he looked when you called me in for help instead of him. The way you were acting. Known a few jealous women over the years."

She inclines her head at that. She was jealous, and worried, and angry. Anyone who knew what it looked like could identify it.

She had called Gibbs in because she didn't want Tony to get in trouble. He read it as she called Gibbs in because she didn't trust him to save her. They couldn't get past that, and when it was clear Gibbs was staying, she ended things. "His team, his rules," she had said to Tony, and left him in the break room on his own.

"I should be done with this. Yesterday I was done with this. Today, I want to slap him for being stupid. He got in too deep and didn't ask for help, and…" She sighs, gritting her teeth. "He wasn't _careful_ with Jeanne."

Gibbs can feel that's a live wire, but he can also see she's not ready to touch it yet.

"I want to dig Jenny up and shoot her. She knew how to run that mission right. She knew Tony was not trained for it or capable of pulling out smooth. She knew he wasn't hard enough for it.

"We had both run honeytraps. We'd run one together. I know she knew how to do it right. How to get in and out clean. How to take out the target. And… and now, all I can think is that Jeanne was her target, because I am certain she did not tell Tony that this was supposed to end with him killing Benoit. He wasn't hard enough for Jeanne; he certainly wasn't hard enough for wetwork."

He rubs her back, gently. He knows he can't fix this, can't make it right or better. "You want some breakfast?"

"Sure. Send Jimmy a bill."

He looks at her curiously.

"Breakfast is on him." She shakes her head. "I hate being angry at him, too. He asked my permission to talk to Tony, offered to let me sit in on it. He apologized to me because he didn't want me to hurt about it, but couldn't figure out how to not hit me, too. He let me beat it out on him yesterday, gave me a huge pile of information, found the kid, and talked to Helen.

"And he let me sit. Once he figured out it wasn't real, that this wasn't something we'd have to deal with for the rest of our lives, that we weren't going to be burying a child or dealing with a massive custody battle, something in his head switched and…"

Gibbs nods, that makes a more sense, once the immediate danger was over, Jimmy could stop just looking out for his friends and start to think about himself. "Look out when a good man goes to war."

"Yeah. I shouldn't have let Tony take that alone. But I'm afraid that if I get in the middle of it, I'm going to start yelling at both of them."

Gibbs nods. They're in his kitchen now. "Eggs?"

Ziva nods.

"Milchig or parve?"

"Doesn't matter. I have not eaten yet."

She starts the coffee while he gets his pan set and begins cooking up the eggs. Once he's got the eggs on plates and they're both sitting down, he says, "Wanna tell me the rest of it? There's more than fallout from Jeanne here."

She shrugs.

"It's personal."

"Okay. But… you want to say it… It's okay, you know?"

She nods, chewing, sipping her coffee. Not saying anything.

"Want me to tell Jimmy these eggs were coated in gold and had those really expensive mushrooms cooked into 'em?"

She smiles a little, appreciating him trying to joke with her. "With caviar and powdered diamonds on top."

"I can do that." He thinks about it a bit more seriously. "Two thousand dollar eggs? And maybe a long weekend somewhere nice for you and Tony? Get your personal stuff talked out?"

She sighs… "We are talking. We have talked." Another quiet moment. "I know all of this. I have known all of this. I knew it before we got married and signed on anyway. But it's harder, now. This child wasn't his. But the next one? Or the one after that? They have to be out there. No way there isn't at least one, and probably more.

"Once he knew, he wanted to know that child. He wanted to be part of his life. That he was Jeanne's complicated things, but if this hadn't been Jeanne… If it had been one of the ladies from a bar or a club… If that had been the case he would have dived right in…

"But with me… he is scared. With me, he doesn't want to make a baby. With me he isn't interested in just jumping in." She stabs her egg with her fork. "That's not entirely fair. Like I said, we have talked, we are talking, and we're trying for a baby but… that is how it _feels_. He could knock up strangers with abandon and glee, but with me…" she's looking at her eggs, then she looks up at Gibbs. "Got anything that makes this better?"

He shakes his head. "Want me to slap him upside the back of the head when I get done with Jimmy?"

She shakes her head, and looks over at the clock. "I should get going. Still have to get ready for work. Have to see what sort of a mess is at home."

Gibbs nods.

"What are you going to do?"

She shrugs. "Right now, he's having a worse day than I am, so I will be there for him and I will support him, and I will make him feel better. Tomorrow, he will be there for me. And we'll get it worked out."

Gibbs nods. "Jimmy?"

She shrugs. "I have already accepted his apology. We're not doing carpentry this week for bootcamp, though."

Gibbs nods at that, too. "Okay. Not going to the house today. I'll have my cell on, and I'll head over to NCIS later. You want me, you track me down, okay?"

"Okay."

She stands up to go, and he does too, hugging her close for a moment, kissing the top of her head.


	97. Hip Deep In It

There's only so much shit a person should have to take in one day. And yesterday poured about two years' worth on top of Tony's head. And today added at least another week's worth. And it's only 6:45.

And right now, Tony doesn't know where he is or which end is up.

Jimmy came in like a small, angry tornado, dumped… a lot of shit on him, and, he's sure, when he's a bit more sober and a bit less… whatever this is… shocked probably, that more of what Jimmy said will hit him, but right now…

He finishes his drink. He closes the windows on his computer, one at a time, shutting down information on lymphoma and leukemia, x-ing out of how bone marrow transplants work, hoping he never, ever needs to get this deep into this sort of thing again.

Yesterday his son was dying. Today he's not. Not dying. Not his son. Not… any of it. Right now, there is no custody case looming. There's no fighting with Jeanne about possible treatments. There's no facing Jeanne at all. There's no fear of having this… feeling, whatever it is... at the idea of this child, turning to ash and ripping his heart out.

And Tony's sure that, as whatever this is fades, all the rest of it'll hit, but right now… Right now his son isn't dying, and that's all he needs.

* * *

He's still sitting at his kitchen table, little bit drunk, mostly feeling confused, like he's got whatever the emotional equivalent of whiplash is, when Ziva comes in.

He glances at the clock and notices she's been gone for almost two hours. "Long jog."

She inclines her head. "Jimmy called me, said he wanted to talk to you alone." She looks Tony over, sitting next to him. "I take it he did."

Tony nods.

He doesn't look nearly as bad as she expected him to be. "Are you okay?"

He shrugs. "I'm better than I probably should be. He had a lot of things he needed to say. I didn't have anything good to say back. I don't think I've ever seen him that mad before. Not at a person, at least." He touches the bourbon bottle. "Between that and the boy not being sick, I know I missed some of it, which was probably a good thing. He got really fired up and wasn't entirely making sense the whole time… I think he knew what he was saying, but he was crying for some of it, so I didn't get it all, but I was with it enough to know asking him to repeat himself was a bad plan. I got enough, and the short version is he doesn't want me in the morgue anytime soon."

Ziva sighs. She looks at the bottle, it's at least a drink lower than it was when she left. Tony's not drunk; she knows drunk Tony, and this isn't it, but he's not sober either. He's been keeping himself steadily buzzed all night. She looks at the clock. "Come on, shower time."

"Need to call Gibbs, don't want—"

"I have already talked to him. He's relieved."

"Probably won't be when he sees how this blew up."

She tilts her head, taking his hand in hers, and gently tugging him up, walking him toward their shower. Once they get in there, once clothing is off, and water is rushing over them, he feels himself start to clear up, feels some of the euphoria of his-son-isn't-dying fade.

He feels what Jimmy said to him start to hit.

And Ziva sees it; she says, "Benoit sold the weapons that killed tens if not hundreds of thousands of people."

"I know. I know he wasn't a good guy. The world's a better place without him. I know. And maybe if I'd arrested him, that'd help."

"Every western government was trying to get him, and none of them succeeded. No one ever scraped together enough proof to hold him. Traditional tactics had been used for more than a decade and failed."

Tony shakes his head. "Except they didn't. Kort was already in his organization. He made me the first time he saw me, and Jen knew he was onto Grenouille. It wasn't enough to take him down, _she_ had to be the one who took him down. All that crap that followed, that was him discrediting her to keep the CIA in charge of it. I know what you're doing," he kisses her "and I appreciate it, but… come on, Jimmy's a fucking _doctor_ and _he_ could see the tactics on that mission never worked. I was a cop with fifteen years' experience, no way I should have said yes to that, not without a whole lot more information, not the way Jen wanted to run it. "

He looks at Ziva, naked, wet, in front of him, trying to make him feel better about this pile of shit and what he did that got them into it. "He said we're supposed to be the good guys, that it's our job to look out for the Jeannes. He said a lot of other things, but that's the one that hit hardest, because it was true. I'm a cop. It's my job to protect innocent people, and I didn't do it.

"He said I kept on that case because I loved how Jeanne treated me, because I loved me more than anyone or thing else. And he was right. I knew how to get out of it. I knew how to end it. I was having a hard time looking in the mirror from halfway into that operation, but I just kept on doing it.

"I should have never taken that case. When he first found out about Grenouille, Gibbs tried to make me feel better about lying to him, said I was under orders to lie, but I wasn't… Not exactly. Never ordered. 'Deep cover mission,' she said, 'between her and I.' I asked if he would have lied to Franks, and he left without answering. Because he wouldn't have. Because that would have broken One.

"Even if the tactics worked, even if it had made sense, even if we weren't tromping all over the CIA's case, _I_ shouldn't have taken it, because she asked me to break One for it."

He looks at Ziva, and kisses her again. "I never said it, but I should have, and I shouldn't have done it in the first place, but… I'm sorry I spent so long lying to you about it. I'm sorry I made you worry."

She smiles at him and kisses back. "We have many lies and worries in the past between us. They are dead. They should be dead." She kisses him again. "I want them to be dead."

He touches her cheek. "But they aren't, are they?"

"No."

He sighs and closes his eyes, nodding. "Let's get through today, do whatever needs to be done, get home early, get some good sleep, and go at it tomorrow? I'm too tired and fried for much today."

Ziva nods, that sounds like a good plan to her.

* * *

Tony's just pulling on his pants when his phone rings. _Dispatch_ comes up on the ID.

"Case?" Ziva asks.

He nods, listening to the details. She grabs her phone and begins texting Bishop and Draga, letting them know to get in as fast as they can.

"Okay, got it Charlie," he says to the dispatcher after a minute.

Ziva's looking up from her phone, waiting.

"Dead body on K Street. Metro thinks suicide, but he's one of ours, so they're handing him over."

Her phone buzzes. She reads and says to Tony. "Draga's two minutes from the office already. Bishop is still at home."

"Tell him to gas up the van and meet us there."

"Okay."

* * *

Doesn't matter how deep in the shit you are, you're still having a better day than your victim.

They don't talk much through the ride to the victim's home. If he is a victim. Ziva tells Tony about talking to Gibbs, and about Jimmy apologizing to her, and about why he was apologizing to her. That Jimmy had intentionally waited twelve hours was one of the things Tony missed in the rush of my-son's-not-dying, or Jimmy didn't flat out say it, or it was one of the garbled bits, or some combination of the three.

However it works out, Tony knows now, and he's less-than-thrilled. And maybe it's just tired, maybe it's that some of the things Jimmy said really hit him, maybe it's just that he wants this shit-storm out of his life, but less-than-thrilled is about all he's able to muster right now.

K Street is the land of the Lobbyists, filled with expensive high-rise apartments, high end cars, and oodles of oodles of money. Their victim's home is no exception to that.

They go in, take over from Metro, secure the scene (bathroom), and while they wait for Jimmy and Dr. Allan, Bishop takes pictures of everything, and Tony and Ziva talk to Major (Ret) Ian Kimmel's nearest and dearest.

Apparently he lived alone. Was last seen two days ago. The cleaning lady had let herself in, and gotten a hell of a shock when she went in to tidy up the bathroom.

Major Kimmel was in a tub filled with blood, dead.

No weapon or wounds they can see, but the water in the tub is up to Kimmel's chest, and it's so murky with blood it's impossible to see through.

They'd only been on the scene for ten minutes when Jimmy and Allan head in. They've got the gurney and their gear. The rest of the MCRT team pulls back to give them room in what is a spacious bathroom, but it's still a bathroom, so it's not exactly a comfortable space for six adults, a body bag, a gurney, and a dead body.

Jimmy eyeballs the room, the space available, the dead body. "Body bag on the floor, Dr. Allan."

"Yes, Doctor."

While Allan spreads the bag on the floor next to the tub, Jimmy makes sure to get the air temperature and the water temperature, both are the same, 70 degrees. He'll get body temp when they get the Major out.

Jimmy looks behind him, sees the bag is all spread out. There's a collection of large, clean, fluffy towels on the towel rack. "Towels around the bag, he's going to drip and Abby will want the liquid. Then down to the van, grab the full arm-length protective gloves."

"Any idea of time of death?" Tony asks.

Jimmy looks up at him, answers cool and professional, no anger in his voice. "He was last seen two days ago, right?"

Tony nods.

"Then not more than two days ago." And while that is a smart answer, that's an almost verbatim 'Ducky' smart answer that Ducky or Jimmy would whip out at any crime scene when asked for a time of death way before there was any way for him to know. "I don't know what temperature the water was, how long he was in it before he died." Jimmy gets his hand behind Major Kimmel's head. "He feels room temperature. Can't be more than a few degrees warmer than the air." He nudges Major Kimmel's head; it moves. "He's either out of rigor or hasn't gotten there, yet."

Dr. Allan finishes with the towels. "But it'd have to be at least a few hours, right? Even if the water was cold and could chill him down fast, it'd take a while for everything to settle into one temp?"

"Correct, Dr. Allan."

Allan nods, pleased, and heads off to get the protective gloves.

Jimmy looks up at Tony. "He's probably already out of rigor mortis, given the temperature of everything, but we'll make sure. Once we get him back, we'll check every fifteen minutes for rigor. If he's not there in two hours, that means he's on the other side of it, either way that'll give me a better idea of time of death." From there, Jimmy shuts up, which is out of character for him, waiting for Allan. He's back in two minutes. They glove up.

"Very carefully, Dr. Allan. If this is a suicide, there's likely a very sharp object in this water somewhere."

Jimmy gets a good hold on Kimmel's shoulders. Allan gets his feet, and they carefully lift him from the bath and lay him on the body bag.

"We'll have to get him rinsed off to know for sure, but I'm not seeing any defensive wounds." Jimmy points to the two long, precise cuts along the Major's thighs. "Slit femoral arteries. Given his position, and depending on water temperature, he could have bled out in less than a minute with those cuts." Jimmy sniffs and stirs the water in the bath lightly. "Apparent lack of fecal matter in the tub indicates premeditation. Suicide or a very well-staged homicide. Blood tox'll help us know for sure."

Allan zips up the body bag.

Jimmy turns to Tony. "I'll send Dr. Allan up with my report as soon as it's ready." Then he turns back to Allan. "Ready?"

Allan nods.

"Careful footing, the floor is going to be slippery, and these protective shoe covers provide no traction."

Allan nods again, re-bracing himself, ready to lift. And once again, they both lift, taking Major Kimmel to the gurney, and from there, to further examination.

* * *

Once they're back in the van, heading back toward the Navy Yard, Allan asks, "I take it you and Tony are not pleased with each other, right now?"

Jimmy nods, tensely.

"It's not my business, and I'm not interested in gossip, but… Do I need to get pissed at him, too?"

Jimmy looks at Allan, and smiles at him, pleased by that display of loyalty. Then he shakes his head. "No. It's between me and him."

"You and him. No, you and him and Ziva? Just… with that condom comment, and her wanting to fight in the middle of the day…"

"Oh. No! He's not cheating on her! He's not that guy. Everything is from a long time ago. Turns out that was a hoax, anyway. One of…" It hits Jimmy how bad this load of crap'll look, and that he doesn't want Allan hating, or even not liking Tony. Because Tony now is not Tony then, and Tony now does not need to be judged based on Tony then. (And yes, Jimmy is aware of exactly what he just thought, and yes, it is making him a bit squirmy.) "Dr. Allan, yesterday's situation was a mess. But it's a private mess. Everything involved in it happened a long time ago, but it hit me pretty hard yesterday. Tony and I'll be okay again, eventually. Beyond that, I'd appreciate it if you left it alone."

"Certainly Dr. Palmer."

"Thank you."

* * *

Ziva's checking any and every place she can think of for a possible suicide note when her phone buzzes.

_Have a few minutes?_ From Tim.

She stares at that, and another piece of Jimmy apology slips into place. Tim was looking for the child, Jimmy found him. They would have worked together, which means at some point Jimmy got Tim to hold off on telling them. Maybe… Tim could have just handed it off, gone home… That doesn't feel right.

_Why? Are you looking to apologize to me, too?_ She texts back.

_Yes._ She winces when she sees that. _If you'll accept one. Kind of hoping to talk. You in the bullpen?_

_On scene._

_Oh._

_That was a very long night, Tim._

_Yes. I imagine it was. I am sorry that backing Jimmy meant hurting you._ She exhales quickly. Looks like Jimmy stuck at least him, and knowing how they work, Abby, too, in the middle. And they picked Jimmy.

_I'm not the only one who got hurt._

_I know. But since we're not all three of us together, I'm just aiming for you. I'll talk to him, too._

_Good. When we get a bit of time, we'll be down._

_Thank you._

* * *

In the hours between getting on the scene to getting back to the Navy Yard, Tony goes from shell shocked to angry.

He doesn't like what Palmer did, but he can understand it. He's not always the sanest guy in the room if you hit him on one of his hot button issues, and he's wishing he had actually talked to Jimmy back in July, the first time it hit his radar, because that probably would have saved them a lot of this.

But he didn't. He knew this hit Jimmy wrong. He knew it was an issue. But Jimmy buried it, so he did too, because there's nothing he wanted to do less than have a heart to heart with Palmer about Jeanne.

Except, now that he's been through the last night and this morning, he's thinking that heart to heart would have been a good idea.

So, he gets Jimmy. He doesn't like Jimmy right now. He's not in any, way, shape, or form _happy_ with Jimmy, and next bootcamp is going to be very interesting, but he gets it. Tony kind of wishes he didn't get it, that he could just cocoon himself into 'poor little picked on me' but he can't, not for this, not for Jimmy.

McGee, on the other hand, is a whole other book of other stories. Once Ziva let him know that McGee was in on it, too, he found someone he could be really good and fucking mad at. McGee is getting his ass kicked from one side of Cybercrime to the other and back again and then he's going to let himself really express how mad he is.

* * *

Strategy time. Tim figures he doesn't have all that long before Tony or Ziva, or Tony and Ziva are in his office looking for some payback.

So… lay on his back, expose his belly, and be really upfront about knowing exactly what he did, why he did, and that he'll do whatever they want to make it better?

Err…

He sighs.

That's probably the right strategy for Ziva. Tony's likely a different story.

It's been a while since he's been on the apologizing end of things, but he remembers how frustrating it was when Tony more or less just stood there in front of him, and took it.

He didn't want Tony to just take it. He wanted to _fight_.

And right now he doesn't know if Tony wants abject apology, or if he wants someone to kick.

He'll have to play that by ear.

* * *

"You think I deserved that?" Tony asks two hours later as he and Ziva storm into Tim's office. Tim watches both of them for a second, Ziva's tired, Tony's running on angry.

He takes a quick breath and hopes this is the right plan.

He stands up, side-steps Tony, ignoring him, and heads right over to Ziva, kicking his door shut, and closing the blinds on his office as he goes.

Once they're private, he faces Ziva and says, "Ziva, it was intentional, I knew it was going to hurt, I did it anyway because I valued Jimmy's desire for revenge over your happiness. I am taking full responsibility for this. My lack of action hurt you; I know it. Anything you want, anything you need, whatever it is, I am at your complete disposal."

He didn't see the strike that split his lip. He felt it. His head is ringing and he can taste blood, but as best as he can tell, Ziva didn't move.

Tim bows his head. "Whatever you need to do."

Ziva tilts his head up, so he's looking her in the eye. "Next time you feel torn, like you have to pick sides, you grab your phone, and you call all of us, and we talk about it as a family."

Tim nod. "Yes, Ma'am."

Ziva nods back at him. Tony's behind him to the left, and he flicks his eyes toward Tony, hopefully signaling, _I'm doing this on purpose, I hope it's the right thing_. She gives him a curious look in response.

"Stop me if this is wrong." He mouths it, no sound, but she nods minutely, so it looks like she got it.

Then he turns to face Tony, standing right up in front of him, eye to eye, and very calmly says, "Yes."

Tony's eyes just about fall out of his head, and Tim hears Ziva shift slightly behind him, but she doesn't grab his shoulder, so he doubles down.

"You deserved every second of that, and for a hell of a lot more than what Jimmy called you on. You and me, last night, that evens us up for all the-"

"Even? How could this possibly be even…" And Tony was off, hot, angry words spewing out of him at a very high rate of speed.

And Tim keeps egging him on, smart ass comment after smart ass comment, pushing him that much harder, that much angrier.

Tony's not much of a puncher. He can punch, and will punch, but between basketball and football, Tony tends to start a fight with a bull-rush. (That's part of why Tim is right in front of him, he wants to let Tony get it out, but he doesn't want to get killed. So he's making sure Tony doesn't have enough room to get full speed up and use the fact that he's got twenty pounds on Tim and momentum to his advantage.) So, it's not a rush, but he does start out with a hard shove, and Tim's already braced for it, so he doesn't go down, which seems to piss Tony off even more.

Tony's a lot like a firework. He burns angry and hot and bright, but not for very long. After about three minutes of yelling and hitting, (And yes, Tim is both dodging and blocking, as previously stated, he's not looking to get killed today, just let him get the angry out.) he'd blown off everything he had to say about how last night did not even begin to come close to any of the shit he'd ever pulled on Tim and especially after the way Tim beat the hell out of him last summer that there was no possible way that any of that was even in the neighborhood of "even" and that if he was such a bad fucking friend that he thought "even" was even in play that he could go fuck himself sideways with a flamethrower. (Tony's actually got an impressive command of cuss words. Some of them would have even shocked the Admiral).

But, after three minutes, he's glaring at Tim, panting slightly, face red, fists curled, but from the looks of it, out of words, and just feeling quite hurt.

Tim waits another two seconds, makes sure he's done, stands up, and then puts his hand on Tony's shoulder. Tony tries to shrug it off, but Tim keeps the contact, and says, "No, Tony, I didn't think you deserved that. I just figured you wouldn't find it very satisfying to just yell at me if I laid there and said I was sorry about it." He lets go of Tony's shoulder. "Better?"

* * *

Tony blinks. God does he have a big 'fuck with me' sign on his back today? But, he thinks about it, about how it would have felt if Tim just stood there and kept saying _I'm sorry._ He nods, stiffly. He actually is feeling a better at really getting to let it go.

Better and done aren't the same thing, though.

"If I didn't deserve it, why'd you go along with it?"

Tim points to one of the chairs, for Tony, and pulls his desk chair around to campfire up. "When we first found the information, I had my phone out, your number up, thumb about to hit the button when he stopped me. You've seen him today, right, so you know how bad he was hurting—"

"Do you have any idea how _bad_ I was hurting?" Tony says, voice hard, glaring at Tim.

"As much as anyone who's never been there can, yes."

Tony's eyes narrow at that. He's not sure if the idea that Tim didn't know what he was doing would have hurt more or less than the idea that he did.

Ziva settles in, just watching.

"I wanted to make you feel better, and I wanted to make him feel better, and I couldn't do both, so when it came down to it, he's never pulled any shit on me, but you have, so I went with him."

McGee's got that obnoxiously earnest look on his face as he says that.

"He's hurting because of bad memories of something entirely outside of his control. You're hurting because of your own screw up. I'd assume, in a similar situation, if my own bad decisions were biting me in the ass, and the fact that I'd made those decisions was hurting Jimmy, you'd make the same choice."

Earnestness plus logic is even more annoying. Earnestness plus logic with not a single trace of malice or joy or… Shit. It's really hard to stay mad at McGee when he's just sitting there, waiting to get dumped on some more. Tony's actually wishing the smart ass would come back so he could have another go at him.

"It was you in my office, yesterday morning, before this shit-storm broke, telling me that if the test goes balls up and I get hurt, and Abby ends up crying on you, that you're going to slap me upside the back of the head for getting on that ship."

Tim just stares at Tony waiting for his comment.

Tony shrugs, and glares a little, because he did say that… And he will smack Tim upside the head for that. Abby or, God, worse, Gibbs, ends up crying because Tim's being an idiot and getting on the Admiral's fucking flag ship when he doesn't actually have to do it, and he will hit Tim because it's a stupid decision and a risk he doesn't have to take… And… shit.

Tim continues filling them in with what happened last night. "Jimmy cracked the case for you. I was stuck. Nothing left. Aiden Benoit was coming up on nothing I had. He looks at it and uses his ID to break into the kid's medical records. And I'm about to call you when he says stop. I've got three options: A: No Jimmy, this is too mean. B: Okay, I'll go along. C: Or say I'm going along and lie about it. C's out. The one didn't require any soul searching. So, we talk about A and B, make sure he knows what he's doing is mean, point out that it's going to hurt Ziva, too, and he still wanted to do it. The first thing Abby said to him was, 'That's not kind,' and he said that was the point."

"How about D: Talk him out of it?" Tony says sarcastically, few sparks of pissed off joining together and firing off.

McGee stops at that, and Tony can tell by the look on his face that that option did not in any way ever occur to him.

McGee keeps thinking, then inhales, exhales, and says, "Apparently, I do think you deserve it. Shit. I'm…" McGeek's doing that annoying thing where Tony can actually see the synapses firing away in his head, trying to get everything in order. "Damn it, I thought I was just backing him, but… Yeah… Should have thought of D. D was obvious."

Tony doesn't know what to do with that. McGee's rapidly thinking through something, eyes far away, with that 'processing' look on his face.

After a minute his eyes come back to Tony. "I had to watch you die, in real time, on satellite, and then help clean up your charred corpse, because you didn't feel like letting us in on the full mission. I thought I was over that. Hadn't thought about it in a long time, but… I think that's why I didn't think of D.

"If you'd let me in, you could have had a tracker on you. Could have been a tiny, little thing, in your watch or something, something you would have kept on your body. But I didn't know you were still on that case, because you didn't tell me. Thought you were done after Kort made Ducky. So I didn't have any signal, anything that could let me know you were still alive." They both hear Ziva shift slightly in her seat at that, and Tim remembers how much those hours of not knowing hurt her, too. "If you had had that tracker, we could have had people on you, we could have picked you and Grenouille up, and gotten the whole thing wrapped up, with arrests, that day.

"It was hours before we knew it wasn't you, longer before we knew what happened to you. And you came in and pretty much laughed at me for being hurt because I had to help Jimmy and Ducky get your charred corpse out of a bombed car. So, yeah," McGee nods and swallows. "Apparently I do think you deserved some shit for that. Because otherwise I would have thought of talking him out of it, because that's not rocket science, and if I was truly going at it as someone trying to minimize both of your pain, I would have come up with that."

McGee doesn't look particularly pleased with himself right now. "Tony, it doesn't matter why. I did it intentionally. I knew it was going to suck. I knew it would hurt. And I picked him and his pain over you and yours." He's looking Tony straight in the eye as he says, "You're welcome to do anything and everything you like to me make yourself feel better about that. Whatever you require of me to make this right, I will do."

Tony glares at him. Right now he's feeling too defeated to even come up with something that might make him feel better about this. He hadn't realized they'd watched the car blow up, and it's just hitting him how terrible seeing that corpse, believing it was him, would have been.

Tim turns to Ziva. She's sitting in one of the chairs, so he moves to sit next to her. "Ziva, as I said, anything. Wash your car, ten rounds at bootcamp, do your taxes, all of the above, anything."

She stands up, shaking her head slightly. "My father used to say, 'Do not apologize. Learn from your mistake, and do not do make it again.'"

"I won't."

"Then we are good."

Tony stands up, too. He looks around, tries to find a joke or something. McGee can see what he's aiming for. "I'd offer to do all your paperwork, but I kind of already did."

Tony nods. "That car better sparkle when you're done with it."

McGee nod. He can do that. He takes three steps to his desk, grabs his keys, and hands them to Tony. "Swap with me? It'll be gleaming in the morning."

Tony hands his over and heads off.

* * *

"What do you have, Abby?" Tony asks as he heads to the lab.

"Good stuff, lots of good stuff. First off, no prints on the razor, but it was in water for more than long enough to dissolve prints, and of course, it's covered in the victim's DNA. No shocker there. Jimmy was right, no fecal matter, or urine, in the water. Just water and blood, so the Major relieved himself before he took care of things. He had Tylenol, Eliquis, that's a blood thinner, and alcohol in his blood, but not so much that he was incapacitated. Just enough to numb him a bit. I've got no evidence of anyone else on him or on any of the samples you gave me. I'm not Jimmy, but to me, this looks like a suicide by someone who was serious about doing the job right."

Tony nods. Then he looks to Ziva, and back to Abby, waiting.

Abby stares at them, shifting her gaze from one to the other, looking at them expectantly.

"Anything else?" Tony asks.

"Not from me," she shakes her head, short blonde ponytails flapping.

"Nothing about last night?" Tony says. He hates it when she does that innocent/pretending to not know what's going on/cute/dense thing.

"Oh. Yeah. Come on back." She leads them into ballistics so they can have a private conversations. "Yeah, last night sucked. And I know I can't make it suck less, but…

She's still doing that cute thing, which is really annoying Tony right now, but then says, "So I… uh… kind of called Diane, you know Gibbs' Diane, this morning, and you know she's an IRS auditor? Anyway, she agreed with me that what Helen pulled on you was total shit, so Helen's going to get a _very_ thorough tax audit this year. And, I've got another buddy who works for Medicare, and she might have… um… flagged Helen for possible Medicare fraud, so… all of her billing for the last five years is going to be gone through with a fine tooth comb. And… yeah… so it's possible that Blue Cross and Anthem got anonymous tips about her overbilling them."

Tony and Ziva are staring at Abby, who is smiling at them, both of them remembering that for as cute as Abby is, there is a very hard, very cold person under there and you do not fuck with Abby's friends. "Jimmy didn't want you going off on Helen, but he didn't say anything to _me_ about it."

"Abby!" Tony says.

"Hey, if she's been playing by the rules, it'll be annoying, but nothing bad will happen to her. If not… That's on her. I made sure to pick agencies that do audits at random, so it's not like checking out Helen is any more or less likely to turn something up than any of their other 'random' audits, so I'm not wasting resources by doing it. I love Jimmy, and I love you guys, and I know I can't make last night better, and I know you're pissed, so I can and did lay some payback on the person who put this whole thing into motion." She smiles at them again. "I hope that helps, some.

"I do have one other thing, Tony, I've got your DNA on file. Tim and I talked about this last night. If you want, I'll run it against everything we've got, and he'll hack the big private databases, all the organ donation sites, bone marrow, 23&Me, all of them, to increase the scope of the search. If you want to know, we'll find your kids, or at least as many of them as are old enough to have hit any of the major databases. It's not perfect, but it'll cut down on the chance of you getting blindsided like this again."

Tony opens and closes his mouth, a very Gibbs looking gesture, that Abby doesn't think she's ever seen from him. Ziva's looking from him to Abby and back again, not sure what she thinks or feels about that offer.

"You two talk and think. But if you want to know, we'll get it for you." Abby starts to head back to the lab proper.

"That's it?" Tony asks.

Abby nods. "What else would you like?"

"No, 'I'm sorry?'"

Abby shakes her head. "Nope." Then she looks at both of them… "Do you really want to have a long conversation about how _I_ know for a _fact_ that _both_ of you have done _exactly_ what set Jimmy off and that I think he's allowed to be crazy about it as a hot button issue because it happened to him? We can do that. We can talk about the fact that _I_ know about several of Ziva's lesser known exploits, but Tim and Jimmy don't, because that conversation was private between you and I and Breena, and since Jimmy was already in epic-meltdown mode, I really didn't think he needed to know that about you. We could talk about how I hate all drunk drivers, because one killed my parents, and about how you know that about me, and how you have never suggested the fact that I loathe every single drunk driver on Earth is in any way inappropriate, because it's my hot button issue. We can talk about how I let you slide on your hot button issues, and how I've never said a peep about the fact that neither of you are gentle with suspected rapists, and that not gentle can get even worse when I've given you a DNA match. We could talk about how I would not expect you to be kind to Tim or Jimmy if you found out that one of them had ever hit your hot button, even if it was more than a decade ago, and that should you find that out, I'd back your play and let you get whatever comeback you'd need."

Abby waits for both of them to say something. They don't.

"We good?" she asks. Very cold, very hard, not very cute at all right that second.

Tony slumps his shoulders, and Ziva nods curtly.

"Great!" There's that smile again. "Let me know what you want to do about the DNA matching."

* * *

Allan's waiting for them, with his report, when they get back up to the bullpen.

"Dr. Allan?" Tony asks.

"Unless you find something to indicate otherwise, we're calling this a suicide. No defensive wounds on the body. Three small hesitation cuts on the right thigh, none on the left. Lividity is consistent with dying in the position we found him in. No signs of rigor, so time of death is more than twenty four hours before we found him, but because we don't know the temperature of the water, we can't get more specific than that. Agent Draga…"

Draga puts up a picture of the bathroom.

"Dr. Palmer noticed the contents of the trash can." In the picture they can see what looks like plastic bags. "They're bags for ice. It's possible that the contents of those bags were in the water, numb him further, make it hurt less. He also had alcohol and Tylenol in his blood, so it's not implausible that he wanted to mitigate the pain. If that's true, that'd put time of death much closer to when he was last seen. But according to Abby, that brand of ice is just municipal water frozen solid, there's no way to tell if it was in the tub with him and melted, or if he used it for something else."

Tony nods. "Thank you, Dr. Allan."

"My pleasure. May we release the body?"

Tony nods. "Yes."

Allan heads off and Tony looks around. It's a bit before four in the afternoon. He's beat. Ziva's tired, he can see it in her eyes and the way she's holding herself. "Bishop, Draga, fill in the database, print the little bastards out, and then cut out. We're all going home early today."

Bishop and Draga seem pleased with that. Tony grabs his go bag, looks at Ziva, and glances at the elevator, and they head home.

He's driving Tim and Abby's car, first time behind the wheel of the roadster. Part of him is very tempted to get into a fender bender. Mostly, he's just too damn tired to deal with it. They're at a stop light. Ziva's not talking, and he's not feeling very talk-y either. But they should talk. Lots of things to say, lots…

Ziva looks at him. "Not tonight. Food. And then I want you to find the dumbest, lightest, fluffiest comedy ever made, and we are going to watch it, and then go to sleep, and as long as no one dies tomorrow, we are taking a personal day, and we will sort it out then."

Tony exhales, relieved. That sounds like a really good plan to him.


	98. Checking In

Gibbs supposes, that five years ago, he would have just headed straight into Autopsy and started smacking Jimmy around.

Of course, five years ago, he didn't think Jimmy could have even imagined pulling shit like that.

Well, he could have imagined it. But he wouldn't have had the balls to pull it off. The downside of the boys growing some backbone is that they'll want to use the damn things from time to time.

It feels odd to Gibbs to be the guy who's looking to fix things, calm them down, get them soothed over, rather than just being the guy who storms in and kicks everyone until they all get along again. Of course, as he thinks about it, he's not really 'fixing' anything. He can't actually 'fix' this. What he can do is make sure each of them is as okay in themselves as possible, and try to help them get to understand where the others are coming from so they can then 'fix' it themselves.

So, what's that? Mediator? Whatever, feels weird.

He feels like he's got a handle on Ziva's side of things. Or at least as much of a handle as Ziva does. But he's not sure if she's going easier on Jimmy than she needs to because she's also got some pissed at Tony going on, and thus Jimmy can be an indirect way to get that out, or if she really does sympathize.

He doesn't know where Tony is, because he hasn't seen the fallout of whatever the hell it is Jimmy's done to him.

And he's got no clue on Jimmy, either.

But he's going to find out.

* * *

No funeral today. That's a good thing. He doesn't stick out in his cargo pants and Marines t-shirt.

Gibbs heads around to the service entrance and knocks. A few seconds later, Jeannie opens the door. "Jethro?"

He gives her a bit of a smile. "Breena here?"

She nods. "She's working with one of our clients."

Gibbs nods at that. "I know my way." And he does, so he heads back to the mortuary.

Breena's standing next to a steel table, wearing scrubs of her own, as she gently applies makeup to the elderly woman on the table. She's talking to her, letting her know what she's doing and why, and doesn't hear him come in.

"We do this to everyone Mrs. Sander. Just makes you look like you're asleep. I know your kids said you didn't like makeup, so it's nothing drastic. No mascara or lipstick. Just enough foundation and blush so you're not all gray. Then we'll get you dressed and ready to go." She puts the sponge down, and sees Jethro, jerking a bit.

"Don't ever just creep into a mortuary, Jethro."

He shrugs and pulls up a stool.

"So, which one was crying on you?" she asks.

"Which one wasn't's more like it."

She nods. "Tony and Ziva going to be okay? I know all of this has to be killing Ziva."

He nods. "Tell me about Jimmy. He go bonkers last night?"

She sighs. "He didn't tell me the whole Lee story until July. Apparently, it happened and he buried it, and then he and Tim are talking about Tony, and Jeanne gets mentioned, something about Tony not having an easy time trusting that a woman'll stick around, because before Ziva they all left…"

Gibbs is nodding; he's following that, can see how Tim might have mentioned that, and… yeah, depending on when in July, Tony and Ziva were in a rocky patch… okay, that makes a certain amount of sense.

"Somehow Jeanne got mentioned as one of the ones who left. Probably because Tim had the 'official' 'Tony's girlfriend' story more in mind than the real story."

Gibbs nods at that, too. He's actually got no idea, at all, of how much of that whole story Tim has, or for that matter, how much of it he has. Not like they ever sat down with Tony and had a long talk about it, let alone a full debrief. They found out about the Frog side of it months before they found out about Jeanne, and by the time they knew about her, it was done. They all know what Tony was doing and how it was supposed to work, sort of, but Tony's girlfriend was way more entrenched than the second half of the Grenouille story.

"Somehow, they're talking, and it clicks for Jimmy, what happened to Jeanne, what happened to him with Lee. If you remember the second half of the Fourth of July party, he was in a wicked bad mood and kept poking Tony."

Gibbs doesn't really remember that. Franks, stories, he was a bit toasted that night… Tony in a foul mood the next morning. He shakes his head, he doesn't much remember what Jimmy may have been doing that night.

"We get home, and we get Molly down, and I get him talking. I get the whole Lee story. It's a good thing you killed her, because if you hadn't…"

Gibbs nods. He doesn't think Breena would really try anything, but he understands that's more a statement of how angry she was in response to that story.

"Anyway, he was so angry. But, he was also with it enough to know it'd been ten years. Lee's dead. Jeanne's out of the picture. Past can't be changed. So, he decides to bury it again. I suggested to him that maybe that wasn't the most healthy plan he'd ever had, and that just possibly, he might try talking to Tony about it, but he looked at me and said, 'If I talk to him, then I have to acknowledge he did it. And if I do that, I have to do something about it. If it's real, I can't let it lie. So, I'd rather this not be real.'"

Breena raises one eyebrow and says, dryly, "If memory serves that's NCIS coping method 101. Ignore it until it bites you so hard you can't ignore it anymore."

Gibbs inclines his head, she certainly isn't wrong about that.

"So, yesterday, he couldn't pretend it hadn't happened, not anymore. From what he told me he was doing okay as long as it was a real threat to Tony and Ziva, but once he knew it wasn't…"

"He couldn't use the threat to keep himself from thinking about it." Gibbs thinks about what he knows about Jimmy. Jimmy's the guy who gets the shakes after the action's over. He's good as long as he needs to be good, but as soon as it's done, he's useless for a while. So… yeah, he was probably all over helping Tony and Ziva until the crisis was over. Then he got shaky. Then he got thinking. Add in sick child… yeah, protecting them, helping them with a sick child… he'd be right on top of that Until he knew there wasn't a sick child anymore. Once he knew the nightmare was just that… and once it was over, it'd be over…

Gibbs feels like he's getting Jimmy and where he was in mind.

"You knew what he was doing?"

She nods.

"You went along with it?"

He didn't ask why, but Breena figures it's implied. She nods. "Two parts on that. One, he's holding Anna, and he looks at me and says, 'What if it was her?' I've got the kind of job that makes enemies. What if someone tries something with her to get to me?' and the second part is that I know about a few missions Ziva hasn't told the boys about. I didn't much like the idea of them hurting, but…

"What would you do if it was Kelly, Jethro? Your Kelly, Tim's Kelly? How about Anna or Molly?" She looks Gibbs full in the eye.

He doesn't answer, because he doesn't need to. Breena knows exactly what he'd do to the guy who tries something like that on one of his girls. That brings up another question, what would he have done if Grenouille had lived and gone after Tony? After all, he heard, just like everyone else going after ARES, that everything Grenouille was doing was for his kids. That brings about another thought, one he sincerely hopes Jen never had: NCIS's claim on Grenouille was somewhere between shaky and non-existent, but if he attacked an NCIS agent, they'd have jurisdiction. _God, please Jen, tell me you didn't set Tony up to get assaulted or killed._

Breena speaking jerks him out of those thoughts. "It happened to Jimmy, Gibbs. MY Jimmy. My sweet, funny, gentle, and trusting Jimmy. The things I love best about him got turned against him. You think I care less about him than you do our girls? And since Ziva and Tony had both been on the dishing out side of it, I figured they could handle a night of taking it, treat others how you would be treated and all that, especially if it made him feel better.

"He called after he got done talking to Tony, he's doing better. Don't know about Tony, but Jimmy's a lot closer to solid than he was last night."

She shakes her head, looking at Gibbs. "I wish this whole thing never happened. I wish Helen had stayed the fuck-" Gibbs blinks, he doesn't remember the last time he heard Breena curse. "away from Tony, and I wish he'd had the sense God gave a cat and turned down the Jeanne mission. I wish this whole thing never touched us. I wish Lee had stayed out of NCIS. I wish her sister never got kidnapped. I wish she had trusted you guys to fix it.

"I wish for a lot of things. Here's something I wish: I wish one of you bastards had acknowledged that something bad had happened to Jimmy when the Lee thing blew up. That would have been nice. Just a few words. Apparently none of you even asked if he was okay." Breena's eyes are right on Gibbs' as she says that, making it awfully clear she's laying that on him.

"You guys put her body in his morgue. For three days." Breena shakes her head and rolls her eyes at that. "And maybe if any of you ever dealt with anything when it happened, or if any of you had even hinted to him that he had any right to feel _something_ about it at the time, he wouldn't have stuffed it so damn far down and let it fester for this long.

"I wish he'd talked to Tony about it before it blew up. I wish I could get him to do something more constructive with all of his shit beyond beating on you guys. Bootcamp helps, it does, and I'm glad he's doing it, because it's a lot better than when he was just stewing, but therapy would be a good plan, too. But you know about doctors and getting doctors to go see another doctor.

"There's a lot of things I wish for…" She sighs. "He's my husband. He and my kids come first. What he did to them eased his pain, and it wasn't entirely out of the blue. Not like he just woke up in a bad mood and decided to start kicking people at random. So, I can live with it. I can back him on it. Can you, or are you going to go slap him upside the head, hard?"

Gibbs sighs. "He goes off the rails again, call me?"

"He was already with Tim."

Gibbs sighs again. He gets how close they are. He gets they can say and… apparently… do… things… maybe… he's still not sure what exactly happened last weekend, with each other that they can't with Tony, but… yeah, sometimes the two of them together is not a great plan.

"I was just pleased to see he didn't come back covered in bruises. Those two don't seem to have gotten much past the beat it out stage when it comes to dealing with pissed off. I'm not sure if ganging up on Tony is a step in the right direction or not."

"Lord. Okay."

"What are you going to do?"

Gibbs shrugs, but stands up, and kisses the top of Breena's head before he leaves. "He's lucky to have you."

She nods. "And he knows it."

* * *

Gibbs never did say anything to Jimmy about the Lee case. Once he was done with his questions, that was it. There was the investigation, and hunting down Bankston, and then getting her sister back, and having to deal with the fact that he killed Lee.

It was a good kill, but it's still a life he ended.

And even the good kills hurt.

And none of the rest of them really would have talked to him, either. They weren't close enough for it back then. Ducky might have… or he might have lectured Jimmy about how ridiculously inappropriate it was to be screwing away all over the office and how lucky he was not to get fired for it.

Gibbs sighs, knowing Ducky, it's entirely likely that Jimmy got the latter speech.

* * *

Getting a visitor sticker feels weird. Gibbs doesn't need one when they use the gym. Officially they're supposed to sign him in, but they just head in like they always do.

After all, the rules you don't make for yourself don't really apply.

But, in that Gibbs no longer has an ID that opens the doors to the Navy Yard, he's standing at the front desk waiting for Clark to get him an ID. He's not big on small talk, but Clark's chatting about how retirement is going, so he half-heartedly plays along.

A minute later he's got his VISITOR sticker.

"Take it you know the way, Mr. Gibbs?"

"I can probably muddle through."

"Have a nice day!" And thus he's waved off, through the metal detector, and on his way to Autopsy.

* * *

Dr. Allan's wiping down the autopsy table with alcohol.

"Get a customer?" Gibbs asks as he steps in.

Jimmy looks up at him. "Suicide. All wrapped up."

Gibbs nods at that. "You got time to get a coffee with me, then?"

"Sure. Dr. Allan, once it's all tidy, you're free to leave."

Allan nods, staring at Gibbs.

Jimmy catches it. "Sorry. I forgot you haven't met. Dr. Sam Allan, Leroy Jethro Gibbs."

Gibbs and Allan do the traditional nice to meet you stuff. Allan's genuinely curious; he has, of course, heard about the infamous Gibbs. Gibbs is going through the motions, he wants to get to talking with Jimmy.

But they get wrapped up, and in a matter of five minutes, they're out front, sitting on one of the benches, both of them with a coffee in hand.

He stares at Jimmy, really seeing him. "You okay?"

Jimmy shrugs. "Now, yeah. This morning really helped. Feels stupid to be this pissed, this many years later, but it's real, and it's right now, and just sitting on it never really seems to work, so might as well get it out and done."

Gibbs nods at that, agreeing with the basic concept, but thinking with a decade down, that Jimmy's got an interesting definition of 'not sitting on it.' "You going to talk to Tony again?"

"Sooner or later. I don't expect him to apologize to me. He didn't do it to me. And I'm not apologizing to him, because he deserved every single word of it and every single minute of it. He needed to know how that night felt. I think he does, now. Not my brightest moment, and I'm not getting the buddy of the year award, but... on my end at least, we're in spitting distance of good."

Gibbs sighs at that. "Put Tim and Abby in a bad place."

"Yeah. I know. Feel bad about that. Feel really bad about what I did to Ziva. I hope they forgive me for it. I hope you do. Didn't hit me until this morning that you were probably hurting, too. I'm sorry about that." Jimmy stares at Gibbs. "No denial, no excuses, no, 'I didn't think you'd get hurt.' I mean, I didn't think _you'd_ get hurt, but that's because I kind of forgot about you." Gibbs holds up a hand, he knows where Jimmy's going with this. "I know what I did. I did it intentionally. I was pissed, so I kicked Tony until I felt better, and bruised the rest of you, too."

Gibbs may not approve, but he respects that. You fuck up, you admit it, you say you're sorry, you face the music, and you move on. "Are you feeling better?"

Jimmy shrugs. "Yeah. Not dancing around with joy in my heart or a song on my lips or anything, but I'm better." Jimmy takes another drink, looking at the Navy Yard. He can see the Director's Office from here. "You know there are no files on that case, not on the computers at least. Tim's gonna check the paper copies, but given how there's literally nothing on the computers, he's sure he won't find anything on paper.

"Jeanne went through all of that, for nothing, and at first, when I grabbed Tim's hand and said, 'Don't tell Tony,' it was about me, all about me, and I'm not going to lie, a lot of this is still about me, but it's about her, too. Everything she went through was for nothing. We never made any arrests. The CIA handled the whole thing, apparently, at least that's how Tim remembers it. No arrests, no convictions, no… nothing. It just vanished.

"That feels bad. Been thinking about that all night. All that pain, for nothing. If… if it had mattered, if… something good had come out of it, it'd be easier, you know? But, there's nothing. It was just meaningless, random pain. Kind of like Jon, you know?" Jimmy looks away from the main building and back to Gibbs. "But, no one did Jon to us. No one had any choice in the matter." He sips his coffee again. "So, then I showed up and bit Tony's head off, and he let me. Not like he was going to say to me, 'It was for a good cause' or 'I didn't know what I was doing' or… He just took it."

"People make mistakes."

Jimmy nods. "I know. Burning Ziva, sticking Tim and Abby in a bad place, that's mine. Ziva's a bad one. She says she accepts my apology, and I really hope she does." He doesn't ask the question, but he knows that Gibbs has had more recent non-professional contact with Ziva than he has.

Gibbs nods. "Yeah. She does. She's pissed at you, but you've earned enough brownie points over the years that she let you have that one. But that's your _one_ freebie. Try something like that again, and she's going to kick your ass from one side of DC to the other."

Jimmy nods.

"And so will I."

He nods at that, too. "I deserve that."

Jethro sips his coffee and quietly says, "I didn't go after every drug dealer in Mexico. Just went for the guy who actually did me pain. I know Lee's gone, and I know that's unsatisfying. But she's gone. And kicking someone else isn't going to scratch that itch."

Jimmy purses his lips, not sure exactly how Jethro means that. He spends a good two minutes really thinking about it, then he says, "We had to pry you out of that desk with a crowbar. Are you really going to tell me that going after the next best thing doesn't help? Or are you trying to tell me that all of this," he gestures to NCIS, "wasn't about going after the next best thing?"

Gibbs also takes a moment to think before answering. "This was the next best thing. And, especially when you've got nothing, the next best thing will keep you up and moving. Keep you going until you can get something, or until the next best thing becomes your something." He sips his coffee and turns to face Jimmy. "But you don't have nothing. You've got piles and piles of not nothing all over the place. You are neck deep in not nothing."

Gibbs gently rubs the back of Jimmy's head, where it meets his neck, and then gives him a slap, hard enough to sting, not hard enough to make his head ring. "So don't fuck it up, and don't burn people you love!

"The next best thing is never going to do it for you. The best thing will never do it for you. You may have noticed, getting the best thing didn't actually make me _better._ No one ever accused me of being well-adjusted back in '93. More than twenty years of second best didn't do it, either. Nothing outside you is ever going to do it for you. It can help, but it won't bury your dead or calm your demons. It'll, just, maybe, give you room to find out how to do it for yourself. You got a plan for dealing with this, for fixing it, for you, on the inside, so it doesn't come back?"

Jimmy nods. "Yeah."

"Okay."

Jimmy takes a drink, quiet, and then says, "I keep thinking about Jeanne, and me… And me for her."

Gibbs doesn't quite seem to be following that.

"We're here for the victims, right? That's literally my job. Everything I do is with or for the victims. I'm the last voice a dead man will ever have. But, no one ever spoke up for Jeanne." Jimmy smiles, sad at that, looking away from Jethro, back toward NCIS. "And yeah, it was way too little, and way too damn late, but… Someone should have stood up for Jeanne. Someone should have said, 'Whoa, slow the fuck down; there has got to be another way to do this!" Jimmy looks back to Jethro. "I'm someone. So, that was the plan. And like I said, I'm feeling better, maybe not all the way there, and pretty cruddy about pulling that on Ziva, but… There's peace in there now. I'll sleep tonight."

Gibbs sighs, shakes his head a little, and rubs the back of Jimmy's head again. "Breena's worried about you."

He nods. "I know. I'm good, probably ninety-seven days out of one hundred now, but… She lives with me, so she sees the bad ones, too."

"Cranston's a really good listener."

"I'm sure she is."

"Wouldn't hurt-"

"I've got to sleep sometime, Jethro. Job, kids, house, continuing education. I'm pretty much scheduled straight though all summer long. Got two breaks in there, long weekend late July and a break for Labor Day, and I'm going to need them."

"She'll still be there in the fall, and so'll you."

Jimmy nods. He figures if you've hit the point where you're so messed up that _Gibbs_ is telling you you need to see someone, you've got to go. "Email me her number?"

"No problem."

* * *

Next stop is Tim's office. Tim's in there, working away on something, fingers flying away on the keyboard.

"Hey."

He jerks slightly and looks up at Gibbs, who closes the door behind him and then whacks him, hard, upside the back of the head.

Tim shrugs a bit at that. "If it's Tony or Jimmy, Jimmy's gonna win."

Gibbs shakes his head, and then looks a bit more carefully at Tim. He sees the split lip, and… "You not shaving again?"

"Clayt suggested it as part of my cover. Might have almost a goatee again by the time we get going."

Gibbs lightly touches Tim's lip.

"Ziva?"

Tim nods. "Arms and shoulders are pretty bruised up, too. Got Tony riled up enough he could let it out. And I'm sure they'll both beat the crap out of me next bootcamp. I'm fine with that. I knew what I was doing, and I did it anyway."

Gibbs shakes his head. "We've got to get better ways of dealing with this. Beating the shit out of each other all the time isn't a good plan."

Tim shrugs. "Seems to work better than talking. Though not doing stupid shit like this in the first place will hopefully do an even better job of it."

"Amen to that." Gibbs sits down. "You and Jimmy okay?"

Tim nods. "Yeah. Didn't love what he wanted to do, but I got it. Happened to me once, too, only for a day, but… Especially if you don't a lot of attention from girls, a woman who really digs you, makes you feel really good… and then it's gone, and she never really… It sucks, Jethro." Tim shakes his head. "Not fun being one the played. So I'm not holding it against Jimmy. He's backed me on plenty of my own insane, I can cover him for this." He pulls his collar to the side, showing Gibbs a greenish blue bruise on his shoulder. "In more ways than one, if need be."

Tim shrugs a little. "While back, Jimmy told me that, basically, at any given time, only one of the two of us needs to be sane. Just wish I'd done a better job of being the sane one. Wish I'd been with it enough to do a better job of talking him down, or had come up with a better way to deal with it, but I didn't. Apparently I'm still pretty pissed at Tony on that whole thing, too."

Gibbs raises an eyebrow.

"Didn't hit the front of my mind, at all. But, he's in here today and asked me why I didn't talk Jimmy out of it, and it literally never occurred to me. At no point did even a hint of there's an option other than we steamroller him or you have to lump it occur to me. So I had to think of why that didn't hit, 'cause it wasn't exactly a reach to come up with something else. Once Tony was in the room, I had one in less than thirty seconds. For a second, I was sort of flailing around and then that image of his car blowing up, and then the corpse..." Tim shudders a little. "You remember how burned and wedged in it was, so I ended up helping Jimmy and Ducky get it out, and… yeah, apparently I'm still a bit pissed on that." Tim shakes his head.

"Jimmy says there's no files on that case."

"None I can find. I asked Janice in records to see if she can find anything, but, you know, they're all by case number down there, and if you can't look the case number up because there's nothing in the electronic files… According to her, cases that old are sent to deep storage, which is a warehouse in Norfolk. They're supposed to be stored by number, by year. But, every case from every NCIS branch will be in that warehouse. Without that number, that case basically can't be found, assuming that there's even anything to find."

Gibbs sighs at that.

"And, I'll admit, I'm not feeling motivated enough to hack the CIA and see what they've got on Lodestone."

Gibbs nods. "Don't think Jimmy needs you going that far."

Tim nods back, agreeing.

"Does Abby need a headslap, too?"

"Nope."

Gibbs shakes his head, standing up, getting ready to head to the Lab. "God, you're a bad liar."

"You think I'm ever going to tell you to go smack my wife?" Tim stands up, and steps close to Gibbs. "In fact…" he turns so the back of his head is toward Gibbs and points to it. "I'm taking hers, too."

Gibbs shakes his head, pats the back of Tim's and says. "It doesn't work that way."

"Fine. No slapping her."

Gibbs licks his lips. "I will deliver a metaphorical head slap."

"Thank you."

* * *

In the elevator, on the way up, it hits Gibbs how similar Tim and Breena's reactions to this were. Both well-aware that this would hurt Tony and Ziva, but Jimmy outranked them, and that was that.

Another second after that, it hit him how similar Tim's responses to Jimmy and Abby were, too.

He sighs at that. On one level, if the four of them are going to do… whatever this thing they're thinking of maybe doing is… then they should feel that way about each other. At least, if this _thing_ has any shot of not biting them all, they're gonna need that. They should close ranks to protect their own, because if this ever goes farther than the four of them, and... him and Abbi, they're in on it, too, they're going to take some shit for it.

If they're willing to risk this… then yeah, Tim should be just as protective of Jimmy as Abby, and vice versa and all the other permutations.

He sighs a little at the idea of Tim being Jimmy's… boyfriend… no, if they do this, it'll be permanent… so… _husband?_ He doesn't know how the hell _that's_ supposed to work. He's awfully certain the guys are straight. Sure, they've never had any conversations about that, but he's not blind. He's been out with both of them, and while he's caught both of them checking out women, he's never seen either of them check out a guy. And yes, he knows they're a hell of a lot more comfortable with each other, on every level he can see, than, well, pretty much every other set of guys he's ever met, but… He doesn't get any sense they're even remotely interested in each other sexually.

Gibbs wonders vaguely if he needs to point out that a foursome with two guys in it will also involve, by definition, two dicks, but decides that, even if the two of them are not impressing him with their combined brainpower right this second, they have probably already sussed that particular fact out.

He really hopes _that_ doesn't end up biting them. He's really not looking forward to some sort of existential sexuality crisis this late in the game.

But if the four of them get into this… thing… are they going to end up with a permanent situation of the four of them on one side and Tony and Ziva on the other? One reason their team really worked was because it was a team. Sure, at any given time two of them were ganging up on the other one, but alliances kept shifting, and it never stayed static for too long.

Though, thinking about that more… The alliances did keep shifting, but, really, it was more often Tony and Ziva on one side, and Tim on the other. And, whenever something went over the line, it was always Tim on one side, and Tony with Ziva or Tony on his own, on the other.

Of course, they're not all working together any longer, so now… Now the alliances are set, three teams of two.

Sort of.

Last summer when everything went bonkers with that case and getting hurt and Ziva and Tony's marriage all messed up…

Jimmy took care of Ziva. Tim and Abby got him.

Tony was mostly on his own. He thinks both of the boys made sure he got some attention, but he didn't get the sort of care and hand-holding that he and Ziva did.

And Tony never really gets that sort of attention. At least, not from anyone who isn't Ziva. Gibbs sighs at that. The elevator doors open at the lab, and they close again. Gibbs gets his phone out.

 _Want to talk?_ He sends to Tony.

A few minutes later he gets back. _No. Crashing tonight. Asleep by eight. Lay in tomorrow. Lots to say to Ziva._

_I'm here if you need me._

_Thanks._

Gibbs hits the L button again.

* * *

Tim and Jimmy both had a vaguely guilty and chagrined air about them. Breena was completely matter of fact about everything, and Abby…

His read on Abby's body language as she comes bouncing over to hug him is that she's completely unaware of any drama that may be going on in the wider world.

"Hi, Gibbs! What, no Caf-Pow?"

Her underlings are around, and he's not saying anything in front of them. "Only when I'm on the case."

"And no cases for you. So, what can I do?"

"Take a walk with me?"

"Corwin, you good with me out for a bit?"

Corwin nods.

Once they get out of the Lab, Gibbs watches her carefully, but the perkiness doesn't dial back.

"What don't I know?"

She half-shrugs. "A whole lot of things I'd expect, but the relevant ones are that I sicced the IRS, Medicare, and two insurance companies on Helen. Then I offered Tony the option of searching every database I've got, and Tim hacking the ones I don't, to go find any kids he may have."

Gibbs' eyebrows rise, and he nods a bit. Sure, that's not… Hell, he doesn't know, that might actually be even for her part of it. That might even be a bit ahead. Depends on what the IRS does. Then his eyes go wide, he knows who Abby knows at the IRS. Helen's gonna have Diane go after her. For the first time ever, Gibbs is feeling like he might have to give Diane a call and suggest that she go full bore on someone.

Another thought hits, past what Diane's going to do to Helen, the offer to find Tony's kids. "He gonna do it?"

"I think he and Ziva are going to have a long chat about it. I mean, I don't have everyone on Earth, let alone the US, and a lot of his kids, if he has them, would be young enough they probably wouldn't be on any of our databases, but… It's a start. He's probably got some out there, don't know if we can find them, but…

Abby gives Gibbs a thorough looking over. She's been around long enough that she caught the tail end of Stephanie and the fallout of that. She remembers when he wasn't doing all of his drinking in his basement. "How about you Gibbs? You ever get curious about if you left any little Gibbslets along the way?"

He shakes his head.

"Didn't leave them or didn't get curious?"

He shakes his head again.

"Well, if you ever do, the option's open for you, too. Sticking one more profile into the search won't take much more work. In for a penny, in for a pound, right? We're going to run Tim, too."

Gibbs looks curious at that.

"No, not for that. He knows his kid. His dad… He's got no idea how many half-brothers and sisters he may have kicking around."

Gibbs nods, that's a… actually that's likely to be interesting. "Running you, too?"

"Don't see why not. Might get closer to tracking down my birth mom or dad. So, you poking around trying to make sure we're all okay?"

"That's the idea."

"And?"

"Haven't seen Tony, yet. Ziva's not good."

Abby nods. "I think that's more between her and Tony than the rest of this. The kid thing's pretty sensitive for them right now."

"She's talking to you and Breena about it?"

"Yeah. She's…" Abby inhales, ready to get talking and then stops. "Actually… This probably isn't a conversation for you."

Gibbs nods at that. He doesn't need those details. "Just want to know she's talking to someone."

"Yeah. Us, she and Tony are talking… Uh…" A thought hits Abby. "Look, I know you're gonna be all, go track those kids down, do the right thing, be a Dad, hoo rah, but… They're not _her_ kids, Gibbs. And if he says yes, especially if he's feeling _pressured_ to say yes… You got to remember, that she's going to be stuck with a guy who's _really_ skittish about having kids with her, and then the actual, real, live kids he had with other women.

"I get it."

"Good."

* * *

Tim heads into Autopsy. It's just about normal quitting time, little bit early, but he's got something to do.

Jimmy's at his desk, books in front of him, reading and highlighting away.

He looks up when Tim comes in. "Hey."

Tim heads over to him and leans, his hips on Jimmy's desk. "Hi. What're your plans for after?"

"Dinner, more studying, early night."

Tim nods. Then he gets his phone out and texts Breena _If I bring Jimmy home with food, about half an hour after you'd normally get there, is that cool?_

 _What kind of food?_ Pops up a few seconds later.

_You pick._

_Pizza for Molly and I. You've got Jimmy (I assume) so something for him, too._

_Will do. And yes, I've got him. He'll be home 7:00ish._

_Okay._

"You making a date?"

"Sort of, asking Breena if I can steal you for a bit."

Jimmy seems to appreciate that these days Breena gets asked that, not him. "Okay… and we're doing what?"

"Washing Tony's car."

Jimmy shakes his head a bit, but nods. "Okay. This part of payback?"

"Yep."

"I'm sorry about putting you and Abby in a bad place."

Tim shakes his head a bit. "We're good. Sorry I failed on the one-of-us-being-sane end of things. If there's ever a next time, I'll try to do a better job of it."

"Better job?"

"You want to guess how long it took me to come up with, 'Here, how about you and I go over and tell them it's a hoax, put Ziva out of her misery, and then we'll both go full bore on Tony,' once Tony was in the room, suggesting that maybe there were options other than side with you or side with him?"

Jimmy winces. "Oh… Yeah… that was kind of obvious, wasn't it?"

Tim's nodding.

Jimmy closes up his books, marking his page, and tidies up his desk. They both stand up to head off. As the door to Autopsy opens, Jimmy asks… "So, why would you be going full bore on him, too?"

"Couple things… Did I ever tell you about Amanda Barrow?"

"I don't think so."

"Okay… It wasn't like it was weeks or months or anything. Just a few days… but…"


	99. How Many?

A/N: I know some of you aren't old enough to remember the '80s (God, how old do I feel, now?) Anyway, things were a whole lot different in the pre-AIDS era. But, for a quick reference, if anyone in Tony's circle in college might have been talking about AIDS, it would have been that vaguely nebulous 'gay cancer' thing. The idea that straight people could even get HIV didn't start to really percolate through most America until the early '90s.

* * *

Going to bed early was a good plan. Tony needed the rest. He's waking up, stretching out, and starting to feel fully human again.

Of course, rested means talking. Lots and lots to talk about. Lots to think about. He rolls onto his side, pulling the blankets over his shoulder, listening to Ziva snore.

 _'We can find your kids,_ if _you want to know.'_

Does he want to know? God… That number could be so damn high.

College alone… He went to school with a lot of those girls, but Ohio State isn't a small school. It had more than 40,000 students when he was there. (Sure not all in one spot, but everyone got together for games…) And some of the girls he saw over and over, had class with, or were cheerleaders. He knew none of them were wandering around visibly pregnant.

But if one had dropped out, no way he would have noticed.

And, of course, the team travelled. New schools for all the away games.

And a lot of them… He knows that after a big win, especially against another Big Ten school, or any of the Final Four Championships, he might have been with three a night, maybe four, and they'd just be whoever was cute and nearby.

Frat parties… God, they threw the best parties ever! And no one ever got turned away. Girls didn't have to pay for drinks, or drugs, or anything else. Just because he wasn't into coke, didn't mean it wasn't all over his frat. 1986-88, everyone with money was on coke and his college was rolling in the stuff.

Coke's got a kind of nasty side-effect, makes you horny, but you can't get it up.

So, loose, drunk, horny, happy girls all over the place, and he's the guy who's actually sporting wood. Not difficult math.

Condoms? Huh? What? He'd graduated by the time the whole safe sex thing really got rolling. They'd started to hear more about it by his senior year, so if a girl had one, he'd always go with it, but he never carried them. Never had to deal with the 'what kind of girl do you think I am?' stuff, never had to break the illusion of 'just got so swept away by you.'

College ball player, young, healthy, invincible. Sure he came up positive for gonorrhea, crabs, and the clap every single time they did a physical, but so did three quarters of the rest of the team. Antibiotics got handed out like breath mints for their team. Ten days on, a full dose of Quell for the crabs, and back you go, good as new, with a quick lecture about condoms, but really, what was the point, damn things were a pain in the ass, and as long as you weren't allergic to antibiotics, why bother?

Herpes was scary, but he always made sure to really look before he touched, and that seemed to keep him safe. At least, he never came up positive for it.

Graduated, police academy, first job in Peoria, he spent a lot of that time studying, learning the ropes, and banging anyone he could get his hands on during the weekends.

He was in the middle of a shift, traffic work, sitting on the side of an empty street, listening to the sports station, holding up the radar gun, waiting for someone to drive by when Magic Johnson's press conference came on. He'd been expecting something about the Dream Team (really was looking forward to seeing that) and got a hell of a shock instead.

And two days after Magic Johnson came out as HIV positive, he got tested, and was clean. He thinks half of his team found their first white hair that day. (Between getting tested and waiting for the results, he certainly did.) Six months later he was still clean. (And in possession of a large quantity of condoms.) Five years later, Rob (the center) was dead from AIDS and Stephen (point guard) was living with HIV.

Five years between then and meeting Wendy. A few girlfriends, but nothing steady. He was young, and hot, and could dance, no problem finding company whenever he wanted it. He… usually… used condoms, but, he didn't always have one, and sometimes he did actually get swept up in it, and besides Wilt Chamberlin had had way more women and he didn't come down with anything, so… (And rumor had it that Steve and Rob had been with each other a few times… At least, they liked to share girls, and come on, straight guys didn't catch AIDS… Well okay, everyone said they could, but... Come on…) Like lots of young guys, the little head was in charge a lot more often than it should have been.

The little head being in charge had a lot to do with never holding a job in one place for more than two years. No big screw ups, never really got in trouble, but he also never really fit, never made any friends, no one really wanted him for a partner. Too cool, too know it all, too much of a jerk or prankster. Whatever it was, he didn't fit in Peoria or Philly.

Then there was Baltimore, and Wendy, and settling down, getting on the straight and narrow, and a ring and the white picket fence, but it turned out Wendy didn't want the ring or the fence. Apparently, Wendy wanted the guy he was before he straightened out. So he went on his honeymoon alone and spent every minute he was awake drunk and balls deep in strange women.

Gibbs had been at the wedding. Was the guy who drove him to the airport, guy who picked him up. He slept on Gibbs' sofa for a few weeks and Gibbs made sure he was sober by clock in time every morning. (Hung over a lot of them, but that was true for Gibbs, too. After all, the Stephanie mess was just wrapping up, then.)

More clubs, more parties, more bars, Spring Break in Mexico… That year after Wendy he fucked every woman in DC, just to prove to himself that he could. Wendy may not have wanted him, but look at all these other women who did.

That lasted a year. Kate came around, and he slowed down, got to his 'grown-up' pace, two or three girls a month, longest dry spell he ever hit was eight weeks, and then he took a long weekend to make up for it. Still he knows he averaged about thirty girls a year, and at twelve years… Lord, him going slow was three hundred women over a bit more than a decade.

By then he was using condoms all the time. Girls expected them, looked at you like an unwashed sock if you didn't have them, and by then… He never wanted to give Kate the satisfaction of having some women he barely knew show up with a kid.

But even with them… Let's put it this way, that episode of Friends where Ross is flipping out about condoms not working all the time, that hit a lot closer to home than Tony would have liked.

God, Abby could dig up a hundred kids… Okay, probably not that many, but… twenty? Ten?

Does he want to know?

Does Ziva?

Does it matter if he wants to know? They're out there. They have to be out there. They don't let you donate sperm unless you've got lots of healthy wigglers per shot, and, at least as of college, he did. And he can't think of any reason why that wouldn't have continued to be true.

1984, April, he's pretty sure it was April, maybe March, he was home from school on spring break. Got into a Theta Chi party in the city, found a girl who made his night. He doesn't remember what she looked like, not anymore. (Not reliably anymore. She got hotter and hotter each time he told the story. He thinks her hair and eyes were brown. He knows she wasn't a Rockette. She had wanted to be one, he does remember her saying that.) But he does remember how she made him feel: special, sexy, crazy turned on, desired. And he very clearly remembers how she felt on him. _That_ he remembers. Never saw her again. Never got her name… So, winter of '84-'85. His oldest child could be thirty-one. Lord. He wonders if Abby can make the computer find his grandkids, because, given how active he was in college, it's possible there are a bunch of little guys somewhere in Molly's age range who might be his grandkids.

No, they wouldn't be in any of the databases… Well, it'd be unlikely.

Realistically, any of them who are under eighteen wouldn't be in there. But over eighteen would get all of his most active years, except for the Wendy fall out. Those kids would have been born in 2000, 2001 at the latest. So, they'd be fifteen or fourteen, out of the system unless they really screwed up at something.

He feels Ziva roll over next to him, facing him, hair all wild around her, eyes still closed.

"Morning," he says.

She sighs, stretching, cuddling in closer to him. He holds her, letting quiet and sleep and whatever calm she's got hold onto her for as long as it can.

Eventually she shifts some, moving back a bit, laying on her side, still facing him. "Sleep well?"

He nods. All things considered, yes he did. "You?"

"Enough."

"Talking first, or breakfast?"

She leans up on her elbow and checks the clock. His gaze follows her, it's a little bit after nine. For him that's a decent morning of sleeping in, for her, that's a sleep marathon.

She stretches again. "Talking. If we get called out…"

"Okay. Where do you want to start?"

They've done this in counseling often enough that if they don't actually set it down they'll just sort of keep nudging the topic without really getting into it. So this is him, tossing the ball in her court, letting her know he wants to get her topics done, first, then they'll get to his.

With any luck, they'll overlap.

She sighs. It's easier to be on the listening side, sometimes. Right now it'd be easier to be listening to him talking about finding out about his kids. Still, one of them has to start, so…

"You wanted to be part of Jeanne's son's life."

He nods.

"You jumped right into it, worry, fear, concern. He was your son, and you wanted to be... something… Intimate?" He nods, that'll cover it. "With him."

Ziva brushes the backs of her fingers down his cheek. "But you do not want my child."

His expression is somewhere between sheepish and a wince. "It's not… If it's already said and done… That's what I mean by I can't make myself jump, but I'll be fine when I land. I know when I hold our child, I'll be good, it'll work, but…"

She shakes her head. "I do not want to push you off a cliff. I want you to jump off with me. You used to like sex. We both used to like sex, a lot, and now… Since I have been off the pill, I have seen you go to dental appointments with more enthusiasm. Now, you are 'tired.' And while I do not mind all the oral sex when you aren't 'tired,' I know what you are doing."

He doesn't deny it. It's intentional after all. He knows she can get pregnant. It's been five months since her last pill, and that has made certain bits of his anatomy very skittish about getting too close to certain bits of her. His tongue on the other hand, that works just fine, no matter what, thank you very much.

And it's not like they haven't had any sex. But the frequency of sex that makes babies has dropped from three to five times a week to closer to once a week. And, he's not exactly relaxed on those occasions.

"Tiny person entirely dependent on us. Little bundle of never-ending need. Everything in our life changing. I can deal with it if it happens. I can handle it. But I can't just sign up for that."

"You already did, over and over apparently," her voice is sharp, and he sees her make herself stop that.

He opens his mouth, and closes it, and sighs. "I signed up for a lot of meaningless sex with women I'd never see again. Women who knew me well enough to have my name or my phone number, I was a lot more careful with." He's not proud of it, but it's true.

"Like Jeanne?"

He sighs at that, too. "The first time was when Cassidy died. _We_ almost died that day, too, remember? I told her I loved her, and… And I didn't go hunting for any condoms. I didn't the first time I told you I loved you, either. You remember that, right?"

She nods. "I remember." Very gentle, very quiet, still in the hospital after they almost froze to death. They whisper/kissed it to each other over and over, rocking slowly. That's a good memory.

"I'm fairly sure that even if you hadn't been on the pill, I still wouldn't have said, 'Stop, go get protection!'"

That's a good point.

"And I'm not sorry about it, but, we just don't have the kind of relationship where I can get so caught up in how good right now feels and forget about the fact that we're going to wake up in the morning together and go to work together and come home again, together. The whole forever thing means I can't pretend there isn't going to be a tomorrow."

They watch each other for a few seconds. "That could have been our son, Ziva, and it could have been real, and…" He rubs his face. "How do you just sign yourself up for that? It's one thing if you have to. You've got the kid, you do the job, okay, but… I'll get there. I'll be a dad, a good one, but…"

She shakes her head. "I want you to want this, with me. This should be… joyful."

"I don't think I'm ever going to get there. Caring about people is terrifying. Even people who love you will hurt you. I mean… It's not easy. I can't just—"

She's looking frustrated as she cuts in with, "You think this is easy for me?"

"You want it, so I'm going to have to say, at least compared to me, that yes, it's easy for you. Maybe not cosmic scale easy, but… You're still breathing. The idea of making a child doesn't stop your heart or break you out in a cold sweat, so yeah, it's easy for you."

Tony sits up, back against their headboard, elbows resting on his knees, hands laced loosely together. "I want you. I want a life with you. I want you happy. I know kids are part of that. But they're not something I'm ever going to want for myself. They're something I'll want for you because I know you want them.

"I don't like kids. I don't like loud, messy, chaotic things, and that's pretty much the definition of kids. I'm getting better with them because we've got a bunch of the little ankle biters all over the place, and really, they're not that bad, but you'll notice I never line up to babysit because I don't enjoy spending time with them. I'm not saying I hate our girls, and I'm not saying that sometimes, when you're holding one of them, I don't get all, 'oh how cute,' but… I'm _relieved_ when they go _home._

"But I know you want them, so I want them for you, but… I'm sorry I'm not enthusiastic about it, but it really is like jumping off a cliff into icy water. Yeah, I know I can swim, but… So, whatever you need to do to get me into the water is fine, but… I can't just jump."

She nods, resigned. "I know."

"I'm sure, we have one, I'll be able to leap for the next one, but right now…"

"Okay. I know. I do." She looks disappointed by that, but not hurt. "Go get us some breakfast. I'm going to do some thinking. Then more talking?"

"Sure. I can do that."

* * *

His phone is showing he's got two texts. First one's from Draga. _No cases yet. Enjoy your day off._

One from McGee. He checks it. _Keys are in the glovebox. Already picked up Abby's car._

And yes, when he gets down to his usual spot his car is there, and the damn thing does sparkle. It didn't look that shiny when it was new, and Tony's wondering if McMoneybags actually hired someone to detail it. He uses Ziva's keys to unlock it, and finds his in the glovebox.

It doesn't have that 'clean car scent' detailers usually spray the interior with, but it's really, really clean.

That helps, a little. He's more… hurt? Disappointed? Something. Whatever it is, it's not raging angry. Not at McGee, not right now.

McGee picked Palmer over him. Flat out said it. 'He's never pulled any shit on me, you have, so I picked him.'

And honestly, with all the years of stuff between him and McGee… Given the same choice, he'd pick Palmer, too. They have a less complicated relationship. Or at least, that was true the day before yesterday. Now… Well, now, if he's ever in need of someone to hide a body, he's not going to Palmer.

Then he thinks about Bodnar, and the fact that Palmer and Breena did, literally, take care of a body for them. Tony sighs. If it was a clean kill, they'd do it again. Palmer will back him to the end of the line, as long as he's doing the right thing.

And he'll call him out and hurt him for doing the wrong one.

Tony shakes his head. He doesn't know what to do about Palmer. He's angry, because that whole thing just sucked, but… But if it was the other way around, and Palmer had pissed on anyone else for something like this, he'd get it and back him.

Flip it around… What if Jimmy wanted to do something nasty to McGee… for the book maybe. The whole necrophilia thing, or writing about them without permission… A whole night of pain… overkill, but… he didn't have any problem with the teasing Jimmy did, and he wouldn't have had any problems if Jimmy wanted to take that teasing up about ten or twenty notches.

He puts his key in the ignition.

McGee picked Palmer. Because whatever it is they've got, that's easier. McGee said that to him, back when he was blowing up over his own stuff. He thinks that's some of it, sure, but, not all of it.

He and McGee don't work together every single day. They don't _have_ to trust each other implicitly in all situations now. His life no longer literally rests in McGee's hands and vice versa.

If they hadn't worked together, they would have never been friends. Never been more than acquaintances, and likely less than that. If McGee had stayed in Norfolk, he would have just been a name and a face Tony kind of, sort of knew.

But that's not how it worked out. And right now, he is literally still breathing because of Tim McGee. And that's true for McGee, too. Every day for almost fourteen years, he put his life in McGee's hands, and McGee put his life in Tony's. And that's how it was.

But not how it is, not anymore.

Six months ago, when they were still working like that, Tony's fairly sure that McGee would have… maybe not picked him, but done a better job of coming up with some sort of common ground. He would have thought of a compromise, because his literal life depended on both of them trusting each other utterly with no hesitation.

And now they don't. Now their lives, their survival, isn't chained to their ability to work with each other. And, without something else, a deep interest in the same sorts of things… They're drifting apart.

It's not like they're ever going to be strangers or something. Not like they'll just be acquaintances. They're bound by this family they've got now. But their lives, literally, don't revolve around each other anymore.

They aren't partners, not anymore. They are friends now, but… it's not the same.

And Tony's fairly sure it never will be. It can't be. Because the stakes will never be the same again.

Things change, and they have this, family, now, that's gluing them together, but… It's not the same as knowing that's the guy who will take the bullet for you.

Tony pulls to a stop at the stop sign, idling for longer than strictly necessary.

Things change. Of course they do, and they're going to keep changing.

But Ziva's still there, and she's the one who will still take the bullet for him. She's the partner who's got his back no matter what…

Implicit trust. No questions, no hesitation. You lead and I will follow. I lead and you follow. No matter what I have your back and you have mine.

He touches his wedding ring. _I will live._ That's the promise he asked for. Those are the words that underline their marriage.

They've talked about that, too. In counseling, and out. How due to too many losses, too many broken loves, they are both terrified of going on by themselves. How that's not healthy. How, in the long run it's probably a good thing that Ziva's going to be getting out of police work, safer for both of them. They've talked that all through.

But that promise. _I will live._ That's his bedrock. That's what he needs from her. That if something happens to him, she'll keep going without him. That she'll put her fears aside and keep going, alone.

He blinks. He couldn't give that promise back to her, then. And he can't, now. If the words ever left his lips, they'd be a lie.

He can't give her that, but he can give her a child. He can stop being a jerk about it. He can, just like he's asked her to, stuff his fear down and keep going, doing what he needs to to treat her like she's more important to him than air.

He can do that.

And one other thing hits him as that does. If they have a child, and if something happens to her, he can't follow her. He can't let himself self-destruct if she's no longer in his life. He has to make the promise that scares him more than anything else.

 _Can't live without you._ He said that to her, in Somalia. He didn't want to say it, but the wall between his brain and mouth was gone and it just fell out.

And suddenly why he's been dragging his heels, and as she put it, going to the dentist with more enthusiasm than he's been going to bed with her, slams into place and makes a whole lot more sense. Why he can jump full into the idea of another woman's child with both feet and no hesitation, makes perfect sense, too.

If they make a baby, then he has to make that promise, because no matter what, one of them has to come home.

And he's terrified it'll be him.

* * *

The car behind him honks, and Tony's got no idea how long he's been lingering at the stop sign. He pulls through the intersection, and then pulls over, stopping the car.

He takes his wedding ring off, and trails his finger over the inscription.

_I will live._

His partner. The one he trust implicitly, in all things. The one who will take the bullet for him (though he'd very much prefer she didn't) or put one in someone else.

The one who always has his back.

He slips his ring back on, not feeling any less scared, but he knows what he has to do.

Fake it 'till you feel it… That's the phrase, right?

* * *

_So, whatever you need to do to get me into the water is fine…_

Ziva's in the shower, washing her hair, thinking about that.

She's not sure if that's as close as he can get to outright saying, 'Just lie to me, take it out of my hands, and when we land, I'll be good,' or what he means by that.

The problem is, if he is asking, 'lie to me' then her asking for clarification will screw up the lie. If she asks, 'Tony, are you saying you want me to pretend to go back on birth control?' and then he says, 'Yes,' and two minutes later she says, 'I'm on the pill again,' it's not believable.

If he's going to buy it, it has to look real, otherwise it won't work. He won't relax about it.

And if he's not saying 'lie to me…'

She's talked with Abby and Breena about this, and they've both said that since Tony's already mentioned that he needs some help with this, that he may be asking for her to just lie to him, but… None of them like that option. They all know someone who's done it, but… It feel dirty, and, just… wrong.

She doesn't exactly want to talk to _her friends_ right this second. She's not feeling mad at them. Not right now, much bigger stuff on the horizon, maybe when this all fades that will change, but… Tim and Jimmy don't know about Philippe. Breena and Abby do. That story was told in confidence, and neither of the girls broke that confidence. That helps with mad. The fact that, like Breena, she'll back her husband, even if he's being stupid, helps with mad. The fact that Abby pulled some pretty serious crap on Helen helps with mad, too.

She is mad at Jimmy right now.

But that can wait. Feeling mad at Jimmy right now seems like a way to not deal with what's going on right here, right now. So, that can definitely wait.

She feels the temperature in the air shift, and a second later Tony says, "Hey. I'm back. Got hot coffee, croissants, and strawberries."

"I'll be out in a minute."

"Good."

* * *

He's laying food out on the table when she comes out, dressed in pajama pants and a t-shirt.

"I'm going back on the pill." She's not sure if she's lying or not as she says that. She still has two disks full of them, the option to do it for real is there.

He looks a little surprised at that.

"Not forever. Not more than six months. But… I am tired of sex being a chore. And we have more than enough big issues to deal with right this second." So much for what he was planning on saying to her. Before he gets a chance to do much besides stand there and look startled, she says to him, "Your turn."

His turn… Time for him to talk and her to listen. "Okay." His stuff. They can start there, and get back to hers. They've got all day. "I don't know what to do about Abby's offer. It's easier not to know. It's safer, for me, and us, and this tidy little life we've got going here. It's less complicated. But I have this suspicion that not finding out isn't right. That… if you can know, you should know."

She nods at that.

"What do you think? Do you want to know? If we find out, this can hit on a lot of levels, not just emotional, but… God, I feel like a dick for saying this, but, this could be a hard financial hit, too. I mean, if I know those kids are out there… Especially if they're _kids,_ under eighteen and all, I kind of have to do something about it, and…"

And she knows. Money is going to be tight if she wants to do the stay-at-home-mom thing. Adding a pile of child support to the list of bills would only make that worse, and, possibly, take it completely off the table.

Time with these kids… That'd be taking him away from her and their family. It would be… destabilizing. Thinking about that doesn't make her feel good. But, it's real.

"I don't want to know." She's fairly sure that's not the 'right' or 'good' answer. But she doesn't want to know. She looks up at the ceiling for a moment. "But there is likely a child somewhere who wonders about her father. And I do not want to be the wall between you and that child."

"Do you think there's… I don't know, some sort of in between? Some way to set it so that if that girl's out there, looking, she can find me, but… But I don't have to go barging into her home? I mean… I'm sure there are kids who wonder, and there's likely some who don't… I mean… I know at least three of the ladies I hooked up with were doing a last night before the wedding fling, and… if that resulted in kids, they probably aren't wondering who their dad is… They may not have the right answer, but they probably aren't wondering. If I'm just sitting there with a list of people Abby dug up, I won't know who is who."

Ziva shrugs. "I would think so. You cannot be the only man in this situation."

"I think that's what I'd like to do."

Ziva nods at that. Maybe not a perfect answer, but, she can live with it.

Tony spreads some butter on his croissant. That was actually a lot easier than he was expecting it to be. Of course, if he gets on or whatever, and someone does find him, this might get a whole lot less easy.

But that's tomorrow, not today. Other things for today. He puts the croissant down. "Don't go back on the pill."

Her eyebrows rise.

"I'm scared. I'm not going to stop being scared, but…" He touches his ring again. "I asked you for something that scared the hell out of you, and you've handled it with grace. And you deserve that back. So… Don't go back on them." He stands up, heads to their bathroom, and finds both disks. A minute later, he's out in their kitchen, tossing them in the trash.

"You and me, to the end of the line, and… And I've got you. You've got me. That's how this works."

Ziva's smiling at him, very touched, very wowed, and very much hoping that he can stay in this headspace, because she likes it.

He looks at the plate in front of her, about half a croissant and two strawberries has been eaten. He takes the basket of berries, and her hand, tugging her out of her chair.

"Come to bed with me," he says with a smile. (And yes, that might not be the most genuine smile he's ever had, but part of this whole loving people thing is putting them and their needs first. He can do that.)

And Ziva smiles back. She can see that this isn't entirely real, but she really appreciates the effort.


	100. Rule 72

A/N: Very slight differences between the chapters.

* * *

_May I see you?_ Text from Jimmy. Been sitting on her phone, without a response, for more than an hour now.

Yesterday was good. Good all over. And at the end of it, she and Tony had asked Abby about their potential halfway solution, and she gave them some suggestions for how he could get his genome out there, and let other people hunt him down. Apparently, this is going to take a lot of spit, a bunch of test tubes, and mailing off bits of DNA to several internet companies that specialize in helping people find their relatives/history/genealogy or whatnot.

Today was busy. Drug case. No dead bodies, but sixty kilos of heroin will get the MCRT rolling.

Ziva likes drug cases. They're… clean… for lack of a better word. No dead bodies. No having to inform next of kin. No having to ask questions of grieving widows or orphans. No friends reeling from loss. They may be messy as hell with lies and backstabbing and deceit, but no one's dead.

It's occurring to her that she may have been a cop for too long if this is her idea of a good day.

But it has been a good day. And as they were getting ready to go home, her phone buzzes, with Jimmy's message on it.

She shows it to Tony, and he shrugs. Whatever she wants to do about Jimmy, that's up to her.

So she tucks her phone back into her pocket, and they go home.

* * *

They're home. Dinner's done. Tony's got a movie he's been looking forward to, but Ziva's not really interested in it.

She heads to their room, grabbing her book, and settles into the overstuffed armchair near their bed.

She's read the same paragraph three times, which means the book's not holding her interest, and she knows why not. Her eyes keep darting to her phone.

Talk to him or not…

She picks up the phone. _Yes._

A minute later _Where? Anywhere that's good for you, I'll go._

_I'm at home._

_I can be there in half an hour._

_Fine._

* * *

And in twenty-eight minutes, he is there.

He knocks. He usually wouldn't. Normally, if he's expected, he'd just head in, because that's how they are with each other's homes. But today he knocks.

He's been trying to think of what to say on the ride over. Not much is springing up. _I'm sorry I hurt you._ That's pretty much it.

But he's already said that.

_I hope you forgive me. I hope you understand._ That's there, too.

_I hope this is fixable._ That's why he's at their door.

Ziva opens the door, and looks at him. Yeah, not pleased at all. It's not a happy expression on her face, but she lets him in.

She leads him to the dining table. They've got an open floor plan, so he can see Tony watching his movie, and feels a flash of hot, angry at seeing him, so… yeah… not okay on that, yet, but… Tony's ignoring them, letting them get whatever they need to do with each other, out of the way.

He sits down, and she does, too, staring at him, making him speak first.

"I'm sorry I hurt you."

"You've said that."

"Wanted to say it again. That was something I needed to do, to be okay, in myself, and, longer term, okay with him, but it hurt you, and… I didn't want that. But I couldn't think of a way to do it without hurting you."

"If he deserved your anger, I did, too."

Jimmy shakes his head. "No… Ziva…You're not—"

"I have run that mission, too, Jimmy."

Jimmy blinks. He opens his mouth, and shuts it, staring at her. He licks his lips, still staring, and opens his mouth again, but no sound comes out.

She sees his posture slouch, and he looks like he's been punched.

But finally he says, "Oh. Uh…" He straightens back up again, breathing deeply. "Then I'm not sorry." He's biting his lip, hard, apparently stopping himself from saying something, likely harsh. He stares at her dining table, and then looks up at her. He looks away again, collecting his thoughts.

"Uh…"

"Would you like to be judged for your worst mistake, more than a decade later?" Ziva asks.

He licks his lips again, and tries to think of what he considers his worst mistake. But when it comes down to it, not going with Breena to Jon's twenty week ultrasound doesn't feel like it fits into the category of use someone for your own gain. But, if she wants to dump on him about it… Not like she'll ever come up with anything he didn't say to himself about that. Not like he won't deserve it. He should have been there with her. She shouldn't have had to face that image and everything that came after it, alone.

"No." He's looking at his hand, wedding ring. "But I'll get it if it happens." He looks back to Ziva. "I don't know if you can call something you did intentionally, knowing you were fucking someone over, a mistake."

"Decision, then."

"Yeah. Decision." He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. "No. I wouldn't want to be judged on my worst decision. Two minutes ago, I thought it was letting you spend that night sitting there, hurting. Now I don't know what it would be. So, you know what, fuck it, judge away. Nothing you didn't deserve. I don't expect you to be happy with it… But, I hope you understand."

"I understand."

He nods and it turns into a head shake. "I don't." He's looking up at her, big eyes, fragile expression on his face. "I said this to him, or if I didn't, I meant to. I don't get it. I don't fucking get it, at all. There are no targets. Just people. And I don't get how you could go into a mission to literally fuck an innocent person with no shot of it working, no hope of doing anything useful. Not when there was a really obvious way to do it without hurting that person. It's one thing if you're off to save the world or something, but…" he shakes his head again. "I don't get it, Ziva."

She shakes her head. "You don't have to, and if you're lucky, you never will."

"That sounds like you do get it. That this… makes sense to you."

She shrugs. "In a properly run mission, it's a simple costs benefits analysis. What's the easiest way to achieve your goal? What tools do you have at your disposal? What timeframe do you have to move in? One broken heart versus a fire fight with an expected fifty casualties? You break the heart."

Jimmy's eyes flick toward Tony. "So, you're saying, what? That this was cheaper than putting surveillance on Jeanne?"

Ziva shrugs, while that is likely true, she doesn't want to put her approval on that mission. "That was not a properly run mission."

"And when you did it, was it a properly run mission?"

"I like to think so."

"Ah." _So, not exactly the same mission._ "And… did… that heartbreak save lives?"

"It certainly did from my side's perspective. None of our men were lost. It cost lives for the other side."

"But that was going to happen either way?"

"Yes. It's likely fewer died by using the route we did. But it's certain that the target would have been vastly better off if I'd stayed away from him. And, in as much as there are such things as innocent people, involving him meant hurting one, and a direct strike would have only engaged combatants."

Jimmy bites his lip again, thinking.

"Did you know that Ilan Bodnar had a wife and sister?"

"No. You never said."

"We were close once… Not family close, but he was my father's protégée. We worked several cases together. Had dinner together on numerous occasions. Friendly."

"More than friendly?"

Ziva shakes her head. "Never that friendly. Since, I'm 'still looking for Bodnar' I get in touch with them every year or so. Check in, see if they've heard anything." Jimmy knew that keeping up the ruse of still looking for Bodnar was part of the cover, that if he was truly missing, Ziva wouldn't have just given up on the hurt, but he hadn't realized what was really involved in that. "They are still waiting for him, still looking. Still hoping he is alive.

"Everything we do, no matter how justified, touches other people. Sometimes it hurts. If you get into something like that, like the kind of life the Frog was leading, you open up the people you love to this sort of hurt. The fact that they become targets, too, is supposed to help dissuade you from that path."

Jimmy blinks, and nods. "Doesn't mean we have to be the ones to do it to them."

"No, it doesn't. And we try not to. But we are human, and we make mistakes, and we make bad decisions, and things that look like a good plan at the time go haywire."

"Yeah. That's how I was feeling about hurting you."

"But you are not feeling that way anymore, are you?"

"No. Now I'm wishing I had chewed out both of you." Jimmy stands up. "I'm…" And he heads out.

* * *

Tony stands up and heads over to Ziva. "That went well."

She glares at him. Not hot, but not appreciating the sarcasm.

He shrugs. "You okay?"

"It is hard to be angry at him when he's sitting there like a kicked puppy."

Tony nods at that, too. "And then you remember exactly how long that night was…"

She nods back at him. Remembering brings that fear and pain back in a flash. Unnecessary pain and fear. Hours of it.

"I'm kind of hoping we can fight it out. Beat the hell out of each other and then call it even."

"It worked with you and McGee."

He nods, some. "Yeah. Just get all the angry out in one big burst and then be done with it."

* * *

Gibbs has been trying to take a back seat and let them work this crap all out on their own.

Unfortunately, he's not liking the direction 'working it out' looks like it's going to take. Because they're all planning on just beating it out.

He's actually been a bit wary on this since Tim and Tony had it out.

The good thing about Bootcamp is that they can all take care of themselves, and then some. The downside is, they're way too damn good to be pounding on each other.

Tim hurt Tony. He got as hurt as you can get without any real, long term damage, and, if Palmer hadn't gotten in there when he did… Gibbs doesn't like to think about that.

And he can see how this is going to play out. Four person brawl. While it does look like McGee and both DiNozzos are doing okay now (or at least not talking about it) Gibbs knows that if this goes down, Tim will get in it, and he'll fight for Jimmy.

Gibbs just doesn't see any way that ends well.

On top of that, what Breena had to say about Tim and Jimmy coming home with bruises stuck with him.

Ziva and Tony trying for a baby, sticks with him.

Tim having the _Stennis_ test coming up, that's sticking, too.

And in each of his conversations with them, they're all mentioning Bootcamp.

Gibbs has a bad feeling about this. He does not want to see a full-on four person brawl, especially if one of those people may be very slightly pregnant and another one might be walking into a real fight in the next few weeks.

The more he thinks about it, the more it's hitting him that he doesn't want beating the shit out of each other to be the fallback position for how to deal with anger at each other.

He wants the guys, especially Tim and Jimmy to be comfortable with their violence, able to use it when they need it, but…

But Tim really did beat the shit out of Tony once, and he got way too damn close to the edge on that. And the last time he saw the fall out of Jimmy letting his mad out and just rage, Tim got hurt, too. And right now Gibbs is thinking that this is not a pattern he wants to encourage. If he'd been thinking about it, he should have shut it down when he saw how bad Tony was. He's thinking about it now, and…

Yeah, this isn't good.

* * *

_Bootcamp is at the house, on Saturday. All six of you. Duck and Penny are watching the girls. No whining or complaining about that. McGee, Palmer, bring your checkbooks._

Gibbs figured that email would do the job, and then he went off in search of a Mason jar and a permanent marker.

* * *

The internet is a useful thing. He's never going to have Tim-level google-fu (or for that matter know the term google-fu) but he's found that if you're persistent, you can find out lots of things.

For example, Gibbs already knows what Tony and Ziva make. He's had their jobs, after all. And he's got an idea for Tim, Abby, and Jimmy. But a bit of research and knowing each of their rankings, meant that he was able to get, within a few thousand dollars, what their yearly salaries are.

More googling meant that he was able to find out, again, ballpark, what an author makes per copy of his book sold, and how many books Tim's sold. (A lot more than he had thought.)

Some googling after that meant that he now knows that the Slater Funeral Homes are a closely held C Corp with 14.6 million a year in sales, and shares of the publically traded stock (Not a whole lot of that, the Slaters own more than 90% of the company. He bought some anyway, not a lot, but he wanted a symbolic gesture of supporting the family business.) going for $17.14. More googling found that Breena Palmer currently owns 11.6% of the company and is officially listed as a Director.

And with that, he has a plan.

* * *

No Shabbos this week. He's not surprised at that.

He hits Tony and Ziva's place first. They seem, okay. Especially with each other. That reassures him. He doesn't want to be poking his nose into their marriage deeply enough to know what exactly shifted, but they're both more at ease with each other.

They always have that fine buzz of tension. That's just how they work, but right now it's a barely audible hum, coming through in the occasional, slightly sharp, joke.

So, they're running on normal.

Tony wants to bitch about whatever the mystery bootcamp is, but Gibbs just shakes his head.

* * *

Palmers' next. Jimmy and Breena he's expecting. McGees just happened to be an added bonus.

Tim and Abby seem okay.

Breena's fine.

Jimmy… Jimmy's in worse shape than he was the last time they talked, and also looking forward to Bootcamp a lot more than Gibbs thinks is healthy.

He'd had dinner with Tony and Ziva, but he's not turning down the watermelon sorbet Breena had for dessert.

Dessert's wrapping up, and he more or less pulls Jimmy onto the porch. Tim follows, not really planning on getting into it, but just staying in the background, there if need be.

"What happened?" Gibbs asks.

Jimmy shrugs. "Turns out Ziva's done it, too." Tim's eyes go wide, he hadn't heard that bit of it yet. "And honestly, if you've ever seduced an innocent person for the job, made them fall in love with you, and used them, I really don't want to hear about it."

Gibbs shakes his head. Sure he's slept with suspects or accomplices, never a bystander.

"They still your friends?"

"Yeah."

"You still love them?"

"Yes."

"Then you've got to let it go. Long time ago and there's nothing they can do about it, now."

"I know. Still hard when people you love and respect do asshole things."

Gibbs stares right at Jimmy, dead into his eyes, makes sure he has his undivided attention, then he quickly glances to Tim before staring back at Jimmy. "Yeah. It is. Sucks when your friends put you in a bad situation, too. "

Jimmy blinks at him, getting what that look is saying. He nods.

"Let it go, Jimmy."

He shrugs. "I'm trying."

"Try harder."

* * *

Saturday morning, bright and early.

He's got six tense-looking people milling around what will eventually be the living room once they get this whole place fixed up.

Gibbs takes the mason jar out of his bag. It's got the word ASSHOLE written on it in big letters. He sticks it on the mantle and then points to it. "This is the asshole jar. All instances of assholery will result in donations being placed in the asshole jar. Then whomever has been the victim of assholery will get the proceeds of said jar. I know, ballpark, how much money all of you have, and what you make, so the penalty for assholery is adjusted by income and will sting, but it won't break you.

"The point of Bootcamp is not to beat the shit out of each other. It's to be strong and fast and able to beat the shit out of the other guys out there.

"So from here on out, beating the hell out of each other is off the table. We'll still fight, we'll still train, but it's never going to be a way we deal with our anger at each other, ever again. You need to fight out your anger at the outside world, great, we're good on that. We support each other on that. But never for each other, never again.

"Lifting a hand to each other in anger, in annoyance, it ends now. No one's ever getting a headslap again, either. We're done with it.

"Now, pay up. Director Gemcity, twenty-five hundred, into the pot, each, for Tony and Ziva."

Tim winces, yeah, that's gonna sting, and they haven't gotten to Abby yet.

"LabMistress McGee, thirteen hundred, each, for Tony and Ziva."

Abby's wincing too. Gibbs is right, it's not going to break them. Won't mean a missed payment on anything. They've got the savings to cover it, but they're going to have to shift some cash around and sell off some of their stock to cover it. Tim gets his phone out and starts taking care of it.

"You got a check with you?" he asks Tony.

"Why would I have one? I wasn't told to bring one."

"If you had one, I could wire the money right into your account. I'll Paypal you instead."

Tony nods at that.

Gibbs says, "Dr. Palmer, grand a pop, to Abby and Tim. Five hundred to Tony and Ziva."

"Five hundred?" Jimmy asks.

"Aggravated assholery. You get a discount on that."

Jimmy bites his lip, this isn't supposed to be funny, but he likes the idea of aggravated assholery.

"Director Palmer, eleven hundred each to Tony and Ziva.

Gibbs hands a check over to Jimmy, who looks at it for a second and then stares at Gibbs, dumbfounded, as he asks, "Why?"

"Because as your wife pointed out, someone should have said something to you when it happened. I should have checked in with you. I didn't. My team, my screw up."

"Tony and Ziva, you're not paying out this time, but each count of assholery's gonna cost Tony seven fifty and Ziva four hundred. I know you all get raises, so those numbers are just going to keep getting higher and higher as time goes by."

Breena's got the checkbook out and writing in it. "If you can hold them 'til Tuesday, that'd be good. I've got to move some money into this account, and unlike Tim, I don't have everything for that online."

Ziva and Abby nod.

Gibbs is almost done. "Rule 72: If it happened more than two years ago, let it go. That's our new statute of limitations. Two years. We've known each other a long time and have long memories, and that's not biting us in the ass again. You wanna bitch to your own spouse about it if it's more than two years old, fine. But unless it is so bad you are literally willing to rip our entire family apart over it, if it's more than two years old, let the fucker go.

"Rule 73: If it's less than two years old and didn't happen to you personally, forgive it.

"Rule 74: If you'd yell at the girls for it, don't do it yourself.

"Now, if you still need to go do something hard and strenuous to burn it off, there's a truck load of rocks that still need to be laid out, and then stuck on the house. Get to it!"

* * *

House building starts off awfully quiet. Working with Ducky during the week means that about two thirds of the masonry is up. Hopefully with the whole crew here, they'll get it all in place by the end of the day.

Then comes windows. Normally, if you had a full crew of people who knew how to do this, you'd go through, pop the old ones all out, and then put the new ones all in.

They are not going to do it that way. Each one goes out and a new one'll go in. The inside has more than enough water damage already without having every widow a gaping hole for God alone knows however long it'll take to get all the new ones in.

So, that's the plan for today, rocks on the house, and a few windows if they manage to get that far.

But so far, putting more stones on the walls is bordering on silent.

* * *

There is a logical part in Jimmy's mind which is greatly appreciating a way to… get out of this… for lack of a better term, without beating the hell out of anyone, or getting beaten.

That's the logical part.

It's normally in charge.

He'd like it to be in charge. Things work better, and they're a hell of a lot easier when it's in charge. And for right now, it's in control of things. Mostly. It's driving the car.

The obnoxious, and loud, passengers in the backseat, anger and violence, are pouting at how this has worked out. They'd be really happy with a drop down, drag out, no one gets out without skin mottled with bruises fight.

He's trying, as he's placing stones against the side of the wall, to boot them out of the car and get back to being okay.

He's thinking that Gibbs may indeed be onto something with the whole Cranston is a good listener thing, because he knows there was a time when beating the shit out of someone because he's mad at them would have literally, never, occurred to him.

_If you need something hard to burn it off…_

He does. So instead of putting the rocks on the side of the house, he gets up, and starts moving them. Grabbing the next few stone for each of the other six, picking them up, carrying them over, and then back to the lay out for the next batch.

It is hard, and heavy, and he's sweating freely by the time he's done fifteen of them. The driveway (where all of the stones have been laid out) is about four hundred feet away from this side of the house, and sure none of the stones is really heavy, but they aren't _light_ either, maybe ten, maybe twelve pounds, and he's making sure to grab three or four of them in a go.

It helps. Not as good, or fast, or satisfying as actually fighting would be, but it's hard and his heart is pumping, and the feel good chemicals are starting to flow.

* * *

Tony would have to admit that not beating the shit out of Jimmy is disappointing. He's also have to admit that the more than ten thousand dollars he and Ziva now have is pretty nice. And that, right now, he's thinking that they are going to go somewhere warm and beautiful and very luxurious and very expensive in the middle of god-awful, nasty winter and then sending pictures back home to gloat about it. And it'll be even better if they manage to time it so the girls have colds.

That is, if that doesn't count as being an asshole.

That's probably being a smartass, and if Gibbs wants them to stop doing that, he's going to have to shoot them, because that's only going to stop when they're dead.

* * *

Things start to thaw by lunchtime. Abbi shows up with food. Very welcome food.

They're milling around on the back patio, grabbing drinks, rummaging through sandwiches and salads (everything has names on it) when Jimmy snags a sugar-free iced tea, chugs it, and then takes five steps to the grass and collapses on his back, sprawled out, groaning with pleasure.

His arms are sore, his back is sore, quads are trembling (You have to do a deep knee bend to get the rocks off the driveway, then stand back up with them, multiply that by about two hundred trips, and his legs are jello), and cool, soft grass feels awesome right now.

"What, you sleeping on the job? Not gonna do it. You know you don't get out of working this afternoon unless you're dead." Tony's mouth shoots over to Jimmy before his brain remembers that maybe now might not be the best time to tease him.

Everyone else stiffens slightly, wondering what's going to come next. Jimmy doesn't even look over in Tony's direction, though his arm slowly bends at the elbow, lifting his right hand high, followed by his middle finger extending.

For another second, no one made a sound, still nervous wondering what would happen next, but then Tim says, "Good news, Tony, he's still alive. Now you don't have to worry about moving all those rocks yourself."

That starts the laughter.

"Please, I could move those rocks in my sleep."

Jimmy slowly rolls up into a sitting position, and heads back to the main group, grabbing another drink, and his lunch, and then sprawling bonelessly in the chaise that Breena had grabbed for them. "Yeah, in your dreams you can move that many rocks that fast."

Tim snorts at that while the rest of them laugh and decides now's a good time to shift the topic a bit. He takes a quick bite of his sandwich (corned beef on rye) and asks, "Got your speech done?" The DiNozzo Sr. wedding is a week from today, and Tony's on best man duty.

Tony nods. "Yep, just re-heating the one I used for your wedding." That gets a bit of a laugh, too.

"'I remember the first time McGee saw Abby… The way his eyes glazed over and that slight bit of drool on the corner of his lips…' Yeah, that'll flow naturally for your Dad's wedding," Abby says.

Tim adds. "You know, you weren't actually there the first time I saw Abby. You were going to walk me down, but I shocked you so bad the doors to the elevator closed before you got in."

"It's called poetic license, and you were already drooling by then! You were just about licking your chops as you got into the elevator."

Tim shrugs a bit, not like that was precisely wrong. And technically it wasn't the _first_ time he saw her. He'd caught just enough of a glimpse on the video conference to be very interested in getting to know her better. But it was the first time he saw her in person, and… well, he's fairly sure his eyes did glaze over, and if he'd been drooling… He wasn't, but he thinks that's because his mouth went dry.

"How'd you shock him?" Abbi asks.

Tim smiles. "It was our first case together, and a few days earlier I'd asked about Abby and he told me Abby wasn't my type. I said 'why?'"

"And I asked if he'd ever had any desire to get a tatt on his ass. He said no. I told him he never had to think about Abby again. You have to remember that back in the day McInked here was about twelve-years-old and looked like he was wearing a suit he borrowed from his dad to go play at being an agent."

"I was twenty-four, Tony. Anyway, I told him that no, I'd never had any desire to get a tattoo on my ass." Tim's pushing up the sleeve on his left arm, showing off the code he's got there. "And that was true. No desire, at all. Still don't have one. Because they hurt to get done and they hurt when they heal up, and who wants to sit on that?" He touches the code. "This on the other hand… I'd been thinking about this for a while. That's my masters dissertation, so not like I woke up one morning and said, 'Oh, bunch of random letters!'

"So, Tony's really looking forward to me seeing Abby and flipping out, or her seeing me and laughing hysterically, and he's telling me she's really not my type, so I said to him, 'You know that desire you were asking about? I took care of it. Went with Mom.' And that fried his brain and stopped him dead."

"Why'd you say Mom?" Tony asks.

"Because I wanted to get to my lunch date, and explaining this would have taken most of the hour Abby had off."

Abbi's looking at that tattoo. "That's your master's dissertation?"

"The core of it. The whole thing is about five pages long. This, then four and a half pages explaining what it does and how."

"What does it do?" Jimmy asks, realizing he doesn't know that.

"Remember, I got out of grad school Winter of '01. So, anyway, back then they were just getting into using database policing. You know, you've got a database that's got every theft in the county, and then use a computer to figure out what was likely to get hit when. Back when I wrote this, the program that did it was thousands of lines of code and would take days, even for a small community. This can handle New York City in an hour, and anywhere smaller in minutes."

"So, everything a cop on the beat could tell you if you asked," Gibbs says, dryly.

"Maybe. This could give you the likelihood of any given address being hit at any given time on any given day. Cop only knows his area and his times on. Usually you'd use something like this to help assign who goes where at what times. How to plan out those beats. And unlike the cop on the beat, this one can update as fast as you feed it new information. So it could tell you in practically real time if your new beat assignments were having an effect."

"Is anyone using it?" Breena asks.

"Not anymore. Much better stuff is out there now. But I wouldn't be shocked if someone built off of it to make some of that better stuff. Just like all the other MIT dissertations, anyone with a library card can find this and build off of it." A thought hit Tim as he says that, something he's never asked. "Ziva, did you go to college?"

"Why are you asking, McGee?"

"IDF at 18. That's what, two years?"

She nods.

"Okay, you're twenty. Then working for your dad. Adventures all over the place. 2005 rolls around, and you're with us. That was fall, so… You're what, just barely 23 then?"

Ziva shakes her head. "I was still twenty-two when I met you. I did not attend college, at least not the way you did. I did get a semester in Barcelona, and another in Cairo, one in Prague. College student is an easy cover if you are twenty-one, and colleges expect to have foreign students. But I do not have a degree. Leon was willing to make an exception for me, based on my vast, in-the-field experience."

"Wise man," Abbi says.

Ziva nods. "I've thought about maybe doing college, going back, along with the job, like Jimmy did, but so far… I think I'd rather just read."

Jimmy nods at that. "Unless you want a degree in something like medicine where you have to go to college, I wouldn't recommend it. Took me seven years to do med school and residency part-time, and I was pretty fried for a lot of that time. What would you study if you went back?"

Ziva shrugs. "I do not know. Literature?" She smiles at Tony. "Film? I did take a class in that, and enjoyed it. I always thought I might like to learn photography, art photography, not just shooting a scene, or go back to dancing. If I went to school it would be for fun."

That makes Gibbs smile. He knows what Ziva's getting for her birthday this year. He still has Shannon's cameras and the dark room equipment. No chemicals, obviously, they'd all be way past their prime, but he's got an enlarger and film spools and trays collecting dust along with an SLR and a collection of lenses and gels in his attic.

They continue to chat while eating, not as easy or smooth as usual, but not silent like the beginning of the day either.

As lunches are wrapped up, and each of them began to head back to the side of the house in need of stonework, Jimmy says to Tony, "Your shot to show off. I'm done with lugging rocks. Let's see how long you can keep it up."

Tony smirks. "All damn night."

Jimmy snorts at that, shaking his head, and follows Breena to where she'd been working, figuring he'd help her with her bit of the wall.

* * *

They're getting ready to head home. Gibbs is packing up his tools, talking with Abbi, Tony and Ziva are already pulling out. Abby wanders over to Breena and hands her the check back. "We're good."

Breena looks at her. "Sure?"

"Yeah." She nods to Jimmy, who's putting up the last stone of the day, with Tim. "You think he's gonna make me do something I don't approve of?" She snorts a quick laugh.

Breena nods, that's a good point.

"I should have said or done something when it happened. I didn't. We're good on my end, and I know Tim is, too." She wraps an arm around Breena. "Besides, I know what you said to Gibbs about those two beating on each other hit home, so I'm perfectly good with you getting the idea through to him that this isn't cool. They may not listen to us on it, but when Dad lays down the law, they pay attention. That's worth a few grand to me."

Breena smiles at that.


	101. Normal As A Wedding

Tim supposes it's a good thing that his wife is squeeing with joy at him developing white hairs, but he's not exactly relishing it.

She's standing behind him as he sits at the table, playing defense on keeping Kelly's food on her tray. At almost a year old (God, how'd that happen?) she's more or less feeding herself these days, but feeding herself often means food all over the place. He feels Abby start to play with his hair. He doesn't mind that at all, it feels good and is putting him in a good mood for the next part of today.

She's making some fairly excited sounds that haven't really filtered through his determination to make sure that at least some of the food on the tray ends up inside Kelly.

Finally, it does filter through.

"I knew it! I knew you'd be one, too. My very own silver fox!"

"Huh?"

"White hairs. You've got sixteen of them."

"Oh. Great." By which he means, not great, and she gets that from his tone.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm thirty-eight."

"So?"

"You're forty-two, no gray hair. Tony's forty-eight, no gray hair."

Abby laughs. "Tony's been dying his since he was thirty-five. And Jimmy's exactly the same age you are, and he's got some, too." For Jimmy, some means probably about two percent of his hair is white, all scattered about his head.

"Tony dyes his hair?" Tim asks.

"You didn't know that?" Abby's really surprised by that.

"How would I know that?"

"His hair's been getting lighter for more than a decade now. It was almost black when he started."

Yes, Tim had noticed that, but it didn't seem like any sort of big deal. From what he can tell everyone's hair changes color some. "My hair's been changing, too."

"Getting darker. That happens. Mine's not as blonde as it was before I started dying it. No one's hair slowly goes from almost black to medium brunette over fifteen years without help."

Tim stares at her, not sure if that's right or not.

She shrugs. "I noticed because I know what hair-dye smells like, and occasionally he comes in smelling like Garnier."

Tim lights up. That he knows about. Every now and again Tony comes into work or Bootcamp smelling a bit fruity. It's not unpleasant or anything, but it is a pretty distinctive aroma. "Is that the sort of fruity smell?"

"Yeah." She nods at that, emphatically.

"He told me that was lube."

Abby looks horrified at that idea. "Why would anyone use lube that smells like that?"

"I was thinking the same thing after I got past the massive yuck of you-didn't-get-enough-of-a-shower-to-wash-the-damn-stuff-off! but we had only known each other for a few weeks when I asked, so I sure as hell wasn't going to ask for specifics. So, really, that's hair dye?"

She nods.

Tim smirks. "I've got to tell Jimmy that. Tony's been ragging on him for months about the gray hair."

"Well, now you have ammo to shoot back with."

He grabs a grape as it goes flying by his head and puts it back on Kelly's tray. "No throwing the food." She grins at him, big eight tooth grin, grabs it, and puts it in her mouth. "What did you mean by you knew it? Have you been thinking about this for a while?"

Abby smiles. "Like since we were first dating. One night Kate and I got talking about you guys, and talking about you guys got into what'd you'd be like in twenty years, and I was betting you'd be a silver fox."

He grins at that.

"Didn't think you'd be so thin," her hands slip down his arms, "or so built, but I like that."

He pulls her down for a kiss. "Glad to hear it."

"So, when's Sarah and Glen coming?"

Tim glances at the clock. "Any minute now."

And, as if conjured by those words, they hear a car in their driveway. "And they're here!"

"Perfect." Senior's wedding starts in two hours. That gives them plenty of time to get changed, and to the church.

* * *

"Can I borrow your sporran?" Tim's holding his phone to his ear, kilt on, shirt half-buttoned. He's hoping Ducky can save him on this. He'd told Borin that he'd do the kilt for the wedding, and then noticed a tad late that he was missing part of the outfit for the whole formal kilt concept.

He hears the sigh on the other side of the phone. "Timothy, one does not borrow a sporran."

"Yes, well, one doesn't have one, and apparently they're kind of required for the whole formal kilt thing, so…"

"Fine. Get your own, soon."

"I've got one on order already," Okay, not technically true, but only because he hasn't decided which one he likes better. He does have a website up and is dithering between two of them. It'll be true before he gets out of the house. "But, it's not going to get here in an hour."

He hears Ducky chuckling.

* * *

Sarah whistles at them when they get downstairs.

"Good God, you two can do stylish!" Once again, they may not be _fashionable_ , but there is definitely some style going on here. He's got the tux jacket and vest, a white button down, and hunter green tie (eldritch knot), along with the kilt, which feels kind of odd to wear without boots. He's just relieved that half a dragon sticking out of the top of his sock doesn't look too stupid. He was afraid it was going to look like it was peeking out of his sock.

Abby's the really stylish one. She'd been jonesing for the dress she has on for about two years, but no reason to get it or wear it, and then those magical words showed up in the mail. _Black tie cocktail party._

Tim knows just enough about fashion to know that he likes the dress, and that the guy who made it, Alexander McQueen is a big deal. Beyond that… No clue.

But he does like it. And it goes with his outfit perfectly. It's plaid, navy and hunter, black and silver, like his. He doesn't know what to call that sort of shape, but it goes from her chest to her knees, one little bit swirling up from her left breast to wrap around her throat, the rest falling into a flouncy pleated skirt, the left side of which is tucked into a wide, black leather belt circling her waist. Under the skirt are many flounces of white lace, and all along Abby's chest, shoulders, and arms is more white lace, with black arabesque detailing.

It looks fucking awesome, and he does not regret a penny of what it cost. (Once they got off the phone with HR to make sure he was still getting paid bi-weekly and not, seasonally, or something, they've been having a good time with Tim's recent raise.)

Lucky for them, they paid for it, and the hotel, and the rest of this, before Gibbs levied his Asshole Fee and wiped out what was left of that month's play money.

Of course, as Tim's looking at the shot of the two of them Sarah took, compared to the black eye(s?) he could be wearing to this, a few grand wasn't that big of a deal.

"Make sure to get shots of Ducky and Penny for us!" Sara says as they head out.

Tim's nodding as he kisses Kelly goodbye.

"No problem," Abby adds to her hug and kisses.

"See you noonish tomorrow!" Tim says, and they're off.

* * *

They're in the car, en route to the church, looking forward to this. He notices Abby yawning as he's telling her about almost having the last of the contracted Tibbs novels done. Ten thousand words to go, and the Continuing Adventures of LJ Tibbs go on spec. Which means when he's feeling inspired he'll crank one out, but the one novel-a-year pace is done.

"Bored?"

She smiles. "Nah. Just sleepy." She sighs. "Had a hard time getting out of last night's case."

Tim nods at that. "Tony was texting me about that one yesterday. Afraid he'd end up stiffing his dad on his best man."

"Lucky for all of us Draga noticed that envelope between the books."

Tim nods. "Feels a little weird to just hear about them, you know?"

"Maybe?" Abby half shrugs. "I almost always just hear about them."

"Yeah, but you work them, too. All week I've been perfecting my test, hacking a database in Tokyo, and fighting with HR about hour tracking. Can you believe they still want us filling out pieces of paper?"

Abby's already heard every flavor of Tim complaining about any branch of NCIS wanting paper documents, so she nods at that.

"I mean, I can give them precise, to the second, accountings of how long my guys are working, when and where, but no, they want paper forms!"

"Tim…" Her hand lands on his, squeezing gently, giving him a look that he knows means, _calm down_.

"I'm calm. I put Howard on it. She's writing a program that will take the information off their computers, fill out the forms, and then print the damn things out for us. All my guys have to do is sign. She tells me it'll be done next week."

"That's good."

"And two weeks from now, Loretta in HR will call me up to complain about how they're all printed out and none of them were actually filled out by the individual who's being tracked."

Abby snorts at that, and yawns again.

"I think you needed a nap this afternoon."

She nods. "You know it."

They get to a stop light, and he leans over to kiss her. "I don't mind if we get there late and leave early."

She laughs. "As long as we put the hotel room to good use after we leave?"

"And before we get there," he says with a big grin.

"Twice in one wedding? You're feeling frisky, aren't you?" Her hand trails up the inside of his leg, giving him a gentle squeeze.

He grins, looks her up and down. He really likes that dress, and it's going to look even better on the floor. He grins again, taking his foot off the break and driving them toward the church.

* * *

Tim is intellectually aware of the fact that this is a big wedding. The fact he's been invited to this thing is a less than subtle hint in that direction, but still…

It's a huge church, easily seats a thousand and it's almost full. He can't even begin to imagine knowing this many people.

They're waiting at the front doors for the rest of their crew, minus Tony and Ziva, who are part of the wedding party.

Ducky and Penny find them first, and yes, Ducky does have his sporran. Tim takes one look at that and blanches. Abby clutches his hand when she sees it, whimpering. Ducky appears especially pleased with this reaction and is happily handing it over to Tim, who really doesn't want to touch it.

"I'm sorry, Ducky, I can't wear that."

"Timothy… First you to borrow it," Ducky is absolutely grinning as he says this, "which required me locating it, and now you tell me you can't wear it?"

He shakes his head, still staring at it. "I didn't expect it to be so… lifelike. What is that, a badger?"

Penny's smirking widely, enjoying this interaction way too much.

"That Timothy, is indeed a badger." Tim was expecting a small leather pouch, not… Oh God, it's taxidermy hell: a full badger's head, shiny, beady eyes glinting away, with its two front paws hanging down, and the pouch made of its pelt, and the damn thing is about the size of a salad plate. If he puts this on, he'll be standing around with what looks like an attack rodent on his crotch. "This badger is the result of my first hunt with my father. Back in the day we kept Dachshunds, Dachs is German for badger, and they were bred to hunt the wee beasties…" Tim finds it interesting that as Ducky gets going on this story, his accent deepens, gets harsher, reminding Tim that Ducky is actually from Scotland, (He's spent so many years with Ducky, that at this point, he doesn't really hear the accent anymore.) and once upon a time, he was a small child, out on the moors, with his father, chasing after a pack of Dachshunds in search of this particular badger.

Ducky keeps going, telling about tromping over broken ground, barking dogs, and what felt like hours of following his father in search of this critter, and Tim takes it from him, very gently, and puts it on, which stops Ducky dead. "Timothy, I never expected you'd actually wear it."

Yeah, it looks several steps beyond dumb as hell, but… "Is even half of that story you're telling true?"

"Yes, it is."

He half shrugs. "Do you mind if I wear it?"

Ducky smiles at him, very pleased by that. "My father would have been gratified to see someone put this on without a fight." He looks back at the badger. "Honestly, it always gave me the willies. The eyes tend to follow you no matter where you go."

Penny laughs at that.

* * *

Gibbs and Abbi find them next. The last time Gibbs gave him that _what the hell?_ look he was wearing eyeliner to Shabbos for the first time.

Now both he and Abbi are staring at the sporran. They're trying not to, but failing miserably.

"I borrowed it from Ducky. He's got a great story about it."

Gibbs looks to Ducky, who launches into the story again.

* * *

Jimmy and Breena are late. They wait outside as long as they can, but the bride is getting into place and ready to walk down the aisle, so they all scoot in, fast, grab seats by the back and get settled.

Half a minute later, Jimmy and Breena slip in beside them. Jimmy next to Tim, whispering that Molly decided now was a great time to have a massive existential toddler crisis about whether or not Mommy was ever coming back.

He and Abby are nodding along, the rest of the group looking sympathetic, as the bridal march begins, and they all stand up.

Two more minutes later, when said march is done and they all get to sit down again, Jimmy nudges him and whispers, "Why are you wearing a stuffed weasel on your dick?"

And so Tim misses most of the first reading, because he is bent over, biting his lip, vibrating, silently laughing so hard he has tears in his eyes.

The next time they stand up, he takes it off and hands it back to Ducky, who seems to appreciate the fact that he managed to keep it on for fifteen whole minutes. Ducky quietly says back to him, "Probably a wise choice. I fear Tony would have had some sort mental breakdown if faced with so many glorious options for making fun of you."

"Thanks, Duck."

"You're welcome, Timothy."

* * *

While it is true that Tim has come to the conclusion that it is vastly more enjoyable to be a guest at a wedding than being in the wedding, or the guy getting married, this part here, in the church, listening to, by conservative estimate, nineteen million songs and readings, is awfully boring.

The nice part of being the groom is that not only did he have input in the matter, thus pruning the ceremony part of their wedding down to as small as possible, but, as the groom he was also not, in the slightest, paying any attention to any part of the ceremony that wasn't his or Abby's vows or ring exchange.

He honestly can't tell you who said what, or what hymns were sung. What Abby was wearing, her walking down the aisle toward him, details about the vows, the way it felt, he's got those down, but the rest of it is fuzzy at best.

But this, right here, right now, as yet another nameless cousin (okay, he could check the program if he wanted a name) is droning on and on about love. Sigh…

It'll be over soon.

* * *

They get to see Tony and Ziva for about two seconds while going through the receiving line at the doors of the church.

If there is such a thing as a person built for a tuxedo, it's the DiNozzo men. He knows Tony tends to think of his various cousins as screw ups, but apparently they're screw ups who look good in black wool. The whole line of them are cool and pressed, perfectly attired and just vastly too fashionable to be real.

Tim doesn't get a chance to really say anything to Tony, but he gets across in his look, _I get why you left._

And Tony nods back, looking at the cousin on Ziva's other side. He's polished, poised, looks ready to step out of a magazine. _Yeah, made the right choice on that, didn't I?_

* * *

Back to the Adam's House. Tim breaks away from everyone else, briefly, to check in and grab their keycards.

Key tucked into his pocket, he heads back, and finds his family all milling around.

He snaps a quick picture of them as he heads in. Candid shot, everyone is just standing around, talking, and sure the guys don't look like they were measured for their first tuxes at age three, but they do clean up well. They also all look pretty similar. Jimmy's also wearing his tux from Tony's wedding. Ducky has on a standard cut, with cummerbund and bow tie, black tux, probably with a boat load of history to go with it. Gibbs is in the blackest black Tim's ever seen. (He's thinking that Abby's probably going to snag a few threads of his jacket to find out what the hell it is and where she can get some of it. It's _really_ black!)

So, in that they're guys in black tuxes, they more or less look like every other guy in the room. Right now Tim is the only man in the room who doesn't look like every other guy in the room. The ladies on the other hand…

It's occurring to Tim that Penny probably used to do things like this a lot. She's at ease in her little black dress and scarlet silk wrap, hair up, cocktail held elegantly. Hell, she's old enough that she probably remembers cocktail parties, when people used to get dressed up and did this at each other's homes. In that she was married to Nelson, and becoming an Admiral is two-thirds politics and one-third astounding talent, she probably hosted a lot of them back in the day.

Tim's trying to imagine her in a 1950's dress, small waist, fluffy skirt, martini in one hand, cigarette in the other, schmoozing with the other officers and their wives.

He's having a hard time picturing it.

Abbi's in green. He thinks Breena would call what she's wearing 'Grecian' but he's not sure. It starts at one shoulder and is tight over the bust, and then flows soft and drape-y to just above her knees. It's dark green, forest at night green. In fact, the only reason he can tell it's not black is that she's standing next to Gibbs, who's wearing the Platonic Ideal of black. Her hair is curly and down and looks really soft and pretty. She shifts a bit, laughing at something Gibbs said, and Tim realizes that her dress probably is black, but the threads have some sort of little green shimmer thing going on that you can only see when the light hits them right.

Breena's in white gold and pink. It's a sheath dress, some sort of thick, rich, silky brocade, the background in white with gold fibers adding just a little shimmer, and an overlay of pink roses. Her hair is up, some little bits of it falling down in soft curls, and she's also looking very soft and pretty.

Abby sees him getting pictures, and winks, sticking out her tongue. He gets a shot of that, too.

When he closes on them, he says to Penny, "I was just thinking about this, seeing you all, but… Did you used to do things like this? Cocktail parties?"

She smiles, laughing gently at that. "Once upon a time, the McGee house was famous for the driest martini anyone had ever tasted, red hot music, great conversation, and tasty food… Well, as much as anything we ate back then qualified as tasty. I was a wizard with Jello."

Gibbs laughs at that. "So was my mom. Fruit jello, meat jello, fish jello."

"Fish jello?" Jimmy asks, appalled.

"I'll have you know, that a properly constructed tuna and lime jello salad is… Honestly, appalling," Penny says with a smile. "It looked amazing though. I even had the special fish pan—"

"My mom had that, too!" Gibbs adds.

"Did she used to put the sliced green olive where the eye went?"

Gibbs nods. "Dad took one look at that and said, 'Never again. Not eating anything that's lookin' at me!'"

They all laugh at that.

"Nelson got back from Korea in '54. From then until he was shipped out to Vietnam in '63, at least once a week, I spent all day cooking, the boys got put to bed early, I got all dressed up and pretty, and hosted at least five other couples at our home for cocktails and dinner."

"Nelson was home for nine straight years?" Abby asks.

"No, dear. He was away about six months a year every year. But, as his wife, I was keeping up appearances, making sure his connections were fresh, keeping an ear open, and making sure he knew what was happening stateside. By '63 I was getting sick of being the perfect wife, cocktail parties were dying out anyway, and with actual men coming home in body bags again, it seemed a politic time to end the frivolities."

"So, you were working as hard at his job as he was?" Breena asks.

"Not precisely. Probably about a third as hard as he was, I had my own job, and running the house, and keeping the boys out of trouble, but I was working on it. Admiral is a political game as much as a tactical one, and without a very sharp secretary and an even sharper wife, the climb from Captain to Admiral is a _very_ steep one. By the time you've hit the upper officers ranks, none of their wives are pretty little accessories; they're all in the game. Or, at least that was true in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. I don't know about now."

Tim wonders how much of that was involved in his parents' marriage falling apart. He knows that he doesn't remember cocktail parties and getting paraded around as the perfect child more than once or twice a year. Of course, his father hit Admiral after he left home. He's got no idea what sort of gaming went on behind the scenes.

A waiter heads on by, drinks on a tray, none of them are non-alcoholic, so he and Abby both skip them, and he decides to head over to the bar and get them something to drink. By the time he's back with a Diet Pepsi for him and a Coke with two cherries for her (Yes, she's been avoiding caffeine, but he figures that if she's this sleepy at half past five, a boost would be welcome. She takes the glass from him, pets it and whispers 'Hello My Love!' to it, smiling at him.) they're on a different topic.

* * *

Eventually the wedding party show up. Eventually they head off to yet another ballroom, this one filled with tables covered in sky high flowers, crystal, and silver. Tim's thinking it's entirely likely his house cost less than this wedding.

They can't even see the head table (where Senior and Delphine are flanked by their eight attendants, each) from where they are. Luckily there are enough of them to fill their own table, so they aren't making awkward small talk with strangers. (Or more likely, making several strangers painfully bored as they chat with each other.)

The food is good, (prime rib) somewhat cooler and less rare than Tim likes, but he figures the logistics of feeding this many people all at the same time mean that as long as even vaguely the right thing shows up on his plate, the team in charge of this is doing superb. And, yes, everyone does have (more or less) what they ordered.

They talk about what they've been up to over the week. Penny's got her grad students working away. Breena's been mediating between fractious family members. Though, fortunately, this week the fractious family members have belonged to families other than hers. (Her own family is entering week eight of the Collin-Amy standoff, but she thinks her father is starting to soften some.) Ducky and Jethro have gotten all of the windows on the west side of the house popped out and replaced. Abby and Jimmy tag team the tale of their latest murder. Abbi and Tim share stories of bureaucratic wrangling.

All in all, a pretty normal week for this crew.

And, after a while, as stories get told and conversation flows, food is cleared away, and the band starts up, letting everyone know to head to the dance floor for the first dance.

* * *

It really is a band, eight guys are up there doing their thing. And the music is swing. Fast, perky, fun.

Tim looks at Abby, who has been yawning an awful lot, and comes to the conclusion that unless by leaving early he means eight-thirty, there's really not going to be any fooling around post-wedding, at least, not until tomorrow morning.

He's holding her hand as they watch Delphine and Senior dancing their first dance and gently kisses her ear. "Slip away with me?"

She smiles at him, both of them carefully backing out of the ballroom to go find their own room.

They're heading up the main elevator this time, but the hallway looks really familiar, and it's when he's putting the key into the door that Tim realizes this is the room across the hall from the one they got at the Palmers' wedding.

He laughs at that, explaining it to Abby, who's grinning, too.

He presses her against the door as soon as it shuts, and the room's not exactly the same, but it's very close. "Good memories?"

"Oh yeah!" she kisses him, warm and soft, inviting him to taste as well as touch.

He carefully unwinds the bit of plaid that wraps around her throat, and then unzips the dress. Enjoying the view of her stepping out of it. (Dress that fancy, costs that much, he's certainly not rumpling it up. He carefully lays it over the arm of the sofa in their sitting room.) White lace push up bra, white garter belt, white stockings, and black pumps, yeah, he likes that view a whole lot.

"God, you're so beautiful."

She's unbuttoning his vest. "Not looking bad yourself."

"At least since I took the sporran off?"

She giggles. "That thing was ghastly."

He's nodding, then kisses her as she pushes off his jacket and vest. A few seconds later, his kilt hits the floor, too. He undoes his tie, stripping out of his shirt as she kisses him and rubs his dick.

Last time they did this, it was up against the door. He likes the idea of tradition but wants to play with it, too. He lifts her in his arms, slipping into her in one stroke the way they did last time, but this time he doesn't press her up against the wall. Given her comment about enjoying how built he is these days, he's showing off, holding her up.

He feels her legs wrap around the small of his back, enjoying her holding him tight as they kiss.

He's lifting her high, rocking her on him, as he lowers his head to nuzzle and lick her nipples. She hisses at that, jerking back slightly, so he goes softer, more gentle. He's got a fairly decent looking goatee right now. Well, at least he's hit the part where it looks intentional as opposed to he just forgot to shave, and apparently it's prickly.

Though softer and gentler seems to be working a treat, she's moaning against him, voice getting higher with each thrust as he rolls his tongue over her nipple.

Her slipping over him, fast and deep, is working for him, too. His orgasm's building, body growing tighter with each stroke.

He adds a bit of tooth, just a light graze and a little pressure, not more than a bare nip, to what he's doing to her, moving her a bit faster and a little harder, too, reveling in the sound of her getting close, that high-pitched, breathy almost pant, almost moan of a sound.

Can't touch her clit, not in this position, not with his hands at least, but he leans back a little, so he can grind his pubic bone against her, and that does it, she's rippling and moaning against him as she comes. Her body rippling on his sets him off.

He holds her up for another minute, both of them catching their breath and relaxing, and when she's done pulsing, he lets her feet touch the floor. He's about to pull out when it hits him that the tissues, which he did remember to bring, are inconveniently located about six feet away from him, on the floor, in his jacket pocket.

She sees him staring at his jacket and begins to laugh.

"Think that's funny? Not my stockings that're going to get wet with cum."

"I know you're a better problem solver than that." She nods behind him and to the left, where there's a tissue box on the table beside the sofa.

"Ah." He picks her back up, and walks them over to the tissues. She grabs one, and takes care of cleaning up.

They're both looking very happy and pleased with themselves when they get back down to the dance floor.

* * *

Swing music. Senior and Delphine decided on a Swing wedding.

Ducky and Penny are doing great with that. They're both old enough to remember when it was popular, the first time.

Tim makes a mental note to ask Gibbs when he learned to dance. He's doing fine. Borin's a bit off footed, but not too bad.

Tim is… competent. But in that he did take ballroom dance in college, and in that swing was part of it, and he did (of course) get an A in the class, he's got a very basic understanding of where feet go when and the like.

Like Jazz, which he loves, Swing is all improv, which is, unfortunately, not his strong suit, but… he's dancing with Abby, and by this point in time, as long as either of them has the vaguest clue what they're doing, the other can follow along easily, and with the amount of physical stuff he's been doing with his body over the years, he's a lot better at it than he used to be. (With the exception of one dance at Jimmy and Breena's wedding, with Breena, it's been twenty years since he's done any Swing dancing, but he's still better at this than he was in college, what with the whole doesn't need to choreograph each move out ahead of time, thing.)

Add in the fact that Abby really is a good dancer, and seems to be able to pick things up just by watching them once or twice, and in a matter of three songs they're doing well. (Okay, he's not flipping her around like some of the other guys are with their dates, but he's got the sense they actually do this sort of thing regularly.)

Jimmy's never done this before and from the looks of it, that dance at their wedding may have been the last time Breena did any Swinging, too. So, they're just sort of happily bopping along, making due with more conventional steps.

Ziva's got it. Tony does, too. Tim didn't know that he actually knew any formal dances. (They've been clubbing often enough that Tim knows Tony's good with pretty much any style of music, and can handle a decent box step when the music slows down, but he's never seen Tony do anything he could identify as a rumba, or a merengue, or the like.)

All in all, a good time is being had on the dance floor.

* * *

"Rescue me!" Tony says to them as he heads over to their table. "If I have to hear about another merger or another party in the Hamptons I'm going to go insane!"

Tim and Jimmy are getting a break, sipping drinks. Abby's dancing with Breena right now, and they're happily watching.

Jimmy smirks widely at that. "Not having fun?"

Tony stares at him. "This is the most vapid evening I've ever spent. Oh, God, there's another of them! He's trying to get me to 'invest.'" A somewhat drunk looking man, a bit younger than Tony is veering toward them. Tony makes a fast bee line into the crowd, looking to lose his tail.

* * *

An hour into the dancing, the party slows down for cutting the cake. Everyone sits down, watches Senior and Delphine laughing and nibbling bites of chocolate cake from each other.

Then, as the cake is served, Tony stands up to do his Best Man's speech, and… "I remember the first time I met Delphine. It was a little over a year ago, at my wedding, and Dad told me he had a date. A date he really liked, loved maybe, and I'll admit, I rolled my eyes. Because Dad falls in love every ten minutes.

"But, even though, as the Groom, I wasn't exactly paying much attention to anything beyond making sure I got to the ceremony on time, I did notice that Delphine was someone special. I noticed her grace, and the ease of her smile, and how my Dad lit up when she touched his hand.

"And for the first time in a long time, I was hopeful for him.

"Fast forward a year, where I've gotten to know you, and see how you make my dad happy, how loving you is making him a better man, and I have to say that I am so very thankful that you love my father, and that you've decided to join our family." Tony raises his glass. "To many years of joy for both of you."

They all nod at that, good, solid best man speech, especially given how little Tony's been involved in Senior and Delphine's life. And it's not just a reheated version of the speech he whipped out for their wedding.

* * *

The wait staff is placing plates of cake in front of them when Tim asks, "Where did you learn to dance, Jethro?"

He takes a bite of his cake. (Chocolate, vanilla frosting, chocolate cream between the layers, it's yummy.) "Asked Shannon to the Marine Ball. She said yes, and was very excited. Realized I didn't actually know how to dance, when I got her letter back and read her gushing about it. Didn't want to let her down. Captain Jimsin's wife offered lessons for anyone who wanted to learn. Took 'em in my off time with twenty other guys." He smiles wryly at that memory. Him and twenty other teenage Jarheads in the Captain's living room, working on their two-step.

"And was she properly impressed?" Abbi asks him, warm smile on her face.

He inclines his head a bit, dry smile on his face. "Probably would have been more impressed if I'd learned any sort of disco, which was the music they were playing, but we both had a good time. How about you, Duck?"

Ducky places his cup of coffee back into the saucer. "There are certain things that are part of any proper gentleman's education. Dancing, elocution, Latin, Greek, and at least one modern language, hunting, equestrian, some form of properly masculine sport, I rowed and boxed, the ability to paint, sketch, or play an instrument, and the ability to produce, or at least recite, insipid poetry upon command. Thus, as a lad, Mother made sure I received lessons in all of those things.

"Of course, as a lad, I was not terribly interested in any of those things."

That gets a laugh. "Gentleman…" Jimmy's looking at Ducky. "So, are you Lord Mallard or something?"

"No!" Ducky waves that away. "My father was the youngest brother. So, we were well-off, but never inherited the title. I do believe my cousin Milton is Lord Mallard."

"Milton Mallard?" Breena asks, giggling, fork paused en route to her mouth.

"Aunt Edith had atrocious taste in names."

"So you learned as a kid and…" Tim adds, keeping the story going.

"And while it is true that the Medical School at Edinburg allowed women to attend long before any other Medical College in the UK, it is also true that while I was there, there were only three females in attendance, and the college kept them in segregation from the male students during our off time with the rigor of harem guards who have sworn their lives to the protection of the virtue of the ladies.

"It is also true that a doctor has long been seen as a desirable catch, and that the first Friday of every month featured a 'mixer' in which both local ladies and dancing were available. In preparation for said 'mixers' dance classes were offered, where I was able to hone the skills mother tried to instill upon me. And by the age of twenty-four, I was significantly more interested in honing those skills. How about you, Timothy? I was rather surprised to see you handle a decent Charleston."

Tim holds his hands wide. "You had to take one gym course a year to graduate from Johns Hopkins. Ballroom dance seemed like a good way to meet girls."

"Was it?" Jimmy asks.

Tim nods. "Always twentyish people in the class, never more than four guys. If I'd been a bit less shy, and a bit more confident, that would have been a lot of fun. Ended up being fairly nervous about doing it right. Had a better time the second and third time I took it. It's possible that I qualified as good by my senior year. Instructor had me demonstrating steps when I was a Senior."

"More than once?" Gibbs asks.

"You could take the same gym class for credit over and over as long as you passed it. One of my roommates took four semesters of bowling. He was all in favor of a gym class he could drink beer and smoke during."

"You lived with a smoker?" Breena asks.

"Not exactly. Senior year I had a quad. Common room/kitchen in the middle, door on each side leading to a bathroom with two bedrooms off of it. I was on one side, he was on the other. No one smoked in the common room or in my room. Okay, Jimmy, you're up. How'd you learn to dance."

Jimmy shakes his head slowly, swallowing his sip of coffee. "It's an epic story. Great story. Completely amazing, you'll never, ever believe it."

"Because it's a huge lie," Tim says, taking a bite of his cake.

Jimmy elbows him. "Alas, in that the statute of limitations is not, technically, expired, I'm not able to tell that story until shortly after 2020." That gets a laugh, and he pauses for a few seconds before saying, "Pretty much the same story as Gibbs," he strokes Breena's cheek, and she leans into the touch. "Met a girl who liked to dance, didn't want to look like a moron, so, and here's the twist, I asked her to teach me."

"Which I was happy to do. So, I guess it's my story then?" The others nod at her. "Pretty common. Ballet as a little girl, jazz as a slightly older girl. Had to take square dancing in gym in middle school. By then no one 'danced' at dances, it was just all about bopping around to the music. So, I was pretty good at bopping around, and then this guy showed up," she kisses the back of Jimmy's hand, "and we went out a few times, and somehow he got the idea that I actually knew how to 'dance' dance and asked me to teach him, so I'm learning them from Monday to Friday, and showing him how to do them on Friday nights."

"Then I'm working on them from Saturday to the next Friday, completely unaware of the fact that she's learning them the week before teaching me. It was a lot of fun, though."

"Yeah, it was. So, you're up, Abbi."

Both Abbies look at each other, and Breena quickly adds, "You're Abbs when we're all together, remember?"

Abby nods, taking another bite of her cake, and Abbi begins, "Like you all saw, bopping around is pretty much all I do. Never took any sort of dance lessons. But softball, field hockey, basic training, I'm good at picking up any sort of physical thing, quickly. Not too hard to follow him." She smiles at Gibbs, and raises and eyebrow, "But maybe I'd like some lessons at some point." That gets her a quick kiss, too. "Okay, Abbs, you're up."

"Footloose. You have to remember that I grew up in a house that was either silent or so loud that the paintings were rattling on the walls. So, neither of my parents were much for dancing, they couldn't keep the beat on anything they couldn't feel, and most people don't like the volume high enough for that.

"So, volume's up, and I'd be bopping around, just playing with it. But then Footlose comes out and it just appealed to my little rebel-wanna-be. Not that anyone had any problem with dancing where I lived. But, off to the library I went, and they had some Betamax tapes of how to dance, I took them home, bribed Luca into helping, and we learned how to dance."

"How'd you bribe him?" Jimmy asks.

"Even then I made the best chocolate chip cookies ever. A bit later, I'm thirteen and Dirty Dancing comes out…" All of the women at the table nod along at that. "And I decided I wanted to learn even more about how to dance."

"Decided you wanted your very own Patrick Swayze," Breena adds, and Abby nods at that. (Once again all the women at the table share a look.)

"They had classes at the Y, so I signed up for them. They were less interesting than I had hoped." Everyone laughs at that. "So, that leaves you, Penny, right?"

"I was nine when World War II began. My older sisters were fifteen and seventeen. We've been a Navy family since there's been a US Navy, and my father was a Captain. He… _understood_ sailors as he liked to say. So, according to my Dad they were old enough to go to USO dances. I was not. Had to be fifteen to go out. So, they'd get ready to go out, get all pretty and… I wanted to be them so badly. They were allowed to wear lipstick and real silk stockings on USO nights. Dad was a big fan of keeping up the soldier's 'morale' up. As he said," she smiles, chuckling, "I haven't thought of this for years, and I'm just now getting why my mother thought this conversation was so hysterical. Anyway, as he said, 'A fighting man needs to keep his spirits up, and nothing lifts a man's spirits like dancing with a pretty girl.'" Everyone laughs at that.

"Your father was okay with your fifteen and seventeen-year-old sisters, _lifting spirits_?" Tim asks incredulous.

Penny smiles. "To a degree. His youngest brother, my Uncle Brian had had polio in the early thirties when he was a teenager. So unlike all the other men in our family, he didn't go into the Navy. He became a priest. And every week, at each dance, Edna and Maggie Langston were chaperoned by our Uncle, Father Brian, who made sure that dancing was all they managed to do while they were out."

"And you learned to dance from them?" Abby asks.

"Yes. They wanted someone to lead, so they could practice, and I was tall for my age. I didn't learn how to play the girl's role until I started 'officially' courting Nelson when I was sixteen. Speaking of which," Penny puts her fork down, takes one last sip of her coffee, and then stands up, "I'm rather fond of this song." She holds out her hand to Ducky who rises eagerly, eyes sparkling. "Dance with me?"

"Always."

* * *

Tim's back at the table, getting a drink, taking a quick break from dancing, waiting for Abby to get back from the restroom, when Gibbs draws closer. "Where did you find?"

"Gibbs?" Tim's about two pages behind on this because he has no idea what Gibbs is asking him.

"Don't look confused at me like that. Every wedding we go to, you and Abby slip off. You were both missing for twenty minutes two hours ago. Where'd you go?"

"Why do you want to know?"

Gibbs just stares at him.

"Oh." Tim giggles. "Stupid question." He hands over a key card. "Room 416. Don't make a mess."

Gibbs looks from the key to Tim and back to the key. "You get a room for a quickie?"

"No! I get a room for the night. Sarah and Glenn have Kelly all night. But if I have a room, I'm not going to go find a corner somewhere to have the quickie."

Gibbs looks at the keycard.

"Look, if you want a corner somewhere, I can guarantee you that Jimmy's found one." Tim scans the dance floor, not seeing Jimmy or Breena. "Actually, he's probably still in whatever corner he's found. But every time I've been here, I've had a room. So… just flush the condom, don't use the bed, and remember to give that back to me before you leave tonight, okay?"

Gibbs tucks the card into his jacket and grins.

* * *

Two minutes later, Abby's back, in his arms, dancing close and slow with him. "I saw Gibbs and Borin heading out of the ballroom."

Tim nods, kissing her gently. "Yep. They're borrowing our room."

She giggles at that. "Talk about twisted family traditions."

"Hey, weddings should be properly celebrated, and how better to celebrate one?"

She laughs at that. "So, think we're even now. We did it in his bathroom, he's in our room?"

Tim doesn't know why, but he finds that idea ridiculously funny. He hasn't had any alcohol tonight but he's feeling almost giddy anyway.

"I love you."

She's smiling wide and bright at him. "Love you, too. So, what do you think they're doing?"

He rolls his eyes. "Crossword puzzles. And beyond that, I don't need to know."

"Come on, you can't tell me you aren't curious."

"I am not curious. At all."

Abby sighs. Two seconds later Jimmy and Breena are dancing near them. Abby looks up at them, and says, "Okay, so Gibbs and Borin are off in our room, you want to know what they're doing, right?"

Jimmy winces, and Breena says, "Oh my God, really? That's so cool! We've got to get talking to her when they get back."

Tim slowly shakes his head, and Jimmy nods in agreement.

Breena gives Tim a gentle shove, swapping from dancing with Jimmy to dancing with him, as Abby flows over to Jimmy. "Are you two really trying to say you're not even remotely curious?"

They both shake their heads.

"There are a finite number of things they could be doing up there, and I don't need to be able to narrow it down any further than that," Jimmy says.

"Plus, neither of us could care less about what Gibbs looks like naked."

Breena and Abby both laugh at that.

"Okay, what's so funny?" Tony asks. He and Ziva finally managed to get free of the wedding party and join them. They're not so much dancing now as standing, talking, in a close circle on the side of the dance floor.

The four of them look at each other, quickly, and while Tim's fairly sure the girls would tell Ziva in a heartbeat, they're all feeling a little reticent about talking about this beyond the four of them.

"I asked Ducky if I could borrow a sporran, and he brought this stuffed dead badger for me." Tony and Ziva seem to think that's hilarious. Once they stop giggling, Tim continues on with, "So, he tells me about how he and his dad hunted the poor thing down and all their family together time, so I put it on, get into the church, sit down, and the wedding's just getting started when these two show up," they know that means Jimmy and Breena, "and Jimmy sits next to me, looks down and asks…"

"Why are you wearing a stuffed weasel on your dick?"

(The girls had missed that. They knew Jimmy said something that set Tim off, but not what, and are now laughing hysterically again.) "Which was when I decided that family memories might be great, but I really didn't need to be wearing that."

Abby finally stops laughing long enough to say, "I can't believe you thought that was a weasel."

Jimmy's hands go wide in a defensive gesture. "Weasel, badger, I knew it wasn't a rat or a skunk."

* * *

Tim's dancing with Breena when he feels someone slip something into his pocket. Since Breena's not bothered by it, he knows it's not something to be alarmed about, and looks over to see Gibbs standing next to them.

A very satisfied and pleased looking Gibbs.

"You look like you had a good time," Breena says.

Gibbs looks smug.

Tim takes a quick glance at his watch. "You were gone for an hour and a half."

Gibbs shrugs, huge, sassy grin on his face. "Who gets a quickie when he's got a room?"

Tim shakes his head, slowly, smiling at Gibbs, but there's some challenge in that smile. "I can't believe you went there, but, okay. You know who gets a quickie when he's got a room? The guy who can still get it up more than once a night."

Breena snorts out a fast laugh at that. Gibbs eyes go wide, and then he starts laughing, hard. When he stops, he looks Tim dead in the eyes and says, "Really nice bathtub in there. Never much for baths, but I'm thinking of changing my opinion on that."

Breena lights up at that, and Tim bites his lip shaking his head with mock rue and passing Breena over to dance with Gibbs. "She wants all the details. I don't. Have fun."

* * *

It is early. Not even ten yet. But Abby's tired, and Tim's perfectly fine with cutting out early. Good long sleep tonight, and then lots of fun tomorrow morning. (He's already ordered the room service.)

Everyone gets hugs and kisses, and then they head up to their room.

In the elevator, on the way up, Abby's leaning against him, back to chest, and he's got his chin on her shoulder. He kisses her ear, listening to her pleased hum at that. She squeezes his hands which are clasped in front of her, around her waist.

"A million worlds, Tim, infinite possible lives, universes untold, any possible option that can occur, does, somewhere, and I'm certain that this life, right here, with you, is my happiest."

She turns in his arms, and he holds her close, kissing her deep and soft. His fingers cup her face, as he pulls back, smiling. "Me, too, Abby."

* * *

And yes, the blog version has pictures!


	102. Zzzzzz....

"Abby, we've got to get moving if we're going to make it to breakfast."

"Mrghr."

"You feeling okay?"

She raises her head from the pillow, glares at him, and says, "Let me sleep, McGee."

He backs out of the bedroom. "Letting you sleep."

Once he's downstairs, he says to Kelly, with a wide, beaming smile on his face, "You know what? I think you might have a little brother or sister in the works."

* * *

If it had just been one day of sleepy Abby, he wouldn't be grinning or jumping to conclusions like this. But it's not day one. It's day three of sleepy Abby. (Or maybe day eight. He's not sure if the wedding should count. She did perk back up again after a full night's sleep.)

Thursday night all the stars aligned properly. They got home by six. Dinner went off without a hitch. By seven thirty Kelly was asleep, and he and Abby were on the sofa. The idea, the idea he'd been hoping for all day, was sleeping baby, little TV, then lots of sex, and sleep for them.

So the plan was working. They'd settled in to get up to date on Sleepy Hollow. Abby was snuggled in nice and close. All was good with the world.

Halfway through the show she was dead weight on his chest, cuddled in and sound asleep.

And as much as he appreciated having her warm and close and cuddled in, he'd been hoping for a different sort of warm and close. So, he let two more shows go by, hoping she'd wake up, feeling refreshed from her nap and ready to play, but eventually the clock hit eleven, she was still dead to the world, so he picked her up and carried her to bed, and she slept through that.

Friday morning she claimed she wasn't feeling sick, just really tired, and yeah, the first part of the week had meant two hot cases, so she's been working harder than usual. So, she's sleepy, okay.

Friday night, Abby was drooping by the end of Shabbos, fell asleep on the car ride home, staggered up to their room and was asleep again as soon as she hit the sheets.

Saturday she slept in late, they had a very enjoyable afternoon nap time, followed by dinner with Kelly, and both of his girls were in bed and asleep by seven thirty.

Which meant now, on Sunday morning, he's feeding Kelly breakfast on his own, while sending Jimmy and Gibbs a text saying they were skipping breakfast at the diner this morning.

Gibbs sent back. _Okay. Bootcamp?_

_Think so. Let you know closer to time. Gym, right?_ Rain's pouring down right now, and supposed to continue on and off all day, so Tim's thinking they're not going to the house today. Though, he's also a little wary of bootcamp in the gym. Everyone is getting along right now, but he knows Jimmy hasn't spent any time alone with Tony or Ziva, and that things are superficially fine, but still a little tense.

_Yes._

Jimmy sent back. _Tired? Keeping her up all night?_

_Not that sort of tired._

A minute later he gets: _Ohhh! "Tired" :)_ _  
_

_Really hope so. Don't know yet._

_Let me know when you do._

_:)_

* * *

So… Sunday morning, and he and Kelly have ventured out to Target to run some errands. Windex, more pacifiers, (he has no idea how they can possibly go through them so fast. If it weren't for the fact he changes her diapers, he'd swear that she eats those things. As it is, he's expecting that sooner or later he'll find fifty of them all stuffed in an air conditioning vent or something.) toothpaste, (Tom's of Maine, Spearmint.) pregnancy test, (He's grinning as he tosses that in the cart.) frozen wild blueberries, (just in case) more of the puffed fruit snacks Kelly likes, and the K-Cups assorted flavors he likes to keep his department well-stocked with (along with a decaf pack for him).

He's in an awfully good mood as they head toward the check out, and for that matter, so is Kelly, (he's pointing things out, naming them, and she's trying to repeat them back to him) so maybe they don't need to head home right this second.

He'd like to get Abby some sort of little present to go with the pregnancy test. Some sort of I-love-you, so-happy-you-chose-me-to-have-babies-with gift.

And, sure he can get her a rose, a NonCaf-Pow, and tie the rose with a bow to the pregnancy test, but he's hoping for something a little more impressive than that.

Plus, not like he can just walk into a florist, let alone a supermarket, and just grab the kind of roses she likes best. They might, if he's lucky, have the sort they had at their wedding, white with the red edges, black roses are special order though, so are the ultra-dark red ones she likes, too.

Of course, there's a nursery on the way home… Couldn't get one for her there, but a whole bush… That's an option.

He flashes Gibbs a text: _What's involved in planting roses?_

_Dig a hole in the ground. Put the roots in it. Add dirt. Water. Why?_

_Just checking._

_You do it in the early fall or spring._

_Or not._

_?_

_Want to do something nice for Abby._

_Roses are good, but they'll be dead by August if you put them in now. No later than March._

_Noted._

So, what to get? What to get? This is a moment where it'd be a hell of a lot easier to be Jimmy or Tony. Head to jewelry store, grab pretty, sparkly thing, and you're all set.

And like with the roses, it's not like Abby doesn't like pretty, sparkly things, it's just that she's got very specific tastes and a good present takes that into account.

"What do you think Kelly? What's a good happy baby present?"

"Cookies."

Tim nods solemnly. Kelly's pretty firmly convinced that cookies are the answer to everything right now, and the odds are pretty even on she's answering his question or requesting them for herself.

"Cookies!"

Requesting them for herself then.

"Uh uh. Lunch. Then cookies."

She pouts at him. "Cookies."

"Nope."

* * *

He ends up going with a rose. Mostly because he's not seeing or thinking of anything that's really wowing him, and because he thinks he's got a plan, that buys him some more time, and that she'll really like.

When he gets home, he'll get online, find something cool, and give it to her on Kelly's birthday. He thinks that's a very good way to say thank-you-for-having-my-babies.

* * *

She's still sleeping when he gets home. That's making him smile even more. He certainly remembers when she was first pregnant with Kelly and wanted to sleep eighteen hours a day.

And yes, he probably shouldn't be getting his hopes up, but… It feels good. And he'd rather be happy than worried that something's wrong.

* * *

They've had lunch (with cookies) and he's put Kelly down for her afternoon nap, by the time he hears Abby thumping down the steps.

She pauses at the bottom of the steps, and he calls out, "In my office."

A moment later, she's in his office, sitting on his lap, eyes scanning over the page that's in front of him. "You're really doing it?"

Tim nods. He typed the last words yesterday, now he's re-reading. "The last ride of LJ Tibbs. Anything that comes next is a prequel."

"You think you're going to do another one?"

"Probably. I'm not done with them. Just want to go and play with some new things. Got a really rough outline for the Dragons series, and about six scenes written. Be kind of fun to just write, no deadlines, no page caps, just tell the story however it unfolds."

She nods at that, snuggling into him.

"I've got a present for you."

"Ohhh…" Her eyes light up and she smiles. "I like presents!"

He pulls a pregnancy test out of his top drawer with a baby pink rose tied to it.

Abby takes one look at the rose and the pregnancy test and starts crying.

That startles the hell out of Tim because of all of the possible responses to his little gift that she could have come up with, that wasn't on his list. And it's not good crying either, this is deeply unhappy, world's-about-to-end crying.

Part of him is terrified that this is a response from last time, but she even didn't get to the tired part last time, so she's got to be further along…

"My temp didn't drop this month." More sobbing, and okay, so she might have missed it, that happens, right? This doesn't seem sob worthy. She can see he's clueless.

"Tired, erratic mood swings, no temperature shift, they're all signs of menopause."

"Oh." He winces. "Shit." He rubs his face. "I didn't even think…"

"That the clock's run out, and we're never having another baby. That we've been trying for almost a year, and I'm fucking barren!"

"Oh… Abby… I just… I'm sorry."

"I'm not pregnant; I'm just old."

He doesn't know what to say to that. _You're not old_ may be true, but it's also not true. She is forty-two and the clock is just about run out.

She's crying more, and erratic moods might be a sign of menopause, but the last time he remembers her sobbing like this she was pregnant.

"Wait. The day after we went clubbing with Jimmy and Breena, you couldn't get a good temp that morning because we'd been up all night?"

She half shrugs. "Didn't get one at all."

"Well, okay then." He picks up the pregnancy test and shakes it. "Come on. Let's see what's going on before we start crying about it."

She's not looking happy at him, and he's sure that if it isn't positive this is probably the absolute wrong thing to do, but… he feels it in his guts and… "Please."

"Fine," she snaps out.

A minute later they are sitting next to each other, on the floor next to their bathroom, watching the little grains of electronic sand shift through the gray on gray hourglass that let them know the test is working.

The last grain drops, then the screen goes blank, and then it flashes up one word. Pregnant.

Abby shrieks at it. Tim feels that frisson of joy again, and this time, minor hearing damage.

He pets her tummy, "Hey there, little dude," then he kisses her. "Don't ever tell me you're old."

"I am."

"Well, you're my old woman, and you're also the mom of my kids."

She's smiling and giggling at that. He smiles, too, and then kisses her again, soft and sweet. "You know, we've probably got almost two hours of naptime left."

She giggles at that, too, and straddles his lap.

* * *

"You want me to tell everyone at Bootcamp?" Tim asks as Abby gets a very late breakfast or possibly very early dinner.

She exhales long and deep. Celebrations are better with friends, but telling everyone to stop celebrating last time was hard.

"Yeah. Tell them. Neither of us are any good at keeping stuff like this quiet. And we might as well all enjoy the good as much and as long as we've got it."

"Okay." He's grinning. "Boy or girl?"

She thinks about it. "No real feel, yet. I still like Sean James if this is a boy."

His fingers find her stomach again. "Well, you gonna be SJ McGee?"

"Sean! Not SJ."

"I like SJ!"

"Then you can call him that. I'm calling him Sean."

"If he's a him."

"Fifty-fifty shot. More we talk about it, the more I'm feeling boy."

"So, you want to call this one McScuito, too, or just go straight for Sean."

She inhales and exhales dramatically. "To hedge our bets or not?"

"Yeah." He's smiling at her. "I'm leaning toward all in."

"Me, too. Okay, don't tell them at Bootcamp, I want to see Jimmy hear the name. Invite everyone for dinner, okay."

"Was Gibbs already coming over?"

"I think so. That was the plan on Friday."

"Great. I'll get the bootcamp crew, you want to call Ducky and Penny?"

"No problem."

* * *

"So, how does this work?" Abbi asks Jethro as they wait outside the NCIS building.

"Tony and Ziva get here soon, then we all get warmed up. Tim, Jimmy, and Collin'll show up eventually."

"Who's Collin again?"

"Jimmy's likely brother-in-law."

Abbi blinks at that.

"He's living with Breena's sister. Looks serious, but no ring yet."

She nods. "So, we get in there…"

"Warm up, practice. There's one ring. I usually set the fights, who's against who. What everyone does, who's on offense or defense. Ziva works on technique, now. Last fight, she was training them on nerve strikes. Jimmy handles general fitness, strength training, stuff like that."

"He's the one who's got you standing on one foot."

Gibbs nods. "Supposed to be good for me."

Abbi's giving him a look suggesting that Jimmy might be pulling his leg on that. They see Tony and Ziva heading toward them, and in a minute, they join Abbi and Jethro.

"So, why are we here half an hour early?" Tony asks.

"Tim's got that test this week, and I want him ready to fight cold if need be."

"We're ambushing Tim?" Abbi asks.

"More or less."

* * *

As soon as Tim walks in, before he's even put his bag in his locker, Gibbs says, "Tony, Ziva, Abbi, all three of you on attack, hard, like you mean it. Tim, you're on defense."

Ziva grins. "With pleasure."

Tim glances over at Gibbs, _this is overkill_ in his eyes, but Gibbs just shakes his head, so, without a warm up, without expecting it, Tim's on fight mode. He tosses his bag to Jimmy and heads into the ring and the next thing Tim knows he's being double-teamed by very fast moving DiNozzos,, while Abbi hangs back a bit, watching, looking for openings to jump into.

Short of having them jump him on the way in, this is probably as close to a real fight as he can get. And Gibbs is going to make sure he's ready for a real fight.

Jimmy's standing next to Gibbs, watching Tony and Ziva and Abbi put Tim through his paces. "You've got a really bad feeling about the test, don't you?"

Gibbs nods, grimly.

"He's going to be fine."

Gibbs doesn't nod at that. "What do you have for me?" Part of Gibbs' usual warm up is checking in with Jimmy, showing off how well he's doing with whatever it was Jimmy set for him last time, and then getting new additions to his training routine.

Jimmy rolls with the change in topic. "How are you doing on the balance challenge?"

Gibbs shuts his eyes and stands on one foot, without wobbling, for a minute.

"Good. Okay, variation on a theme time. On your toes. Eyes open." Gibbs looks pretty stable at that. "You've got that down. Close your eyes."

And with teeth gritted, Gibbs closes his eyes, and is down on flat feet in less than two seconds.

"That's the next balance challenge."

"Why are we doing this?"

"Because I'm not visiting you in the hospital because you fell and broke a hip."

Gibbs flashes Jimmy his exasperated look, but closes his eyes and rises up on his toes again. "You can do this, right? You're not just messing with me." (He's down on flat feet before he gets both of those sentences out.)

Jimmy looks satisfied and holds up one finger. He tosses his and Tim's bags aside, slips his shoes and socks off. "Tree pose." He's standing on one foot, other foot tucked against his thigh, hands at heart center, palm to palm, then he rises onto his toes, and then closes his eyes, holding that for a full minute before setting himself down again.

"Yeah, I can do it. And I can do a version of it on one hand, too."

"Why?" Gibbs can understand why you'd spend hours, days, huge chunks of your life working on something other people can see. Practicing for a sport or something. He gets doing the work to look the way Jimmy looks. But he's not getting the point of this. Seems like time you could be doing something else, something useful.

"Why does any man do something physically difficult and kind of stupid? To impress women."

Gibbs laughs at that.

"No, not really. I mean, yes, Breena's impressed by that, but that's not why I can do it. Being able to do it feels good. The focus necessary to do it is good, for a lot of things. You can't hold something like that if your brain is whirling around." He shakes his head a bit, that's part, but not all of it. "I don't talk about it much, but… I'm diabetic, you know that. I manage it so well most people don't even notice. As much as you can beat it into submission, I have. But it's not like I've got allergies. This isn't some little annoyance that makes me periodically uncomfortable. This is serious, and eventually, it will kill me. But it's not taking me easy." Jimmy shakes his head. "So, until they develop that artificial pancreas, I'm running a race against my body, and the better I do with it, the longer I get to keep running. If I want to be there to play with my grandkids, I can't just let myself slide. And, since I want you here to play with my grandkids, too, you're not letting yourself go, either."

Gibbs smiles at that, nods, and then pushes himself up on his toes again.

* * *

Tim knows that he's not winning a three on one fight. Not if a third the team he's up against is Ziva, and another third is Abbi, who he's never gone up against before and has a completely different style than he's ever dealt with. His only goal is to just keep at it long enough to not embarrass himself.

But, eventually, like with all fights like this, he hits the mat.

Tony helps him up, and for a moment they all just stand there, breathing hard.

"Test ready to go?" Tony asks after a minute.

Tim nods. It's ready. It's beyond ready. He's grinning, wide and happy at the idea of it. He's going to turn an entire strike force upside down, and it will be completely awesome.

"Be careful."

Tim holds his hands out in a _quit worrying_ gesture. "I'll be with the Secretary of the Navy. Everything should be fine."

Tony nods. Ziva's eyes have narrowed. They don't have the entire story of Tim's issues with his dad, but the bits they do have are enough. Plus, as the test gets closer, nervous is radiating off of Gibbs, so, they're all catching it, too. Same for Abbi, Gibbs hasn't given her all of the details, but she knows McGee and the Admiral don't get on, and she's figured that if McGee can keep a relationship going with DiNozzo after all the teasing she's seen and heard about over the years, there's got to be more between him and the Admiral than they just rub each other wrong.

"We prep Thursday." Tim looks at all three of them. They talked about it a bit at Shabbos, so this isn't new information. "You know, when I get that cover ID that means The Admiral can't even admit he knows me without blowing the op. Then up at the crack of dawn Friday, test goes off in the afternoon, I hang around and watch, and as soon as they figure out what happened or give up, I go home. Should be back by Sunday, Monday at the latest."

Tony nods. Ziva does, too. Then she heads to her bag, rummages around in it, and comes back a few seconds later, handing him something.

Tim looks at it. "A roll of quarters?"

"Makeshift brass knuckles, McGee. The reason you have them is you are bringing home American coins for your children. Every new place you go, you get some of the local currency and take it home to them."

Tim raises his eyebrows and nods. That's a good story. Actually, he's not planning on travelling much, but if he does… He might start doing that. Another thought hits him. "Did your Dad do that for you?"

Ziva nods. "Yes, he did. We also had a map with little pins in it. Learn geography and where Abba was all in one. I was nineteen when I found out he was never where those little pins were, and that his secretary kept a supply of currency for him." She sighs, and Tim does, too. Eli David stories always have that sort of disturbing twist to them.

Gibbs and Jimmy head over, having finished whatever it was they were working on. Collin's been hanging by the edges of whatever it is they've been up to, so he joins them, too. Gibbs looks them all over, focusing on Tim. "All warm and loose?"

Tim nods.

"Good." Gibbs heads into the ring, gesturing to Jimmy and Collin to join him.

Tim stares at Gibbs for a moment, because Gibbs isn't setting up teams. "Six on one?"

Gibbs shakes his head. "Ladies out." Abbi's not looking thrilled at that, but Ziva inclines her head in a _I'll explain in a second_ sort of way. "Your job is to keep us in each other's way as much as possible. Hard to hit one guy if there's a bunch of you fighting at once, so use it."

"Okay."

* * *

Ziva and Abbi are watching, and it's a melee. Hard to actually track what's going on, but Tim does seem to be keeping at least three of them out of the fight at any given time.

"So, why are we out?" Abbi asks.

"Collin won't go full out if there's a girl in the ring. Tony won't if I'm in there. And Jimmy and Tim are a lot better than they were when we started, but they can get shaky when they're tired, and Tim's tired. Gibbs doesn't want either of us getting an elbow in the face by accident."

"But he doesn't care if one of the guys do?"

Ziva nods. "Jimmy caught me in the mouth with an elbow… Six months ago. Not a big deal, just a split lip and a bruise, but every time I went anywhere with Tony, the whole time my lip was cut, people kept glaring daggers at him, and two even offered me suggestions for battered wife services. And, yes, people stare if the guys have split lip or visible bruises, but it's not as big of a deal."

"Oh."

"So, one of them gets tired, he pulls me out. Apparently, same for you. But there is no reason we cannot spar with each other. If you're interested?"

Abbi smiles at that. "Oh, yeah. Show me your best moves, DiNozzo."

Ziva grins.

* * *

Tim's sore, and tired, really tired, as they head to the showers. Gibbs ran him through pretty much every possible fight combination he could think of in preparation for the test.

So, he's undressing slowly. Partly because nothing about him wants to do anything fast right now, and partially so he can get a minute to talk to just Gibbs.

Tony and Jimmy head to the showers. (Collin headed straight home after fighting.)

"Your gut is screaming."

Gibbs nods. "Take your gun."

Tim shakes his head. "Blow my cover. I've always got a knife, and Ziva's roll of quarters is a good plan."

"You keep them on you, all the time."

Tim nods. "It'll be fine."

"You can believe that when you're home. Until then, you're walking into battle and that's how you're going to treat it."

"Gibbs—"

"No. Don't give me any feel good bullshit about this. You stay armed, you stay alert, and you keep people around you all the time. You do not spend a second alone with him."

"Okay."

Gibbs nods again, not looking relieved, and heads to the showers. A minute later, Tim follows.

* * *

They're out of the shower, drying off, dressing, ready to move on with the rest of the day when Tim says, "So, kind of went a bit bonkers at Costco today. They had some really nice looking tomatoes and that bacon we like was on sale… Anyway, BLT night at my house. Everyone's invited."

Jimmy grins. Granted, for him a BLT is a salad and not a sandwich, but he's a fan. And Breena's almost always a fan of nights where someone else cooks. "We're in. Get home, grab the girls, and head on over?"

"Sounds great."

Tony looks pained. He is also a BLT fan. "Can't. Want to, but can't. Dad and Delphine got home from their honeymoon yesterday and invited us for dinner today. I think they're working on setting up some sort of Sunday dinner type thing. Her kids and grandkids'll be there, too."

Tim nods at that. "Sunday dinner sounds like a good thing."

Tony inclines his head. "Hope so. At least, none of the other wives really worked to bring him into her family and vice versa. So, any luck this is a move in the right direction."

Jimmy nods along with that.

"You and Abbi coming?" Tim asks Gibbs. When Gibbs agreed to dinner at their place, he was solo, so it's possible he had things he wanted to do with Abbi on their own.

"We're coming. That was the plan, right?"

Tim nods. "Just checking in."

All four of them are up and ready to go. They're heading toward the door, but Tim hangs back a bit. "Tony…"

"What?"

"You dropped…"

Tony gives Tim a perplexed look, he knows he hasn't dropped anything, but Tim is giving him the _get over here_ look, so he does.

"We're telling everyone else at dinner, so, let Ziva know, Abby's pregnant again," Tim says quietly.

Tony breaks into a huge grin, glances over his shoulder, sees that Gibbs and Jimmy have headed out of the locker room, and then pulls Tim into a warm hug. "Congratulations!"

"Thanks."

"When..."

Tim does a bit of math. "February, probably, early or middle."

"So Molly might be sharing her birthday time?"

"Maybe," he says, grinning.

Tony hugs him again. "So, this one going to be Timmy Junior?"

"No." Tim says emphatically. There will be no Juniors of any variety among his kids. "But… our boy name last time was Sean James, and we're both getting a bit of a boy vibe, so… Maybe SJ McGee?"

"SJ.. Sean… Sean works better."

"Abby thinks that, too."

"Wise woman." Tony grins again. "How far do you want this to go?"

"Just us right now. Labor Day's soon enough to let everyone else know."

"Okay, we'll keep quiet. I better get moving before they wonder what I could have possibly dropped that took that long to pick up." Tony pauses for half a breath before saying, "And don't you even suggest anything about the soap."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

* * *

There are things in this world better than sitting on the porch on an early June day, air warm and damp from many thunderstorms, as the last clouds scuttle away, leaving the world watercolor clean. Adding in your family, BLTs, watermelon, happy baby girls playing peacefully with each other, (Okay, Molly and Kelly are "playing," and Anna's just chilling in her baby carrier, enjoying the air.) takes that experience into the upper echelons of better things.

So, it is already a very good evening, as Abby, who's sitting on Tim's lap, gets everyone's attention during a lull in the conversation and says, "I'm pregnant!"

That gets a lot of happy responses, a lot of congratulations, many smiles and hugs, a few words on who's getting told now, when the newest McGee should be showing up, and, as is usual for brand new baby announcements, possible name ideas.

"Have any thoughts about names?" Penny asks.

Tim and Abby nod at that. "Yeah, we do," Tim says

"Another mystery 'family name' that we'll all have figured out by the time we get home?" Jimmy asks with a smirk.

Tim grins at that, and Abby says, "Not a mystery, but yes on the family name part."

"Sort of," Tim adds. They don't have any Seans in the family. "But I bet you can't guess it," he says to Jimmy.

Jimmy's willing to take up that challenge. "Boy or girl name?"

"Boy's name," Abby replies.

"Thomas. That's Abby's Dad's name, right?"

Abby nods, pleased to see he knows that. "Yes, it is, but not the name we're aiming for."

Jimmy thinks for another minute. "Jack or Jackson?" Gibbs looks pleased by that.

Abby and Tim quickly glance at each other, Jackson McGee actually sounds pretty good. Thomas Jackson… that's good, too. That's going on the list of potential baby names if they find themselves looking for another one.

"We like that, but no. Next time we have this conversation, maybe," Tim says.

"Donald?" Abbi asks.

Tim nods toward Jimmy and Breena. "They've got dibbs on that one."

Ducky looks very pleased at that.

"I'd say Leroy or Jethro, but I know you don't like them," Jimmy says to Tim, who turns to Gibbs and says, "No offense."

Gibbs nods at that. His names are country and dated, neither of which is true about his kids.

Jimmy's staring at Tim, mild exasperation overlaying a whole lot of pride in his eyes. "I can't guess it, or I _won't_ guess it?"

Tim shoots him is best smart-ass grin. "Is there a difference?"

Jimmy laughs at that, and before he gets a shot to say anything Abby says, "Sean James. That's what we're thinking."

Jimmy looks down for a second, a very warm, very pleased smile spreading across his face, then he looks up, beaming at both of them, and heads over for more hugs. He's got an arm around each of them, and kisses Abby's cheek. As he pulls back his hand falls to Abby's tummy and he says, "Sean James, you hear that? That's a good name, so you better be the with-a-penis-model, okay?"

Everyone laughs at that, and when they stop, he adds, "Just fooling on that. Girl, boy, little bit of both, doesn't matter, we're all gonna love you no matter what."


	103. Storm Watch

Tim's all but bouncing as he takes the stairs up to Leon's office. Last prepping meeting before the test is today and he's really looking forward to it.

And not just because he's enjoying the idea of showing off exactly how the test will work, but because it'll also be really nice to talk to someone about this who isn't assuming he's going to get assaulted or killed the second he sets foot on the _Stennis._ Of his family members, the only one who knows about this trip and isn't worried is Penny. Because she also gets exactly how horrified John would be at the idea of _ever_ disobeying a direct order.

Everyone else is varying from not sleeping (Jethro) to on edge (Ducky).

So, heading up, showing this off and talking to people who assume it's going to work splendidly is going to be fun. Showing off how damn good he is at his job to the Secretary of the Freaking NAVY, is awesome.

And, sure, he's worried, a bit, but mostly, he's really enjoying the idea of seeing the look on John's face when he steals his entire fleet, turns it inside out, kills his communications, and makes all the guys with all of their command experience and years in the Navy completely irrelevant as he uses the skills he spent decades honing to cripple everything his Dad loves.

For a few minutes, at least. Until he chooses to give it back to them. Just the idea makes him smile.

Karen waves Tim in when he gets to Vance's office. Vance is (obviously) already in there.

They greet each other, and Tim get his lap top set up.

"Not that I don't appreciate being kept in the loop on this, McGee, but why are you and Clayt meeting up here? You have an office of your own for a reason."

Tim nods. "Yep." He shrugs a bit. "Probably just being too cautious, but… This is supposed to be kept quiet, and the Secretary of the Navy coming to visit me'll cause talk. Him coming to visit you, doesn't. He happens to drop by while I'm briefing you… That happens, right?"

Vance smiles dryly at that. It is cautious. Too cautious, likely. The chance that anything that happens here getting out is minimal. But Vance does approve of this level of caution for what's supposed to be a classified test.

Tim looks up from his laptop. "Okay. Final report on how it's supposed to work is in your inbox. For a heads up, my team thinks I'm at Cybersecurity conference on a cruise ship. If they ping my phone and see I'm at sea, they won't wonder why. Manner and Howard are minding the store while I'm away. Nothing big's on deck for right now, and I'll be checking in when and as I can."

Vance nods along with that. "How's Manner liking that?"

"He's pleased. He's a good second-in-command, and he knows it. The difference between now and ten months ago is that he knows he's better at taking orders than giving them. So, he's got the DC Team and instructions for what to do with them. Howard's nominally keeping an eye on the rest of the techs. Ngyn's coordinating that, but having to deal with 130 plus people in person is her idea of Hell, so she's making sure everything keeps running, and if something SNAFUs, Howard'll handle the people while she and Ngyn wrangle the tech."

Vance approves of how Tim's handling his teams, playing to his people's strengths.

A second later, Jarvis and his secretary, a young Lieutenant named Remy James, enter Vance's office. They're both looking pleased to be in there, and after a few moments of pleasantries, James hands Tim a suit bag, which Tim opens.

"What did you do before you were SecNav?" Tim asks as he looks at the content of the suit bag in front of him.

Vance smiles at Jarvis. "Clandestine services. Clayt always did enjoy breaking out the costumes and cover IDs."

Clayt nods, pleased by that comment. It's true, too. He always did like slipping into new lives. "Cover is a good idea, but a cover is only as good as it's details, so..."

"So the details will be perfect." Tim's looking at the contents of the bag. It's a Captain's uniform, Irish Naval Service, proper insignia, McGee on the nametag, a few medals he's going to have to google because it'd be useful to be able to say what they are if anyone asks. James hands him a folder, which he opens. Or maybe there will be no googling. He's got a life history, a history of the Irish Naval Services, the meaning and history and what he did to get all of those medals. It's a complete backstory.

"I don't suppose you can fake an Irish accent?" Jarvis asks.

Tim shakes his head. "No. You don't even want to hear me try. It's, really, really bad." (The less that's said about that particular misadventure in role playing, the better. We'll leave it here, Gabriel McGee is _not_ Irish. Abby wasn't laughing so hard she wet her pants, but only because she'd been to the bathroom recently.) Clayt takes the folder back from McGee, crosses a few lines out, and adds in, _Moved to US as a baby. Back to Ireland late teens._

"Ah." Clayt looks up from the McGee notes and hands them back to Tim. "Add what you need to personalize it. Make it yours. Just give us a heads up if you really shift something. You're just a guy on a trip with us, so we wouldn't know you well, but major details would stick out."

Tim nods.

"Anyway, the plan is that we'll get on board. The XO generally meets me when we do this. John prefers to keep everything under his eye and doesn't like to be pulled away from his men if he can avoid it."

Tim nods again, that sounds right to him.

"So, on we'll go. We'll get settled. You'll do your thing. And then we'll call him in and let him see how they handle it."

"If his guys are on top of their game, at some point they'll pull him away from us," Tim says.

"That'll be fine. We can watch how he reacts… Don't suppose there's a way to do this without him knowing it's a hack?"

"Sure, I stay home." Tim supposes that would make Abby and Gibbs and Jimmy and Breena all really happy, but… Right now, he really wants to go. He wants to see the look on his Dad's face when this goes down. "The test is already set. Nothing any of us actually need to do, now. So, if you want him completely blindsided, you do your thing, and at 13:03:06 everything goes bonkers. Look alarmed when his XO starts yelling."

"And the downside to that is?" Because there has to be a downside.

"We won't be able to _see_ how they respond. I need to get to a place where I can hack the security feeds and get us footage of his computer guys. I don't, technically, need to be on the ship to do that, either, but since you'll be on the ship, it'd be easier to show you what's going on if I'm there, too. If you just want a data feed, or just a report after, I can do that from my computer from pretty much anywhere."

"No." Jarvis shakes his head. "I want to see them in action, as well as get the data."

Tim grins. He wants to see the action, too. "That'll be easier in a room with a big screen TV."

"When McGee did it here, he was able to use the cameras to check everyone, see how they worked as a team in addition to tracking what they were doing with their computers," Vance adds.

"Okay. So we go. I'll request a pre-inspection briefing… Conference room on all of those ships has a big screen these days. Spin some bull about Irish Naval ships and what 'you guys' are looking for. That'll be the reason he'll be there. It'll be just him. He'll be ordered to silence. And we'll watch the test from there."

"Sounds good." Tim looks at the uniform again, checking the tags. "How did you know my size?"

Jarvis smiles. "Once upon a time, I was _really_ good at this."

* * *

Abby looks up at him as he heads down to the lab, suit bag over his shoulder. Then he realizes that he can't open the damn thing, because if he does, the cat goes leaping out of the bag, and sure, the Lab Techs aren't likely to talk, but…

Too late.

"Ohhh… what's that?" she asks, seeing the bag.

He grins at her. "Surprise." He looks around, everyone else is milling around, some low music is playing in the ballistics lab, but it doesn't have the active case feel. "You guys working late today?"

"Everyone should be out by six." She's smiling as she says that, getting a hint of what he's possibly thinking. Get all dressed up, head down to the lab, maybe carry her off to her office… He's smiling at that idea.

But, God… if someone sees… It's not obvious what, exactly, it is, and… not a lot of traffic down here, as long as the lab's officially closed…

No. Too much risk. And Heather probably wants to get home at normal time, and holding her late so they can fool around…

He leans in close and kisses her ear, whispering, "After dinner, dress up time," and heads out quietly humming Up Where We Belong from Officer and A Gentleman.

She catches it, and begins to giggle, having a very good idea of what might be in that bag.

* * *

"Gibbs?" Tim's at his desk. Right now he's not on deck for the job triaging system. (Since he can't reliably finish whatever he might start before quitting time tonight.) So, he's scanning through the jobs that are up, looking for ones that have been open for more than a few days, and hopping into them to give everything a quick look over. See if he can add anything useful.

So far, and this pleases him greatly, the answer is no. He's gone through two jobs, and both of them are on day three or four because they're sorting through absolutely massive wodges of data, and there's just no way to make the computers do that any faster than they already are.

Gibbs shuts the door behind him, and heads over to sit on the edge of Tim's desk.

He's not saying anything; he's just looking at Tim.

"Okay, at this point, _you're_ making me a hell of a lot more nervous than the test is."

Gibbs nods. "Be nervous."

Tim sighs. "Okay, really, specifically. What is the gut sensing?"

Gibbs shakes his head. "Nothing specific. This feels bad. This feels like walking into a trap and trying to convince Shannon not to testify all-together."

Tim slumps at that. He hates how worried and afraid Jethro is.

"You want me to ditch it?"

"Yes."

Tim slumps even further. He doesn't want to ditch it.

Gibbs shakes his head. "I know you won't. I know you want this, maybe need it."

"I do."

Gibbs sighs. "God, be careful, Tim."

"I will. I'm not the one who takes the stupid risks."

Another sigh. "Yeah. I know."

Tim stands up and hugs Gibbs. "I'm fine. I'm going to keep being fine. Sunday or Monday I'm coming home, all in one piece."

Gibbs squeezes him tight, holding him quietly for a long minute before letting go. "You better."

"I will."

Gibbs swallows hard, nods, and heads off.

Tim exhales, low and deep, trying to chase away all the nervous Gibbs just dropped on him.

* * *

Almost done for the day. Just a few more keystrokes and…

"Hey."

Tim holds up one finger, letting Jimmy know he's almost done. A second later he hits enter, and then looks up.

"Hey, back. What's up?"

"Got something for you." Jimmy heads over, pulls an orange pill bottle from his lab coat pocket, and hands it to Tim.

Tim looks at them, nodding. More anti-nausea meds.

"Thanks. Still got plenty from last time, though."

Jimmy shakes his head. "Use these."

"Okay… The other one's expired or something?"

"These are stronger."

Tim nods at that, looking at the label. Sure he didn't memorize the bottle last time, but this looks exactly the same. "Stronger how? This is the same stuff, right?"

He looks up and sees Jimmy looking a little uncomfortable. "Last ones were ninety percent baking soda."

Tim blinks and sighs. "You gave me a placebo?"

"And it worked splendidly until you saw that body, right?"

"Well, okay, yeah."

"This time you're going to be on a moving ship, with your Dad around, and I thought maybe having something beyond a mild antacid would be useful."

Tim opens the bottle and notices that this time the pills are in a small blister pack, with labels. He puts the cap back on, noticing the Target logo on the bottle. Which is when it hits him that, yes, Jimmy can write prescriptions, but he doesn't have his own dispensary. "What do I owe you for these?"

Jimmy waves it away. "Call it a going away present."

Tim smiles at that. "Keep an eye on Gibbs for me? I don't want him getting Abby panicked during Shabbos tomorrow."

"I was going to do that anyway."

"He showed up today, pretty much just to hug me."

"He's really freaked out."

"I know. That's not keeping me any calmer, either."

"Yeah, well, I don't want you going into this calm and relaxed. I want you on full alert. Just because I'm not flipping out doesn't mean I'm not worried, too."

"I know, but short of emergency appendicitis, I'm not getting out of this."

Jimmy looks Tim dead on. "That can be arranged, you know?"

Tim flashes Jimmy his exasperated look.

"I know. I'm not helping." Jimmy pats the pill bottle. "This is helping. Call in if you get a shot, okay?"

"I will. Any luck I'll have a few minutes round about dinner time back here to give a quick call."

Jimmy nods and heads out.

* * *

It's black or navy blue. So dark he can't tell which. And if asked, he's sure it's not identical to US Navy Service Blues, but he couldn't tell you how. (If it's blue and not black, that'd be a difference.) But the cut looks the same, the double row of gold(ish) buttons on the front, the four gold stripes on the cuffs, same gold star above them, the white hat with the black (navy?) bill, to Tim, this looks like a US Naval Uniform.

Which is more or less the only piece of clothing he's never, ever wanted to have touching his body.

He looks at it more, the insignias are different, so there's something. Holding the hat, cap, whatever, he can see that where, on a US Naval Officer's hat there's an eagle and the shield, on the Irish cap there's some sort of big, gold two spread wings-looking things. Between them is an anchor, and above it is something that looks like a sun with two Fs in it. But just like it's US counter-part it's got the gold curly-cues on the bill and the gold stripe across the band.

He checks the jacket more carefully, and, if there's a difference between it and the US Naval equivalent, he can't see it. The stripes are the same. The stars are the same. The buttons are different, and that's it.

There's probably some sort of uniform manufacturer in China who makes a ton of these things and they just send them out for fine tuning the embroidery.

Enough dithering. If he doesn't put the damn thing on soon, he'll find Abby asleep in bed, dreaming about the sex they're going to have, instead of awake in bed, actually ready to have some sex.

* * *

When he steps out, in full uniform, with as close as he can get to the right posture, Abby just stares at him, blinks hard, stares some more, and finally says, "Wow!"

Tim nods, looking at himself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door.

She hops up, standing behind him, hands on his shoulders, gently slipping them down his arms. "Just, yeah… Wow!"

He takes the hat off, only part with anything really visibly not a US Uniform, and says, "This was supposed to be me."

Her chin is on his shoulder, but she shakes her head anyway. Her hand slips under the jacket, between the buttons of his shirt, and comes to rest on his chest. " _This_ is who you're supposed to be." She strokes the uniform. "This is… I don't know. But not you. Not for more than a few nights. Not for more than play."

He smiles at that.

"It looks good."

He nods. It does. "Feels weird."

"Probably going to make your Dad pass out when he sees you. Especially if you're not wearing the hat."

He has to admit _that_ makes him smile. Drive the old man apoplectic to see him in a Captain's uniform. And, while he's sure John would have some choice words that he'd _love_ to say about him defiling the uniform, the fact that he's wearing it at the request of the Secretary of the Navy is awfully sweet.

"So," she nibbles her lip. "Are we playing with this, or is it too weird?"

"I think we're playing. If it gets weird, I know how to stop it."

She grins and nods. Then steps back, settling herself in the center of their bed. He's noticing that she's not her usual pre-bed naked. He's appreciating that she's got on a little teddy and cute little lace panties.

"Hello, Sailor," she says, voice lower than usual, come hither all over her tone.

He grins, liking that. "Hello back."

"Looking for company?"

He laughs, and then gets himself into the character. "Think I found some. What's the going rate?"

She stretches a little, rubbing one leg along the other, then shifts her weight onto her arms, pressing her breasts up and out. "Depends on what you like."

"I like lots of things." He says, stepping closer, unbuttoning the jacket, loosening his tie.

"Lots of things, huh? And let me guess, you've been away a long time, only your hand for company?"

"Communal showers, so not even a lot of that."

She shifts onto her knees, gesturing for him to come a bit closer, and then rests her hands on his chest. "Poor baby." She's close, lips a breath away from his, as she slips her tongue over them, it just, barely brushes against his lower lip. "I bet that's _frustrating._ "

"You have no idea."

She nods.

"So, is it true what they say about sailors?"

"Which part?"

"That you're all really horny all the time?"

He takes her right hand, and places it on his cock. "What do you think?"

She moans quietly, and squeezes gently. His teeth clench and a sigh slips out of him. "Mmmm…"

"Know what'll feel even better?"

"What?" he asks.

"Not having pants on."

He nods. "That'll feel much better." She squeezes again, and he bites his lip.

"But you've got to tell me what you want, first, so we can get the business part done."

He closes his eyes and smiles a little, licking his lips. "Don't suppose you just charge by the hour?"

She shakes her head. "Nope. Gotta tell me what you want."

"Okay…" He looks her up and down, figuring that this is a pretty direct statement of 'You get to pick what we're doing tonight.' "Feeling kind of lazy tonight. Just want to lay back, sixty-nine until I'm about to come, and then have you slip off and ride me home."

"Sounds good. Two fifty, but if you can get me off, it's on the house."

He gently licks her lip. "Then I'll just have to get you off."

He's stripping off his uniform (carefully, it can't be all wrinkly for tomorrow) when she says, "You can try."

"Oh yeah." He grins. "I love a challenge."

A few seconds later he's naked, standing at attention (in more ways than one) next to their bed.

"Nice ink." She says.

"Thanks, like yours, too. You gonna let me see all of it?"

She carefully strips out of the teddy and panties, and his eyes trail all over her. He nods slowly, eyes lingering on her breasts and then pussy. "Yeah, like that a whole lot."

He sits down on their bed, wondering how 'realistic' this is going to be. Granted, he's never had sex with a hooker, so he's a bit fuzzy on the details, but he's assuming a lot of foreplay isn't part of the deal. Of course, given how sleepy she's been lately, quick is probably a selling point right now.

So, he just lays down, pulling her to him, careful not to crush her breasts between them. They're starting to get really sensitive again. "You kiss?" he asks.

She smiles and kisses him, soft and wet and deep. Then pulls back. "I do when I like the guy."

His hand twines in her hair and pulls her down for another kiss, also wet and deep. She's making soft, needy, happy noises in the back of her throat when she pulls back, and starts to flip around.

"Hold up. Change of plans." His hands urge her forward, up his body. "Still want to go down on you, but want to be able to touch more of you."

She's straddling his lips, exactly where he wants her. And for a few seconds he's just looking. Perfect pussy pouting at him, pink lips peeking between white labia, slight gleam of wetness, that smell hitting him so hard.

"Love pussy."

"You and every other sailor."

"Mmmm…" And he dives in. Kissing all over her. Starting gentle and easy, waiting for her body to start to rock in counter to his. Then licking, reveling in her flavor on his lips and tongue. His left hand strokes her, getting wet and slick, moving along with his tongue, finally, first two fingers slipping into her, pressing forward, finding her g-spot. His right hand reaches up, the reason for changing positions. Barely a month pregnant means very sensitive breasts, and he intends to take advantage of it.

Old, familiar dance, well-loved and satisfying. His lips and tongue and fingers know what to do, how to play her, how to touch so that in a matter of minutes she's going tight on him, hips moving fast as thighs tense. He's focused his touches, tongue on her clit, rolling over and over, fast and firm, keeping a steady pulse on her g-spot as his other hand pulls gently on her nipple.

She's moving faster, grinding against him, moans going high and breathy, and he knows she's almost there, just a little more, a few more seconds, bit more pressure. He sucks on her clit, pulling it between his lips, and pinches her nipple, firm, not too hard, and feels her hips and pussy twitch in response, slipping her over the edge.

Abby takes a minute to catch her breath, and then shimmies down him, kissing his lips. "Looks like you know your way around more than a ship."

He grins, sassy, at that. "Aviator. Don't like boats."

"How does a guy who doesn't like boats end up in the Navy?"

"It's where all the best toys are."

"Uh huh." She kisses him again. "So, ride you how? Facing you or turned away…"

"Ohhh… options…" His hands settle on her butt, and he leans up a bit to lick a nipple. "Tits or ass…" He kisses her nipple again, letting his teeth just drag over it, and she shivers. "Love this view, but… Turn around. Always been an ass man."

She turns around, wiggling at him, and then settles onto him in a long, slow stroke.

"Fuck!" he says it sincerely, voice low, hands settling on her ass.

She sets a quick pace. Not setting any endurance records tonight. And like before, it's an old, favorite dance. Motions mastered long ago and beloved. He holds her hips, rocking up to meet her, enjoying the view and the sublime pleasure of her body on his.

It's only a few minutes, but they're good minutes, happy minutes, and then he's also jerking and twitching as he comes.

She rests against him for a moment, both of them enjoying the glow, and then he reaches for the tissues, followed by quick cleaning up, and snuggling in close and sleepy.

They roll onto their sides, breathing slowing, and settle into sleeping position. He kisses her neck and shoulder, and she kisses his hand.

Another breath, one more, and the day ends in slumber.


	104. Storm Breaks

Four AM Friday morning. Butt crack of dawn. Tim's yawning, and Abby's looking like she's about to fall asleep on her feet. Test begins 13:03:06 Pacific Standard Time. Between now and then he's got more than three thousand miles to cover. Time to get moving.

He kisses her, and she holds him, tight. "Come back as soon as you can."

"All goes well, I'll be home Sunday or the day after."

"You better be." She's looking up at him, serious, some fear in her eyes.

"Look, there is no way I'm missing Kelly's birthday for this. Give her extra hugs and kisses from me when she wakes up."

"Okay."

He kisses her again and then gently turns her toward the stairs. "Come on, go back to sleep, you look ready to drop. I'll be fine. I went to Afghanistan, and you were less nervous about it."

"Because you were less nervous about it."

He smiles a little and kisses her one last time.

"Sunday or the day after. I'll skype if I can."

She kisses him, pulls back a little, and looks him over in the uniform. "Think they'll let you keep this?"

He knows where this is going but plays along anyway. "Why?"

"Want to take it off you when you get home."

He grins at that, kisses her ear and whispers, "As you wish," then pulls back and heads for the roadster.

* * *

Jarvis and James are standing on the tarmac when he pulls up. He sees both of them eye the car. Bright red 1930s roadster isn't precisely subtle.

"Didn't know you were a car guy," James says to him as he gets out, shouldering his own bags.

He shakes his head. "I'm not. My wife is. She rebuilt this from scrap. I just get to drive it when I need to get somewhere, and she needs the car with the baby seat in it."

Jarvis nods. "Beautiful car." Then he looks Tim over critically. He's pulling off the uniform okay, doesn't look uncomfortable in it. Posture's a bit wonky, but not terrible. It's right, but it looks like he's got to think about it to keep it right. "What's that black thing on your wrist?"

"Wrist cuff." Tim pulls up his jacket sleeve showing it off. Jarvis is good at this, everything fits, almost perfectly, but the sleeves are about a quarter inch too short.

"Any chance of you taking that off?"

Tim does and shows him the red lip print tattoo under it. "This at least looks vaguely like a watch. I can take the watch off, so it looks even more like one."

Jarvis nods, squinting at the lip print, curious. "Why do you have a pair of lips tattooed onto your wrist?"

Tim smiles, putting the cuff back on. "Had a good time on my honeymoon. How about you, do you have any?"

Jarvis looks amused by that. "No. It's difficult to do a good job in the clandestine services if you have a readily visible identifying mark. James has a few interesting ones, though."

James shrugs, touches the top of his arm. "SEAL team mark. Got Bill on my calf."

Bill the Goat is the official Navy mascot. "Played for Navy?" Tim asks.

"When I was at Annapolis, yes. Linebacker."

Tim looks at James, who is likely six two and two hundred pounds of muscle. Yes, he would have been a fine linebacker. James is looking at him. "You're what, a swimmer?"

Tim smiles. "MMA."

James shakes his head, and Tim sees him flash Jarvis a _Computer guys really are weird_ look. "Of course."

The pilot joins them. "We're ready to go, as soon as you are."

James looks toward the plane, and up they go.

* * *

Clayt is dozing. James is going over his files, probably making sure everything is ready to go as soon as they hit the ground in California.

Tim's prepping his character.

He actually likes the idea of naval aviator. Between talking with Draga, and his personal aversion to boats, he feels like he can pull off an aviator.

The Irish Naval Service doesn't have aviators. That's not entirely true. They have one team. Search and rescue missions. It's a helicopter that works off the deck of their largest ship. Tim could fill a thimble with what he knows about helicopters and still have plenty of room left over, so he can't convincingly fake that.

Plus, apparently one of his medals involves diving. Another one indicates he was loaned out to the UN for peacekeeping missions.

He looks up from his reading to James. "So," he taps the medals, "Is this a real person or…"

James shrugs. "I didn't handle that. He's got contacts all over the world from doing all sorts of things. Once the idea was set, he called _someone_ and then this showed up along with the SparkNotes version of what all of this is a week later. All I know is that if someone gets suspicious and actually calls the Irish Naval Service to check up on you, you'll pass."

Tim nods at that. "Okay." He does more reading, and thinking, and when he feels like he's got Captaen (Captain, he's lucked out. This is the one rank where the English and Irish Gaelic are practically identical.) Timothy McGee set in his head, he also decides to get some more sack time.

* * *

It feels a little odd to be part of a VIP delegation. Personal guest of the SecNav.

His stateroom is nice. Really nice. Walnut and mahogany fixtures, crisp linens, plush carpeting. It's about a thousand times nicer than the berths the enlisted men get (which is where, on the few times he's been on a ship overnight, he's crashed.) Actually, other than the small aspect, it's also nicer than basically every hotel room he's ever stayed in for the job, too.

But, very nice or not, it's still a room, in a ship, which is at sea, moving, under his dad's command. To say that he's nervous is an understatement. As soon as he saw the damn ship, it hit. Bad. He feels like his skin is buzzing he's so keyed up.

To say that he's green from sea sickness isn't. That hit about two minutes before he got on the ship.

They have an hour to get settled, and then they're meeting in the conference room. The Admiral didn't greet them when they got on the ship. That helped with both the jitters and the seasickness. But helped doesn't mean he's feeling good.

Like Jarvis had said, John's XO, Captain Russle, took them in hand, and if his dad still has pictures of him up, he looks different enough now, or Russle never paid enough attention to them, to identify him from them.

Of course, between the uniform and the goatee, it's possible that all the XO saw was an Irish Captain with a goatee and never looked any closer.

Fifty minutes until they meet. Tim takes a deep breath, and two of the anti-nausea pills Jimmy donated for this trip, ( _Thank you Jimmy, for real anti-nausea meds._ If this was Dramamine, between that and his nerves, his heart would just about explode.) then he gets his computer out, and gets going.

Focus is a good thing. He needs to focus to do the only hacking he's going to do onboard today, and that's getting into the security feed.

Takes him a good half hour to break in and get everything set. It'll take a minute or two more to transfer the feed from his computer to the big screen in the conference room.

By the time James knocks on his door saying, "Three minutes. We're heading to the conference room," everything is ready to go.

"Okay." He checks the count, then closes up his computer. "We're good on my side. 13:03:06 it all begins."

"13:03:06?"

"Just a random time not too long after we get together. Wanted to get it started off soon, but some people run periodic sweeps. They usually start at the top of the hour or the top of the minute. Anyone who plays the game knows that, and adjusts. If they're on their game, they know that too, and have also adjusted, instituting random times. Hopefully the guys on this ships are that good, but there's no reason to give them an easy target if they aren't."

James nods. He's looking like he's going to enjoy this. "We'll see how good they are."

Tim exhales, forces his shoulders to relax, and says, "That's the plan."

"Looking forward to seeing your dad?" James asks.

"No." Tim says flatly. It'll be clear to everyone who sees them soon enough, so… "We're not on speaking terms."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

James looks nervous. "Is this going to compromise the test?"

"It shouldn't. Him noticing I was on the visitors' roster might have, because he knows I'm a tech guy and he'd wonder why I was coming. But once it gets going, everything should run smooth."

"Good." He can see James is in pre-emptive clean-up mode.

"Really, no one _ever_ accused my dad of letting his personal life get in the way of his professional life. He's not going to let the fact that it's me doing it mess with his career."

"Okay."

* * *

Like his stateroom, the conference room is plush. It'd be at home in any four star hotel or Top 100 corporate board room.

There are some hints they're at sea, the table and chairs are attached to the floor. There aren't a lot of cute decorations that could go skittering around. But everything just screams money and luxury.

That doesn't much matter to Tim. The fact that he's got lots of plugs and excellent Wi-Fi does.

The fact that the TV's huge is quite nice, too.

He can run a good show from here. He's getting it set up when he notices James (who's been hovering in the back of the room, doing something with his own computer, getting ready to record the whole thing, Tim remembers.) leap up.

He looks up and notices that he didn't hear the door open, but open it did, and The Admiral has just walked in. If he's changed since the last time Tim saw him, four years ago, he can't tell. Maybe his hair is more gray, maybe not. Posture, face, eyes, voice, they're identical.

"Clayt!" The Admiral sounds happy to see SecNav, though Tim's thinking that's probably a façade. He doesn't ever remember his dad having anything positive to say about higher ups poking around in his business. Of course, as a political animal, he never had anything negative to say about the higher ups who were poking around, but he would tell Terri about how frustrating it was to have to stop everything and deal with said higher ups.

"John. How are you doing?" Jarvis' smile is warm, but restrained.

"Just…" And that's exactly how long it took for his dad to notice the tall, thin guy with the goatee in black sitting at the table, not standing up for him, not saluting, is Tim.

"Tim?" There's a mix of confusion and horror in his eyes at seeing his son. Tim's not sure how much of that is him versus him in a Captain's uniform, versus being caught completely flatfooted by Tim in an officer's uniform.

He nods curtly, acknowledging his existence, not standing up. "Sir."

John turns to SecNav, very confused look on his face. "Clayt? What is going on here? What is _he_ doing in _uniform_?" Apparently the Admiral can't tell at a glance what nationality this uniform belongs to, either.

"McGee… Hmmm…" Jarvis looks at both McGees. "That's awkward. Tim?" He looks over at Tim, who nods, his first name is fine. Jarvis herds the Admiral to a seat and the three of them sit at the conference table. "About a year back, before Tim took over NCIS Cybercrime, he decided to test their team. The test was very informative…" while Jarvis is explaining, Tim's continues setting up. He can feel his dad's eyes on him, but he's doing his best to not pay attention to it. He's got a job to do, and that job means getting everything online so they can watch the test.

He gets the images of their main computer stations up on the big screen, and gets his computer up and scanning the techs' feeds. He half-notices Jarvis pause, and gets the sense they were waiting for him, so he looks up and says, "All set on my side. Show starts in sixty-four seconds."

"You're running a blind test on my men?" John McGee does not sound pleased by that.

"Exactly," said Jarvis. "Though not just yours. This will be happening periodically through the whole Navy for the foreseeable future. You are the only one on this ship read into this and you are to remain silent about it until we're done with the testing phase. What are we seeing, Tim?"

"The test will run on the whole of Strike Group Three, so upper left corner is the _Stennis,_ lower left is the _Borealis,_ lower right is _Dewey,_ and upper right is _Kidd._ "

John nods and turns to Tim. "And you're in charge of this?"

Tim nods. "Just this first one, sir. I have a department of my own to run. Since it's my baby, I'm setting up the first test, writing up the assessment, and how to do it for whomever takes over from here, but from here on out someone else will handle it."

"Did you pick my ship?"

"No, sir." _I wouldn't voluntarily go anywhere near your ship if it was up to me_ is left unspoken, but The Admiral gets it.

"Your ship was chosen at random, John," Clayt says.

"Then why the secrecy? _Why_?" he points to Tim's uniform, his voice scathing on the _why_.

"You would have known something was up if you saw my name on the visitors' roster."

"Indeed," John's voice is frigid as he says that. Tim has the sense that John's secretary is going to get grilled awfully hard in the not very distant future for missing that the name of the visitor from the Irish Navy was Capt. T. McGee.

He sees his screen flicker, the feed changing. "Okay, we're starting. The first time I ran this, I made sure the test was big and ugly and really visible. But if you guys were really getting hacked, that wouldn't happen. So this is slick and quiet. If your guys are awake, they may notice it in the first two minutes. If not… Well…"

They spend a moment watching techs on the different ships working away. Tim rotates through three of the screens, showing the other ships. He keeps the _Stennis_ up so they can keep eyes on this ship's response.

"You run your own department now?" John asks Tim.

"Yes. In January I became the Director of Cybercrime for NCIS."

John nods. "How many men are under your command?"

"One hundred and forty-seven, sir."

"I had an entire battle group under my command by your age."

"I remember, sir. I was there."

John inclines his head. "Quite a step up from being tech support for a four man team. You catch your Boss in a compromising position with a sheep and get pictures or something?" John asks with not quite enough of a smile to make it a joke.

Tim closes his eyes and refocuses on the screen. Jarvis winces at the tension between them and the silence that falls after John's statement.

"How are they doing?" Jarvis asks a minute later.

"Haven't noticed so far."

"What happens if they don't notice?" The Admiral asks.

"First all of your communications for the entire strike force will go down. Then you'll start firing on your own ships. Your ship will be aiming at the _Borealis_. Well, that's what they'll think is happening. Unless they've got a view of the deck, they won't know it isn't real. I'm not looking to kill anyone, so the guns won't move or target or fire or anything, but they'll see it target and the command to fire go through on the computers. Your other ships will get similar messages. Your radar and sonar will go blind, so no one will have any clue what's out there. And because I don't want you scrambling the jets and actually shooting anyone your intercom is going down. By the time you can get a message by foot to the pilots, the test will be over and everyone will know no one was actually shooting."

"You can do that?" John looks very surprised.

Tim smiles, and there was nothing kind in that expression. His father is on the President's Commission for Drone Warfare, _the_ top Drone man in the Navy. So, he's not asking, 'Is this possible?' He knows it's possible. He's asking, 'Can _you_ do that?' "Apparently those years at MIT weren't complete and utter waste of my time or talent, Sir."

That's a smartass answer, and probably not warranted. Jarvis and James likely read that question to mean, _can this be done._ Jarvis looks from Tim to John, one eyebrow raised, and Tim just shakes his head. John's appalled at the idea that Tim would ever say that to him, let alone in front of his Boss.

They wait for a minute. Tim watching the big screen, looking to see if anything interesting is occurring, but the techs are all staring at their computers, doing their jobs, oblivious.

John is standing behind him, and Tim's very carefully trying to ignore him, but that's impossible when he asks, "How is my grandchild doing?"

"I wasn't aware you had one, sir." Another smartass answer, and he's got to pull this in, but at the same time he's not willing to play the happy-family charade they used to do when he still lived with the man. "However, if you mean my daughter, she's well, sir. She'll be a year old next week, already talking, everyone says she's extremely smart."

"Takes after your wife, I see."

Tim rolls with that. "Yes, sir. She does. Looks like her, too. She's absolutely beautiful."

"Do you have pictures?"

"Yes." He's staring very intently at the feed, hoping his dad will drop this.

"On you?"

"Yes."

"May I see one?"

Tim finally looks away from the screen to face his dad. "No, sir. You lost that privilege decades ago."

Jarvis clears his throat, and Tim goes silent, returning his gaze to the screen, willing someone to figure out something is going on and get them off of his own family drama.

"How long will it take?" John asks.

"Eleven minutes start to finish. I'm hoping having your guns target one of your own ships will make sure your men know something is up. But, if somehow they don't notice, then in…" he checks the clock, "six minutes the test will end, and we'll be on our way. If they do notice, I'll be staying until they figure out what's going on and someone shows up to arrest me for espionage."

"Arrest you?" John seems interested by that idea. Tim really doesn't like the edge of glee in his voice at that.

"If they're any good they'll figure out where the commands are coming from." Tim gently taps his computer. "Technically, today I'm an Irish national, which means if I'm hacking your ship, I'm guilty of espionage."

Tim sees James and Jarvis glance at each other on that. As they understand how the test works, it's not coming from anything that can be traced to Tim. But they both have the sense not to ask about that.

Two tense minutes pass, and Tim keeps monitoring both his worm and the lack of response from his father's men. Jarvis hovers over his shoulder, occasionally asking what different bits of information mean. Through the whole thing, his dad paces back and forth across the conference room, and the sound of James' fingers clicking on his keyboard as he does whatever he does fill the room.

"Show time," Tim says. Three of the sections on the big screen went blank. "Okay, that was communications going down."

"Why did those screens go blank?" John asks.

"Because you've got communications blocking tech on this ship, and I've hijacked it. Once the jamming software goes live, nothing gets in or out, including the feed I was using to monitor the rest of your Strike Group. I'm still recording the responses on the other ship, and will get them uploaded once communications are back up." Tim's fingers fly over the keyboard and three new angles on the _Stennis_ ' computer hub come up. "Can't get feeds from the rest of your group, so we're just watching here, now."

Unfortunately nothing is happening. No one on the computer deck seems to have noticed that they've gone blind.

Tim's feeling very satisfied, watching the way the vein on his father's head is throbbing away as his techs just sit there, completely unaware of the fact that they've been cut off from the rest of his fleet.

"Okay, phase two begins…" They see one of the techs hop up, yelling. "Now. Looks like he just noticed the order to target go live."

John's gone stone-faced, staring at the screens, watching his whole command fall apart as they realize they can't talk to anyone and have no clue how to stop the targeting.

Tim shakes his head. "They're not figuring out what's doing it."

By this point John's bright red, the vein is throbbing, and his eyelid has started twitching.

Tim's glancing between him and the feed. "Clueless. They're in damage control, just trying to shut it down, and not having any luck. They're not even sure where it's coming from."

One of the techs runs over to another computer, one no one was sitting at.

"Okay, he's on the ball. He's noticed that it appears the commands are coming from that computer. Would have been better if someone had been using it, but this is good, too."

They can see the sailor hitting keys, fast and nervous, and calling over his shoulder.

Jarvis says, "I have a feeling you're about to get a call, John. You cannot let on that you know what is going on. They have to believe that this is real, so act like your ship is suddenly targeting another of your ships."

John nods, curtly, standing very, very still, hands in fists.

Half a minute later, they hear footsteps pounding toward the room, and Tim quickly flips a schematic of the _Stennis_ up onto the big screen. An out of breath sailor bursts into the room, obviously having run as fast as he could, and lets them know the XO wants the Admiral on the deck NOW.

So John leaves.

As the door closes, Jarvis says, "I take it you two don't get on?"

Tim's tempted to apologize for being a smartass or letting Jarvis see that, but… No. This is not a guy he wants thinking him weak, and he's not sorry he didn't let his Dad see the pics or pretend they get along.

"We don't. And he knows that he is not, in any way but DNA, Kelly's grandfather. He has never seen her. He never will see her. He does not know her name, until five minutes ago he didn't know she was a girl. And he knows no one in our family has permission to share pictures of Kelly with him. So asking was way out of line. He was probably hoping I'd knuckle under because you're here."

"Okay." He can see Jarvis wondering what could have gone _that_ bad between the two of them. "Is this going to be an issue?"

"I hope not. Best of my knowledge he's never disobeyed a direct order, but… I'm here and I'm making his guys look bad. He's not going to react well to that. He's never let me beat him at anything before, and if his guys fail, if they can't shut down the worm, that would be me winning. Sabotaging something of mine would be in character for him, so I built an extra layer of protection in. I lied about them being able to trace the signals coming from me. If a bunch of his guys show up to arrest the 'Irish spy,' it means he's told someone what's going on."

"Because the test is launching from Tim McGee, Director of NCIS Cybercrime's computer," Jarvis says, and Tim nods. "Someone shows up for you, I'll take a few minutes, 'call the Irish Consulate' and then get you transferred to my custody."

"Thanks. My computers will keep recording everything, but if I'm in the brig I can't really follow what they're doing, and God only knows what they'll do to my laptop if they can figure out how to open it." Tim pauses, they hear the red alert, all hands on deck go through the intercom. "And they've got communications back. That's good.

"Look, I hope he plays by the rules, but… I've never beaten him at anything, and if they don't come out of this looking great, he'll consider this me beating him, and it'll get messy."

"How messy?" Jarvis asks.

For all he told Abby about everything running smoothly, once he was in front of the man again, Tim began to doubt that. "Unpleasant, I'll probably get yelled at later. At least, that's how he used to handle it. I haven't spent more than an hour with him in fifteen years, so you probably know him better than I do these days."

"Ah."

"Just, if someone does show up to arrest me, don't leave me on my own too long, okay?" That's as close as he's willing to get to saying he may need to get bailed out of something sticky.

Jarvis stares at him for a long minute, and Tim feels like he's having his whole life history read.

The feed catches Tim's eye. His eyes narrow, and he nods. "They failed. If that had been a real attack, five missiles would have just blown the _Borealis_ out of the water, but not before it fired on the _Aurora,_ and the _Aurora_ fired on the _Mobile Bay_ , and on and on. If that had been real, Strike Group Three would be completely out of commission by now."

"Okay. Now what?" Jarvis asks.

"Eventually, you do whatever it is you do with him. I'm thinking I'll stay in my quarters and keep an eye on this. They didn't stop it, but now they know it happened, so I want to see what they do and how they try to track me."

"Fine."

* * *

He's back in his quarters, keeping watch on the clean-up effort by his dad's men. They're doing… Okay. Taking all the standard steps, looking under the usual rocks, searching for horses before they go Zebra hunting. (At least, he hopes that's what they're doing, as opposed to horse hunting is all they can do.)

But nothing they're coming up with is rocking his world. Nothing they're coming up with would have impressed him at MIT, fourteen years ago, either.

He checks his clock. 16:35. Everyone should be at dinner. He grabs his phone and pulls up Skype. A minute later he's got Abby on the screen looking really happy to see him.

"Tim!"

"Hey, I said I'd call." He can hear everyone else buzzing around behind her. And once she said his name Jimmy and Breena (who were apparently sitting next to her) crowd into the screen as well.

"Look, I'm still in one piece." Gibbs drifts into the back of the frame.

"How'd the test go?" Abby asks.

"Awesome. For six minutes the entire strike group was paralyzed. It was beautiful!"

"How did your father take that?" He hears Penny's voice, but she's not in the view. Then everything shifts and she is.

"That little vein in his forehead was throbbing away the whole time, but he just stood there and took it. I'm really glad I'm not his secretary. He's getting reamed tonight."

"So, nothing bad?"

"Few snide remarks, mostly along the lines of how I'm barely competent to breathe and walk at the same time, let alone pull a coup on his strike group, but, not really. Not by his standards. He suggested I got my job by sexually blackmailing Leon. Little tense when he asked to see pictures of Kelly, but I said no, and that was that. Four minutes of me explain what the test was doing, and then his XO sent a runner for him, and off he went to look like he had a clue as to how to stop the mayhem."

"And did he?" Ducky asks.

"Not a clue. I think the only idea he came up with was to break out the Semaphore flags so the ships could start talking to each other again. But communications were up again before anyone found them."

He sees the scene jiggle around again. Then Gibbs is looking at him. "So, you're really okay?"

"I'm really okay." He flips the phone around, showing them his room. "Look, I'm in a locked, from the inside, stateroom."

"Nice digs, McGee!" Tony says.

"Oh yeah. If you can swing it, pretending to be an officer rocks." He shifts the view of the camera a bit further. "Look mini fridge. Between the upset stomach friendly snacks I brought, and this, I don't even have to leave this room the whole time."

Abby circles back into the frame. "What's the whole time?"

"Who knows? Rate these guys are going, I'm thinking middle of Sunday before they figure it out. Shouldn't be much longer than that."

She nods at that, and hands the phone back to Gibbs, who's just watching him carefully. "I'm really okay."

For the first time in days, Gibbs actually nods at that assessment.

"Unless he wants to blow my cover and his orders, he won't even see me again. His strike force just suffered a huge computer FUBAR, he's not going to be entertaining some piss-ant Captain from Ireland. He's going to be on deck, every minute he can be, until this is handled. Maybe he'll take the time to eat with Jarvis, but me, nah, I'm out of the picture now."

Another curt nod from Gibbs. "Good."

"Hey," Abby says, sitting down again, taking the camera from Gibbs. He sees Kelly on her lap. "Look who wants to say Hi!"

"Hi, Baby!"

Kelly stares around, really confused. She can hear him, but can't see him. Abby's finger hovers over the screen. "Daddy."

Kelly looks at the screen, sees him, and looks really confused. "Hi Kelly," he says with his biggest possible smile.

Apparently she finds the idea of Daddy in a phone horrifying, because she starts crying.

"Oh no! No crying. I'm okay. I'm just far away."

Of course, none of that means anything to a one-year-old who expects Daddy to look a certain way, and two inches tall in a little black box is not the way he's supposed to be.

"Daddy!" she gets out between sobs.

He sees Abby facepalm. Talk about plans going awry.

"I'm okay, baby. It's just a picture." Also completely useless for baby soothing. Abby hands the phone over to Breena, who's laughing quietly. He can hear Abby humming quietly. Ziva and Abbi slide into the frame.

"How is the seasickness going?" Ziva asks.

"Not too bad. It hit pretty hard before the test, but right now, I'm not feeling great, but I'm not green, either. Hey, where's your husband?"

"Hers or mine?" Ziva asks.

"Hers."

Jimmy shows up behind Breena. "Amazingly enough, if you give me pills with actual medication in them, they work a hell of a lot better."

"Thought you said the last ones worked."

"These work better." Tim holds up a bottle of water and a green apple. "I'm actually able to eat some, this time."

"Lucky you," Breena says. "All those do for me is make me not throw up. Certainly don't make me feel good enough to eat."

Tim shrugs. "Well, I'm not pregnant. It probably works differently."

"Ya, think?" Breena says with a perfect Gibbs deadpan.

Abbi laughs at that, and Tim does, too.

They all hear a soft beeping sound.

"What's that?" Abbi asks.

"My cue to get back to work. Someone on board's up to something interesting. Love you all." The phone gets handed back to Abby.

"Love you, too."

"I'll call again if I get a shot, but… this is looking interesting. I might be keeping watch on this all night."

"Okay." She air kisses the screen. He doesn't see anyone else in the field of view, so he kisses back.

"See you soon."

"Bye."

* * *

So much for promising. It started off well, but whoever CT Jenner is, he got lost along the way to promising. He traced the hack through two bounces, but from the looks of it, he decided that two bounces was either: A, where the attack was coming from, or B: after two bounces there was no way he was going to follow it all the way home.

Either way, he gave up nine bounces away from NCIS.

Tim kept watching, focusing the camera in on Jenner, but couldn't tell what he was doing. Thinking apparently. He's just staring at his monitor. Finally he stands up to grab someone else, okay, that's the XO…

The downside of the security feed is that Tim can't _hear_. He's got prime seats for what all the techs are doing on their computers, and he can see them interacting with each other, but Jenner's back is to him, so he's got no clue what he might be saying.

He's watching intently, wondering if the XO was just told that Fight Group Three was attacked by NASA. (Tim routed the attack through the CIA, IRS, NASA, Homeland Security, IBM, Bank of America, Facebook, and Pirate Bay, and some lesser known spots. He had a lot of fun setting it up.)

There's a knock on his door, which makes Tim tense up for a second, and then he notices that it's dinner time.

He stands up, opens the door, and there's Jarvis and James. "We're heading to the Captain's mess for dinner. Do you want to come?" James asks.

Tim shakes his head. "I've got snacks. Things are just starting to get interesting on the feed, so I'm going to keep watch."

"Would you like me to bring you something back?" James asks.

"Sure, whatever they're serving. By then I should have a good update for you. So, you guys eat, in an hour or so, bring me some dinner, and I'll take you through what they're doing."

Jarvis nods at that. "Sounds like a good trade. See you in an hour."

"Great."

Tim settles back in front of his computer, and flips on the voice recorder. He wants a running commentary of what he's seeing. Plus Jenner just turned around, so he can finally read his lips.

* * *

Clayton Jarvis was never a cop.

At eighteen he was young, talented, the apple of his Daddy's eye, and Daddy, a Senator, made sure he got into Annapolis when he indicated he wanted a career in the Navy.

He did well there, bright, good with people, good with languages, always able to see all the angles, somewhat 'flexible' moral compass. He was a natural for the Clandestine Services.

The twenty-five years he spent in active Navy Service are classified and the bits that aren't classified are so heavily redacted that only one out of ten words is still legible. So, suffice it to say, he had a rich and varied career involving many hair-raising adventures before he blew out a knee (officially he was repelling from a helicopter when that happened, we won't speculate as to what he was really doing) and moved from active engagement with the enemy (and friends, and allies, and some neutral parties, but we're not going to talk about that, either. Trust me, we're all better off not knowing who he was working with) onto the Navy political track.

Once on the political track, he was able to blend the fact that he is good with people, and languages, and reading a situation and figuring out all the angles, with the fact that he has a whole cemetery full of skeletons from other people's closets into an upward career arc that made him Secretary of the Navy less than ten years after leaving active service.

So, he was never a cop, but like a cop, he's got no ability to just let a mystery lie, and right now the mystery he can't let lie is the McGee family drama.

As SecNav, he didn't find it difficult to get every file on both McGees, including the ones that are classified. What he's learned is that both of them are off the charts intelligent. But while McGee Senior added ambitious and politically savy to intelligent, McGee younger delved into his specialty deeper and seemed to be very satisfied to find a niche and then become the best possible person he can at that niche.

What he didn't find was anything to indicate why those two wouldn't be speaking. He assumed that if there was some sort of noticeable friction, it would have been _noticed_ in the different evals that John went through before hopping to flag rank. When the Navy looks at you for Admiral, every facet of your life gets dissected. And while there are mentions of McGee's marriage falling apart, there's nothing in there about the kids.

So, he's puzzled, but he's not about to just ask.

Which means he's watching, very carefully. The level of paying attention he's doing while he has dinner with John is offering more insight into the situation than Joe Average would be able to glean from just watching him eat and chat about the "attack."

John is _pissed_. He's trying not to show it, he's fairly cool, but his motions are all a tad too abrupt, too sharp. He is beyond curt when he speaks to anyone who isn't Jarvis. Various techs continue to filter in and out, giving him updates every few minutes as to what is going on with the test, and none of those updates are pleasing him.

But John is not _pissed_ at his men. He's not seeing this as his guys were asleep at the switch. Pissed is aimed in two directions, at Jarvis and at Tim.

Jarvis could care less about John being pissed at him, but only if he actively tried. He is slightly disturbed by how much angry John manages to pack into his one "polite" question about where the Irish Captain is. Tim wasn't kidding about John never losing to him and taking it personal.

He's taking this way too personally.

Toward the end of dinner, Lt. Mane, John's secretary (his version of Lt. James) comes over and says something very quietly to him, whispered in his ear. John leans back, smiles, nods, and then Mane leaves.

Something about that sets Jarvis off. He's worked with killers, thieves, mercenaries, and psychopaths more times than he wants to count, he knows the smile of a predator about to kill and right now, John's wearing that smile.

"Good news on the attack?" Jarvis asks.

John smiles again. "Yes. Mane tells me they've traced where it came from."

Or that could be the smile of someone who happens to be a killer who also happens to be genuinely pleased with what just happened. "Wonderful." Jarvis smiles. He's looking forward to talking with McGee, seeing what the techs did and how they tracked the attack.

John pulls away from the table. "If you'll excuse me, I have some men to congratulate."

Jarvis holds up his hands. "By all means. I was just about finished myself."

When John stands up, James does, too. "I'll grab McGee a plate and head over there. You finish your coffee and in five minutes we'll see what happened."

"Sounds great." Jarvis sips his coffee.

* * *

It probably didn't have to work out the way it did.

Well, maybe it did.

But…

Tim shouldn't have done this on his Dad's ship. He certainly shouldn't have stayed overnight. And the 'Irish Spy' thing was probably a very bad idea, and all of this is hitting him as he feels ice shoot down his spine, his knees go weak, and nausea completely unrelated to sea sickness tighten his gut as three midshipmen show up at his quarters.

Jarvis said he'd stop by after dinner. A knock on his door came almost an hour after they left. He assumed it was Jarvis and opened the door. _Never assume._

God, it's like all of his worst nightmares all wrapped into one. Three guys, really big guys, are standing outside his door, malice radiating off of all of them, but right now the spokesman… Tim checks and notices none of them have visible nametags on their uniforms, which just scares him worse, is still polite.

"We'd like you to come with us, Captain McGee."

"Why?" He hits the button on his computer that locks it, without his password, it's a brick to anyone who tries to use it, but doesn't close the case. He wants it to keep recording, and as long as the screen stays up, it will. He'd been keeping track of what was going on, recording his own notes on the subject, and right now, a recording of everything that happens in here seems like a really good plan.

"Please come with us." The first one says, again.

"To where?"

"You need to come with us, sir," The same sailor speaks each time.

Tim feels his entire body tighten, his hands clench, and his heart is racing. "No. I'll stay here. Go get Secretary Jarvis and Admiral McGee, and we'll get this straightened out."

"No, sir. That's not how this is going to work. You are _going_ to come with us, sir."

He's shaking his head, and edging backwards, making sure the desk is between them. Not a lot of room in here, and getting around the desk will bunch them up closer and limit their space to fight.

_Just keep them talking. Clayt will be here, soon._ "I'm a guest of the Secretary of the Navy and the Admiral. I'm staying in my quarters until I can talk with them."

"No, sir. You're not." All three of them file into his room. He tries to think of how Ziva would handle this.

"I am Admiral McGee's son, please leave."

"You're the bastard that tried to kill the Borealis," the guy on the left who hadn't said anything yet replies, murder in his eyes.

_That's the one who's going to kill me, if he gets the chance._ Tim takes a step back, getting more cover from the desk. "I would appreciate it greatly if you would leave. You can confine me to quarters until this is sorted out. We're on a ship in the middle of the Pacific. Trust me, I'm not going anywhere." At this point he's just talking to keep them paying attention to his mouth. He's reaching for the clasp knife he has in his pocket. Roll of quarters is in his jacket pocket, on his bed, on the other side of the sailors.

The knife is small. He's never tried to fight with it. Doesn't think trying is a good idea. He'd be just as likely to hurt himself as he would them. But even small, it's solid steel, heavy for its size. Big guy to his left, the one who is going to kill him the second he gets a chance, is only six feet away, so he's sure he can throw it hard and hit him square in the eye with it. Three ounces of steel to the eye'll drop a man, and that's all he needs it to do.

"You don't sound Irish," the third one says. They're moving in slowly, flanking him, blocking the escape.

"Grew up in California, with Admiral McGee, my FATHER. Please get SecNav Jarvis." _Where are you?_

"No one hacks our systems," the first one says.

_Shit. Now or never_. He whips the knife right at the guy on his left's eye. It hits dead on, and he drops, clutching his eye.

"Don't get any closer to me."

The other two charge.

Tim never thought that bootcamp would ever come in handy for anything other than blowing off steam. He'd assumed, (don't assume, stupid) that if he was ever fighting for his life he'd have a gun. But he doesn't have his gun. And right now, bootcamp is coming in very handy. He's not as good or as fast as Ziva, but at least he's got some practice at fighting two people at once.

He's certain that if he gets taken too far away from Jarvis, he'll just vanish somewhere on this ship and horrible things will happen to him, and maybe that's not rational, but he doesn't want to find out.

But it's still two on one, and fast and good versus outnumbered, bigger, fast, and good is a losing proposition.

He can hear yelling, other people have to know what's happening, all he has to do is endure, survive. If he can survive; help will come. He has to get out of this, he's got people at home, people he needs to get home to.

_To the last breath._

When his arm cracks, shoulder pulling free of the joint, his knees go out from under him, and he knows he can't keep fighting any longer. Time for defense, he curls into the tightest ball he can, back to the wall to protect his kidneys, body curled in to protect his other vitals, and prays that someone shows up before they kill him.

* * *

Jarvis decides to skip dessert. The young man in charge of the Officer's Mess had offered what looked like some amazing cheesecake as he was finishing up his coffee, but he's getting a bit flabby around the middle and he really doesn't need cheesecake, no matter how good it sounds.

Plus, he does want to know what happened with the test, and it'd be rude to keep James and McGee waiting. Of all the things Jarvis has learned over the years, the fact that keeping a warm, polite, and above all _respectful_ relationship with one's secretary will result in a much _much_ happier work life is among the most important.

So, instead of dessert, he heads for McGee's quarters, looking forward to the brief on how John's men tracked the attack.

He's walking at his usual brisk pace when he begins to hear yelling, cheering, and screaming. He knows that sound, that's a fight. That breaks him into a run. Down the hall, one starboard turn and he's in a corridor choked with men cheering and yelling at some kind of fight.

He can see the door to McGee's quarters is open, that James is already yelling and pulling men out of the way, and he can focus in well enough to hear that's where the screaming is coming from.

"Stop! Stop that this instant! Get in there and… Stop!" Jarvis has an awfully commanding voice when he chooses to use it.

* * *

It takes a while for Tim to notice he's not getting pounded anymore. But eventually he realizes no new blows are falling and that Jarvis is leaning over him. "Oh God, McGee!" He looks up to someone Tim can't see. "If every medic on this fucking ship is not here right this second you are all getting court-martialed!" Tim closes his eyes. Jarvis' voice moves closer again. "God, don't move, Tim. Just… shit… Where are the medics?"

"Don't see why you'd waste a medic on him. He didn't get half what he deserved. And Kev's hurt, bad."

Jarvis turns to one of the sailors who had been pounding on Tim. He's bruised, his eye is swelling shut and his nose is bleeding. He's cradling one arm and keeping all of his weight off his left foot, and there are two MAs holding him.

"Kev," the sailor he mentioned, is on the ground, bleeding from his eye socket. There's an MA hovering over him, but he doesn't look like he's going to start any trouble.

"Half of what he deserved?" Jarvis is mad, but he's also the sort of man who knows something is wrong when he sees it, and this is _wrong_. True psychopaths are few and far between. The kind of man who will beat another man three-quarters to death, cold is very rare. Three of them together, rarer yet. Three of them together on a Navy ship with annual psych evals should be impossible. " _What_ do you think he did?"

The sailor is starting to look disturbed. Like maybe this isn't what he was expecting. He's supposed to be getting patted on the back, not dressed down. There's this guy, in a suit, clearly a civilian, but everyone is jumping at his orders like he's God. "Lt. Mane told us he hacked our system. That if we hadn't caught it in time we would have fired on the _Borealis_. Guns targeted and everything. I've got a brother on the _Borealis_. Kev, there, his wife is a medic on the _Borealis_ , and she's two months pregnant. Rod's" he nods at the other sailor, who is also standing, bruised, bleeding, minus several teeth and plus a broken nose, at least, "sister is on board the _Borealis_ , too."

Medics rush in and Jarvis turns away from the sailor, barking orders at them. They're rapidly assessing Tim, carefully uncurling him, making sure his neck is braced, getting him onto a stretcher.

Jarvis turns back to the MAs. "I want all three of these men confined."

Tim's been fading in and out of this, but he caught that, and gasps out, "Alone. Can't corroborate."

"You heard him. They don't get to talk to each other." He turns back to the sailor. "This is Timothy McGee, he is Admiral McGee's son, and he is my personal guest on this ship."

The sailor's looking very pale under the blood and bruising. He'd been sure the whole 'son of the Admiral' thing was bullshit. Mane would have known if he was the Admiral's son. He would have had to… right? He's starting to tremble, because he can see exactly how badly hurt McGee is and right now he's wondering if he just killed a man for… He doesn't know what, doesn't know why Mane would have told that lie.

But he pulls it together enough to ask, "Who are you?"

"I am Clayton Jarvis, Secretary of the Navy."

The sailor swallows hard, feels the entire world collapse, and then wets his pants.

* * *

Tim's alive. He's got to be alive because he hurts, and you don't hurt when you're dead. Beyond that, and occasionally managing to gasp out things like 'preserve the evidence' and 'don't let suspects stay together,' he's mostly out of it.

Floating on pain and the half-awareness of people poking and prodding him.

He tries to make Jarvis take him somewhere else, not let his dad's doctors get a hold of him, but he doesn't think he does a good job of getting that idea across because he's in the infirmary on the ship.

But Jarvis stays right nearby, so that's probably a good thing. They probably won't kill him if the SecNav is standing right next to him.

They give him a shot of something, and everything stops hurting. With that surcease of pain he passes out.


	105. Response

It's after 01:00 Eastern Standard Time when Leon gets the call. He pulls himself awake, sits up, rubs his eyes, and then checks the name on his phone.

Jarvis.

"Vance."

He listens as Jarvis gets him up to date, nods a few times, and slips out of bed, quietly, hoping not to wake Lara.

"McGee's alive, right?"

"Yes. In surgery right now."

"Okay, start at the beginning, Clayt."

"The test went off without a hitch. Everything was fine. John had left to go handle the aftermath of the _Stennis_ 'firing' on the _Borealis_. Tim mentioned to me that he's had some issues with his father and that he had planted a false lead in their conversation. If the men on the _Stennis_ did their job right, they'd trace the attack back to NCIS. But he said to John that if someone showed up to arrest him for espionage, we'd know they'd traced the attack back to him."

Leon gets to his desk and sits down, rubbing his eyes. "But the attack couldn't be traced back to him because he didn't attack from the ship."

"Right. After that test, he went to his quarters to monitor what the techs were doing, how they were responding, what they were doing to try and hunt him down. That's what he told me he was going to do. He also mentioned that he was nervous, doesn't get on with his dad, and was afraid that this would go badly.

"John was at dinner, and he was in a black mood. I didn't like the way that felt. Then Mane comes in, says something quietly to him, and he's all smiles. He told me Mane said they'd tracked the attack. So after dinner, I decided to stop by McGee's room, see how they did it."

"He wasn't at dinner?"

"No."

Vance knows McGee has issues with seasickness, and he knows he doesn't get on with his dad, so food, his dad, and a ship, probably a bad combination on an upset stomach, ditching dinner makes a lot of sense. "Okay, so you drop by."

"I get to the hallway he's on and people are yelling, men are crowding in, some getting close, some running away. It's chaos. I start yelling which gets things back under control. James was already heading toward McGee. He had heard the fuss, and he got there a bit before I did, and was trying to get things calmed down. The XO was enroute already. We got the fight stopped a few seconds after I got there.

"There were three of them. One already on the ground, grabbing at his eye, the other two had him backed against the wall, kicking the shit out of him."

"Three on one and he got one of them down?"

"Yeah. He must have had a knife on him."

"Rule number nine."

"Leon?"

"Never mind, Clayt."

"It was a little thing, pocket knife. Didn't try to fight with it, but it was heavy enough that he whipped it at one of them, got him right in the eye, the medics tell me he's lost the eye, ruptured it, and that took him out of the fight. Probably the only reason McGee's even alive right now. If all three of them had been pounding him…"

"Fuck." Leon shakes his head. He's seen what can happen to someone when multiple people decide to stomp them.

"Yeah. The other two were hurt, bad, but from what we've been able to get, they had about a minute between dropping McGee and me showing up where they got to kick him as much as they liked."

Vance can't even think of a curse word hot enough for what he's feeling right now. He sits there and seethes for a minute and then asks, "You keeping an eye on him?"

"Yeah. He's about ten feet away." Jarvis pauses. "Uh huh…" Vance hears him nod and gets the sense he's not talking to him anymore. "They're patching up his lung."

"They let you scrub in?"

"They let me stand off to the side and keep an eye on everything. He was sure the docs here were going to do something to him, so I said I'd stay close."

"Not an insane conclusion given why he's in there," Vance says dryly.

"I get it, that's why I'm still here. That's also why the docs didn't fuss about it."

"Okay, what happened next?"

"The MAs dragged everyone off to the brig or their quarters. I sent James to talk to everyone and get statements. Here's what I've got so far: Apparently Mane, that's John's secretary, found three sailors and explained to them how McGee had hacked the system, and how it was only the quick thinking of their guys that prevented the Borealis from being blown out of the water. All three of the guys he picked had family on the Borealis. He instructed them to remove Tim from his room and bring him to a quiet area below decks where they could properly deal with him.

"Oh God. Was John in on it?"

"Not so anyone could ever prove."

"Is that a yes?"

"I'm sure the words, 'go attack my son' or any variation on that theme never crossed his lips. I'm sure no verbal hint of any sort along those lines ever occurred. I also know he was not dismayed about the attack when James told him about it, was not surprised about the attack, and did not ask James what condition Tim was in."

"I see."

"I also know that only four people were in the room when the 'Irish spy' idea was mentioned, me, Tim, James, and John. So, obviously, someone talked to Mane. And that someone wasn't me, and it wasn't McGee, and it wasn't James."

Leon nods. He knows that the stretch between disobeyed-a-direct-order and ordered-a-hit-on-his-son is going to be almost impossible to prove.

He thinks through who he has on the West Coast to send in. Then he thinks further west, because further west is the best option for this case, seeing that DiNozzo is out of the picture because he'll just go right in and kill everyone. "I'll give Agent Burley a call. His team will handle the investigation. How far out of Pearl are you?"

"Eleven days."

Not even remotely close then. "I'll have my guys there as fast as possible, and I'll call the Agent Afloat to let him know what's going on. If you can, get that ship back to San Fran."

"I can do that. I haven't called his family."

"I've got it. What's the official prognosis?"

"Very lucky he's on a flag ship with a combat-ready medical ward. Punctured lung, bruised spleen, bruised kidney, broken thumb, index finger, and middle finger on his right hand, more broken bones in his hand, dislocated right wrist, dislocated right shoulder, cracked right humerus, three cracked ribs, two more broken ribs, one cracked tooth, broken nose, crushed sinus, and a concussion. Everything that can bruise, is bruised."

"What are they operating on?"

"The two broken ribs went clear through his lung. One team is pulling them out and patching everything up. The other surgeons are pinning his arm and hand back together."

"Oh God. Do they think any of the damage is permanent?"

There's a pause, then Jarvis repeats the question, and another pause. "They think he'll make a full recovery, but he's going to be in for a very uncomfortable month, and a lot of PT after that to get his right arm back to fully functional. As soon as they say he's stable to move, they'll medevac him to Alameda and he's seeing the Navy's top surgeons, make sure that what the doctors here say is happening is happening."

"Okay. Let me know when you get moving toward Alameda. I'll have his family waiting for him there."

"Thanks, Leon."

* * *

Leon remembers the first time he met John McGee, first and only time. He remembers Gibbs saying that John didn't respect anything Tim was doing.

This is quite a few steps past 'didn't respect.'

He also remembers that John wasn't at Tim's wedding, nor was John ever mentioned by anyone talking to him. Granted, he's not part of the intimate family, but he is a cop, and he was paying attention, and at no point did he ever hear something like, "Gosh, it's a shame John couldn't be here for his only son's wedding."

And one other thought goes through his head. Gibbs killed the man who killed his girl. What on earth would he do with the man who hurt his son?

* * *

The frustrating part of this… One of them anyway, is that Vance is certain that Admiral McGee has made sure that a case cannot be made linking him to this attack.

He is absolutely certain that Admiral McGee never said that he wanted this to happen to Tim. He never suggested that such a thing would please him. He wouldn't have to. A secretary who's that good at his job knows his Boss inside and out; he'd never need the order. (Just like Vance's secretary wouldn't need instructions for something along those lines, either. The major difference is, Karen wouldn't kill a man for him.)

If Mane is the kind of man who would do that to McGee, then he's also the kind of man who will fall on a grenade to protect his Boss. He'll take the rap for this. He'll claim it was all on him.

Which means they'll have to break him, break him so bad he lies.

And that's going to be difficult. Maybe impossible.

But one way or another, Admiral McGee is going to pay for this. Because there was only one way Mane would have pulled this crap, and that's because he knew the Admiral would approve.

* * *

Vance is a good Boss, he's a very good administrator. He's good at finding talent and letting that talent do its job without him interfering.

The problem with that technique is that he's not as up to date with the seconds-thirds-and-fourths in command of his different teams as a micro manager would be.

He has a plan, he knows what he is going to do. What he doesn't know is who he needs to execute part of that plan. Normally, should a plan like this need to be executed, he'd call in McGee, and obviously that won't work.

At two in the morning, on the road to the Navy Yard, he's about to make a call to Abby, and then decides against it. While it's true that she's the person most likely to know who Tim's most trusted second-in-command is, it's also likely that if he calls her in the middle of the night looking for a tech, she will flip out. So, he is not calling Abby, instead he's making a call to Dr. Palmer, the man most likely to know what he needs to know.

"Nrgh." Sound of Jimmy rubbing his eyes.. "I'm awake, Palmer here. What's going on?"

"Doctor Palmer. I have a question for you."

"Director?" Jimmy sounds surprised to hear Vance on the phone.

"Yes. I know McGee relies heavily on Ngyn and Howard, which one of the two of them is better with a secret?"

"Sir?"

"Ngyn or Howard, Dr. Palmer?"

"Why aren't you asking Tim?"

"Because the _Stennis_ is under radio silence right now, as part of making sure that McGee's test doesn't get out." That's a complete lie, but one he doesn't mind. He doesn't need handling Palmer on top of Gibbs right now.

Jimmy thinks for a moment. "He tells us about how good Howard is all the time. I don't know if she can keep a secret. Ngyn's one of his wunderkinds, too. He likes both of them, trusts both of them. Ngyn's more likely to be in the office right now. Oh, and she's really shy, so she probably wouldn't enjoy blabbing about something."

"Thank you, Dr. Palmer." He hangs up before Jimmy can get enough brain cells together to wonder why Vance would be asking that in the middle of the night.

* * *

He doesn't have Ngyn or Howard on his personal phone. He does have McGee's desk. So he tries that. After four rings, "Cybercrime, McGee's desk."

"Who am I speaking to?"

"Sturm. Who is this?"

"Director Vance. Is Howard or Ngyn down there?"

"Yes, sir." A quiet moment passes. "Ngyn here."

"Ngyn, this is Director Vance, can you meet me in the evidence lock up in twenty-five minutes?"

"Uh… Sure…"

"Good. See you then."

* * *

Vance remembers one other thing as he walks toward the Navy Yard, another early morning, one very much like this, when he walked in through the bullpen and found McGee working on David's computer.

He remembers being told that McGee was making sure everything was nice and secure.

He remembers a few months later, when David walked into his office, handed him a bloody knife, and said, "For your wife."

She left, and he never asked. He didn't have to.

He knows that Gibbs' whole team handled the wet work.

He's sure McGee's the one who did the actual tracking.

And he knows, absolutely, that he owes McGee, all of them really, but right now he can repay one of them.

And he will.

* * *

Vance knows, on an intellectual level, that McGee'd revoked the dress code. But it'd been a while since he's been down in Cybercrime, so he was rather surprised to see this… girl… woman… he looks closer, she's a real adult, just small and dressing young, in jeans, a t-shirt, and oversized Converse All-Stars standing in front of the evidence lock up looking nervous.

"Director!"

He walks through the lock up, keying in his numbers, and goes to the back where the weapons they have confiscated are kept until they are destroyed. It takes him a moment, but he finds what he is looking for.

HTR 2000. Scheduled for destruction in three weeks. The last appeal had been exhausted in March. This gun is done.

It'll do.

"Agent Ngyn, I want everything regarding this gun destroyed. All records of ballistics, every case it was involved in, the fact that this gun ever existed needs to vanish."

"Sir?"

"Everything. Dr. Palmer tells me McGee thinks highly of your skills. I need this gun to _vanish_. I need the fact that you and I met down here, that I'm taking this gun out of here, all of it needs to evaporate. Can you do this?"

She's staring at him, very wide-eyed. "Yes, sir."

"Good. Up you go to my office. Use my computer." He quickly writes down his passwords. "Take care of it."

"Yes, sir. Sir?"

"Ngyn?"

"Why is Doctor Palmer recommending me on McGee's behalf? McGee's okay, right?"

"Yes, Ngyn." He smiles kindly. "He's fine. You know 'he's at a conference?'"

"Yes?"

"He's war gaming. Top secret. Right now, he and everyone on his ship is locked down for radio silence."

"Oh."

"Got an undercover op that just went hot and needs a clean gun, normally he does things like that, so I had to find out who he'd send in if he couldn't do it for me himself, and I figured that if anyone would know, it's Palmer."

"Huh. Okay. I'll get on it."

"Thank you."

* * *

It's slightly before 03:00 eastern time when Vance, with a rifle, opens Gibbs' door.

He almost breaks his nose when the door doesn't actually open as he steps forward.

So he knocks, wondering when on earth Gibbs got a lock and why.

Less than a minute later the dog, who's name he couldn't remember, had bounded down the steps and is barking vigorously at him. Suddenly the lock makes a lot of sense. He's awfully glad he didn't just walk into that. Three minutes later a sleepy, disheveled, and upside down looking Jehro ambles down the steps in a pair of boxers and nothing else.

* * *

Barking. Gibbs sits up, rubbing his eyes. One shift from working Gibbs to retired Gibbs is that he actually sleeps when he sleeps now. Before some little part of his mind was always a few degrees awake, ready to leap into action.

He hears another knock on his door. Great.

Abbi rolls over, looking at him, little bit of curious in her eyes. He waves it off. "Go back to sleep. Probably Fornell. He crashes here when he's got a case he doesn't want to take home."

She nods, looking mostly asleep too, and he gets up slowly, heads to his dresser, finds some shorts and a t-shirt and, still pulling the shirt over his head, wanders down the steps.

"Mona, hush up."

One last bark, and she bounds up the steps to him, thumping on down with him as he goes to the door.

Through the leaded glass in his door, he can't see who's there, but with each step, he's feeling a little more awake, and as sleep clears from his mind, that little voice starts to scream.

For a second, he can't place it, there's just a sense of blind panic.

Then he opens the door and sees Leon standing there, holding a rifle case.

Gibbs feels his knees go week. One second he's standing up, the next he's on the ground. Leon kneeling next to him, case forgotten for a second. It takes a good thirty seconds before he can pull his voice together enough to ask, "When did it happen?"

"Oh." And Vance, who is fully in revenge and justice mode, snaps out of that, realizing how bad this would look to Jethro. "No. No. Jethro. No. He's alive. Tim'll be fine, eventually."

From there, everything goes cold. He stands up slowly, taking the rifle case into his living room. " _What happened?_ "

Vance explains, and then he explains some more, and then he pats the case. "And if we can't get a case against him, or, even if we can, say, for after he's been dishonorably discharged and stripped of his rank, there's this."

Gibbs nods slowly, and he opens the case, looks at the contents, nods, and heads up the stairs.

While he does that, Vance calls Karen. She's less than thrilled to be woken up at 03:45 with a request to get the Lear Jet up and running and ready to go to Alameda, but she doesn't ask questions. She knows if he's asking for the fastest transport the Navy has for civilians in the middle of the night, it's important.

"When will you be back in the office?"

"Tomorrow, I hope."

He calls Lara, telling her what's going on, why he's not in bed, why he's not going to be home for a while, hopefully tonight, but probably late. She understands.

By the time he's done, Gibbs is down, he's got a duffle packed. It's not very full. He stuffs the rifle case into it, too. Now it's full. He takes a moment and gets a second bag packed, stuffing two bowls, dog food, and some rawhide chews into it.

"Abby next, right?" Leon asks.

Gibbs nods. Then Palmers', someone has to take Kelly and Mona in.

* * *

This wasn't supposed to happen. That was the whole point of Cybercrime! Gibbs and Vance weren't supposed to be in her home at 04:23 with bad news. He could have stayed a cop if this…

She's barely awake, pregnancy tired clinging to her, trying to drag her back to warm dreams where everything is fine, battling the surge of adrenaline that goes with waking up, finding Gibbs in her room, Vance hovering at the door to her bedroom, looking ready to kill someone.

She's crying, sobbing, before she can even put together what's going on, really.

But she knows, in her gut, she feels it. They wouldn't be here if everything was all right.

Gibbs has got his arms around her, rocking her, gently, saying… something, but she can't get the words, she's too trapped in tired/pain/hormones/terror bawling.

"Abbs… Come on baby, pull out of it. Abby… he's alive." Gibbs has said that about three times now, but it's not breaking through the immediate horror of him at her door in the middle of the night, Leon behind him. "Come on, Abbs, you've got to pull it together, hear what I'm saying, baby, he's alive. He's alive, and we've got a jet waiting for us so we can get to him. We've got to get Kelly all packed up and over to Jimmy and Breena so we can get to him. Come on…"

Eventually 'he's alive' filters through. It'd be almost comical the way she jerks when it finally hits, but this is real, and someone you care about's abject, soul-deep horror isn't funny.

She sniffs, wipes her nose. "Alive?"

"Yeah, Abbs, he's alive. He's hurt. But he's alive. And we've got to get to him."

She nods and begins to get up out of bed, grabbing her robe. "I'll get dressed. Can you…" her voice is rough, and it cracks, but she keeps talking, "get a bag packed for Kelly."

"Yeah. Want me to call Breena, too, let her know she's got some visitors coming soon?"

"Yeah. That's… Yeah. He's alive?" There's desperate terror in her voice, and Gibbs suddenly gets that the last time someone showed up in the middle of the night at her home and told her someone was alive but hurt, it was her parents, and her mom was already dead, and her father only had hours left.

Gibbs nods, holding her tight, kissing her forehead. "He's alive. Vance says that as of 04:10 he was stable to travel and they were med-evacing him to Alameda."

"How badly hurt?"

"Vance has more details than I do. Get dressed, get packed, stuff for Tim, pajamas and clean clothes, and he can fill you in when we go to Jimmy and Breena's."

That gets her moving. Every minute talking is a minute they aren't getting closer to Tim.

* * *

The second time a phone rings in the middle of the night, Jimmy's awake, and scared. It's Breena's phone, but she's still pretty groggy, so he grabs it.

"No bullshit this time, _what_ happened?"

Gibbs wasn't expecting that, but he answers, "Tim's hurt, we're going to California, can Mona and Kelly stay with you? Don't know how long it'll be."

"Hurt? Hurt how?"

"John had his men try to beat him to death."

Jimmy goes cold at that. "Fuck. Okay, no more talking to me. I'll pick up the details when we're on the plane. Get the girls here as fast as you can."

"Thanks Jimmy. Vance has more details than I do, he'll call when we're in the air."

"Okay." He hangs up.

"Was that my phone?" Breena blinks a few times and sees that Jimmy's so pissed he's shaking. "What happened?"

He's jumped up and is packing a bag. "Can you take a few days on your own with an extra kid and Mona?"

"Jimmy, you're scaring me."

"Tim got on that fucking ship, and his dad tried to have him killed. All I know right now is that he's alive and Gibbs and Abby and Vance are heading to California, and if you can handle the kids, I'm going with them."

"Okay. Mona and Kelly are coming here?"

"Yes."

"I will handle it. Ducky and Penny'll help."

"Yeah, they will."

Breena gets up, and wraps Jimmy in a hug. "Okay, you get a shower, and eat. You've just packed nine pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, two left shoes, no shirts, and no underwear. I'll get you set to go. You get calmed down because Abby's going to need calm people around her, got it?"

Jimmy swallows, takes a very deep breath, lets it out, shakily, and nods. "I've got it."

She kisses him, holding onto him, tight.

"I don't even know how hurt he is." Jimmy's somewhere between rage and about to cry. "It's got to be bad because he's not talking to us, though."

She nods, holding him close, cradling the back of his head, kissing him. "We'll find out, and you'll get there, and you'll be his doctor, making sure they treat him right and he comes home to us."

"Yeah." He wipes his eyes, takes another deep breath, and heads for the shower.

* * *

It's a quiet handover. Kelly sleeps through the whole thing, and no one is surprised to see Jimmy's up, packed, and ready to go. Mona's confused because she doesn't see Molly, and visits to this house always involve Molly, so there's some barking, but Breena swings into Bad Ass Mommy Mode (which is identical to Alpha Bitch mode) and has her calmed down and toeing the line in a matter of seconds.

She kisses and hugs Jimmy and Abby as they head off. "You bring our boy back."

They both nod, ready to go.

"I'll call Ducky and Tony when it's really morning. Let me know how he is as soon as you do."

More nodding, more hugs, more kisses, and they go.

* * *

Tim wakes in a panic, everything hurts, he feels like he's choking, there's this weird whupping noise, and he has no idea where he is, how he got there, or why. On top of that, he finds he can't move, or talk because there's something shoved down his throat (hence the choking sensation).

He's blinking as hard as he can, hoping that will get someone's attention and get him some answers because he's about to start crying.

A second later a face hovers into view, one he doesn't know.

"He's awake, sir."

Jarvis comes into view.

"You didn't want to stay on your dad's ship, so as soon as you were stable enough to move they got you on a medevac flight. We're en route to Alameda."

He blinks again, that helps with some of the panic, and the whupping noise suddenly makes sense, he's got to be on a chopper.

The first face, probably some sort of medic comes back into view. "One blink for yes, two for no."

He blinks.

"Are you in pain?"

One very emphatic blink. And if he could talk, something along the lines of _What the fuck do you think? I'm enjoying this?_ would have come out.

"Scale of one to ten, how bad is it?"

He thinks he blinks nine times. Might have been six. Could have been twelve. Counting's tricky right now. This is the flu, getting beaten to a pulp by Jimmy, freezing, and the car accident that broke his arm all together and multiplied by ten, he can imagine that he can experience more pain, because he's still conscious, but he's hoping he never has to find out.

"Okay. More pain medication coming up."

He can half-see out of his peripheral vision someone else messing with his IV. Then the medic comes back into view. "Do you know why you're here?"

_Sort of._ He remembers the fight. He hurts all over, so he's got to be hurt bad. But he doesn't know how hurt he is. He blinks once and then winks, hoping that's between one and two and gets the idea of _I'm fuzzy on the details_ across.

Seems like Jarvis got that. "You remember the fight?"

One blink. _Yes._

"Do you remember after?"

Two blinks. _No._ There are bits and pieces he remembers, but not enough of them.

"They assessed you in the infirmary."

The Medic took over, probably a good plan, he's got a better idea of how this works. "You have a concussion, a broken nose, chipped tooth…" he lists several more things none of which say, _you needed to be intubated_ to Tim, but finally he gets to, "You've got three cracked ribs and two broken ones. The broken ribs punctured your lung. They got everything patched back up in surgery, but the machine is breathing for you right now so that we don't have to worry about something going wonky while we're in the air."

He'd nod if he could, but he can't, so he blinks once.

"We're monitoring your vitals closely, your spleen and kidney are badly bruised and we're making sure you don't end up with so much swelling that you end up with problems. That's why you're cold."

It hadn't occurred to him that he was cold, but once the Medic said that, he notices that he is cold. They've probably got him packed in ice or something.

The Medic says a few other things, but by that point the pain medication is kicking back in again, and Tim checks out.

* * *

A Lear jet is the fastest transport NCIS has to offer for four people traveling together. There are lots of nifty goodies on board, the flight crew is beyond obsequious. On any other occasion, this would be a lovely trip.

But it's not, because anything other than Star-Trek style transporters is too damn slow. (And honestly, even if they could be beamed to California, it'd still be too slow.)

Gibbs is sitting next to Abby, keeping an arm around her. Right now she's praying, and from the looks of it, Gibbs is, too.

Jimmy's got Tim's medical records up on his computer. The rough version they filled out aboard the _Stennis_. He finishes reading, carefully shuts his computer, stands up, and kicks his seat, hard, six or seven times.

Gibbs, Abby, and Vance stare at him as he does it. When he gets done he rubs his eyes, then stalks over to the bar, finds the strongest alcohol they've got (Vodka) pours three shots of it, and hands one to Gibbs, one to Vance, and shoots his back.

He picks up his computer, sits next to Abby, and says. "I'd have poured one for you, but I figured you wouldn't want it." She nods, face a mask of fear. Vance looks curious about that, but no one says anything, so he puts two and two together and decides Abby's pregnant again.

Jimmy opens his computer and begins to go over the details with them.

* * *

They're racing the sunrise, and winning. Perpetual dark of near dawn envelops the jet as it continues westward.

It's a bit after 07:00, by Vance's watch (Eastern time, he's not sure what local time is, or for that matter where they are) when they get confirmation that Tim's in Alameda, off the vent, breathing on his own, and right now, sleeping.

He gets up and asks the pilot how far out they are, and he says they're about ten minutes from starting the descent.

* * *

It's a long hallway. A really long hallway. They come in from one end and find Jarvis, he leads them toward Tim, at the other end.

Solid door, they can't see in, and it's closed, so they don't know what's on the other side.

Abby hugs Gibbs and Jimmy, and then says, "I'll… I need to… Alone."

"Okay. We'll wait, right out here," Jimmy says. Gibbs just gives her another hug.

* * *

Her first thought upon entering the room, stupid, silly thought, she sat next to Jimmy as he read the different files, she knew, intellectually, how bad he was, but it didn't stop her from almost turning right around, walking out and saying, "This is the wrong room. That's not Tim."

His face is so battered and swollen and bruised, she couldn't have identified him by looking at it.

They cut his shirt off and didn't put a gown over him, so she can see the tattoo on his delt, marred, swollen, black ink merging into black, red, blue, purple bruises, and knows it has to be him.

She makes herself look, makes herself see, analyze, and plan, because she cannot just throw herself on the bed, weeping, wrapping around him.

His face is black, some spots are purple or green, one tiny patch along his right ear is still skin-colored. There's a patch of naked, scabbed scalp on the left where someone yanked out a quarter-sized chunk of hair. There's a brace on his nose and a tube in his nostrils.

There are choke marks on his throat. His collarbones are black and blue, both shoulders covered in greenish-yellow-purple. Upper chest doesn't look too bad, comparatively. Little patches of skin colored skin and two heart monitors are attached there. Middle and lower chest are wrapped up tight in some sort of bandage.

His left hand is black-purple-green, knuckles bandaged. Left elbow in similar shape. There's an IV leading to the back of his left hand, which she's praying is sending powerful pain medication into him.

His right hand and wrist are in traction, his right shoulder is propped up, and strapped to the bed to keep it immobile. There's some sort of black vinyl thing, a cast of some sort, covering from his armpit to mid-forearm. There's a strap across his forehead and another across his chest, probably one along his hips but there's a blanket pulled up to his lower chest so she can't see. They don't want him accidentally moving.

She can feel the tears pouring down her face. She can't touch him. There's nothing she can lay hands on that won't hurt.

A small choking sound rips out of her as she steps closer.

The heart monitor beeps gently, and she can see the steady blip of his heart. He's alive. He's here and he's alive, and she's got to touch him because if she doesn't, it's not real.

She very gently, very carefully eases up the blanket, to check his feet and legs. His knees are bruised, his shins are mottled purple and black, broken toes wasn't on the list, but it looks like at least two of them are pointing in the wrong direction.

She looks up further and finds a spot, about the size of her palm, just below his left hip, that doesn't appear to have any bruises at all. She lays her fingers on that spot. He's warm and alive and real, and hurt, so so hurt.

She's crying, trying to be quiet, because she doesn't want to wake him up, though she's fairly sure they drugged him enough that he won't wake for anything short of the Apocalypse.

Abby spends a few minutes sitting there, touching his leg, listening to the heart monitor and the sound of him breathing. She spends a few moments thanking God that he's still alive.

She lays a kiss to that little patch of un-hurt Tim, about to get up and let Jimmy and Gibbs in, and hears, voice very rough, "I must look like complete shit if you won't kiss my lips."

She snaps up, hand reaching to touch his cheek and then pulling back.

He sees her face, no makeup, red and puffy from tears. Sees her almost touch, but not quite.

She swallows hard. "I didn't think you'd wake up."

"Not sure if I am. I'm half-sure this is a dream."

She kisses his leg again. "I'm here. Jimmy and Gibbs and Vance are outside. Once you can travel, we're going to take you home."

"Today?"

She shakes her head. "No."

"Tomorrow?"

"No."

He tries to move a little, but feels the restraints. "I know I'm on a lot of medication, so I'm not hurting too bad, all over, but it just aches now, but… How bad is this?" He tries to move his head. "Is my neck broken?" His toes wiggle and he hisses, that _hurts_ , staying very, very still is suddenly sounding like an excellent plan. "I can move my feet."

"You've got a lot of broken ribs, and your right arm is a mess, that's why they don't want you moving your torso. I don't know why your head is strapped down, but you neck isn't broken."

"Okay. Why are you kissing my leg?"

She wipes away her tears and tries to smile. "No bruises. I couldn't stand to do anything that might hurt you more."

His tongue slips over his lip, mapping the splits and the puffy, swollen flesh around them. She leans in and kisses the tip of his tongue.

"Do you have a mirror?"

She does but she says, "No," anyway. He doesn't need to see his face today.

He knows that she has a compact that lives in her purse and has a mirror on it, so she's lying to him. "Is it really that bad?"

She nods, more tears in her eyes.

"Okay. I don't need to see."

"Not until the swelling goes down some."

"Okay."

She kisses that bit of leg again. "I love you, Tim. Love you so much."

"Even ugly?" He tries to smile and that hurts, too, he can feel the skin of his lip separating again, so he stops.

"Tim!" She sniffles.

"I told you I'd fight to the last breath to come home to you."

"You did." Another sniff. "I love you so much, so much. Gibbs and Vance came at four in the morning and…" She's crying again.

"I'm alive, baby." His left arm seems free, and he thinks about moving it to touch her, but just tensing the muscles to start moving it hurts like fire, so he doesn't move.

"I know. I do. Now." She wipes her eyes again. "Jimmy and Gibbs are going to want to see you. You want them to come in?"

"Little bit, feeling tired again."

"Okay, little bit, then you sleep some more."

* * *

They're waiting right outside the door, but by the time Gibbs and Jimmy get into Tim's room, he's asleep again.

Gibbs looks at Tim, lying there, just… broken.

He very gently ruffles his hair, kisses the top of his head, sees Tim wince in his sleep, and pulls his hand back.

He looks over at Abby, realizes that the little bit of his leg that she's touching has to be the only part that's not hurt and swallows hard, staring at the ceiling.

"Jimmy, the medical records you read didn't say anything about his knees or toes, did they?" Abby asks.

"No."

She pulls the blanket back enough for Jimmy to see the rest of Tim's leg, and he curses quietly, storming off to go find Tim's attending physician.

Gibbs looks. Apparently they paid attention to the top part of Tim when they were working on him, and forgot the bottom half.

He kisses the top of Abby's head, squeezes her shoulders, and heads into the hallway, where Vance is, again.

Vance didn't go in. This is a quiet, intimate, family moment, and he's not going to crash it. At the same time, though, he did look in and felt every ounce of blood in his body boil as he looks at McGee.

Vance is a cop. He's been at NCIS thirty-five years. He has seen literally thousands of dead people, and he has never seen someone that badly beaten who was still alive.

Gibbs comes out a few seconds later. "I want on that ship."

"No."

He's giving Leon _the help me or get out of my way look._ "Leon."

"No. Agent Burley is heading there, with his team. The ship is heading back to port, and when they land, you can talk to him, but you will not get within sight of McGee. We will handle this properly until we cannot handle it properly anymore." There's so much ice in Vance's voice that it gets through to Jethro, that he actually listens.

"Jethro, what do you know about John McGee?"

There are a lot of things he could say, but most of them are private, for Tim and the family and that's it, so he says, "He's the man who didn't check to see if his son was alive or dead after the Deering bombing."

Vance nods. He hadn't known that, but isn't surprised.

"Here's what I know about you: if I let you on that ship, you'll kill him. Here's what I know about me: Dying by your hands will not be nearly as slow or painful as what I want to happen to him will be. Here's what I know about him: He loves his rank, his ship, and his job, more than anything on earth, so we will _rob_ him of it. Hell is whatever hurts worst, Jethro, and we will make him _hurt_. That rifle I gave you, use it, _after_ he's been stripped of his rank and dishonorably discharged."

And Gibbs has to admit, that's something he can wait for.


	106. Investigate

"Burley." Stan answers.

"What do you have, Stan?"

"Gibbs?" Burley's confused. This whole thing has been confusing. He got a call just as it was quitting time, from the Director of NCIS demanding he get his team on a ship that was way the hell out of his jurisdiction, for something, Vance didn't say what, just that the Lt. James, (whoever the hell that is) and the Agent Afloat Sarah Angua would get him up to date as soon as he got there. And now, from nowhere, Gibbs is calling for an update.

"Yeah. What'd'ya have?"

"Nothing, I'm still in the air. Gibbs, I haven't even been briefed on what I'm investigating yet. I just know I was told to get my team to the _Stennis_ ASAP and the Agent Afloat would get me up to speed. I'm on a cargo plane, still an hour out."

Gibbs bites his lip. "You remember my retirement party?"

"Lot of it's pretty hazy. After the second bottle, things started to go sideways. Can't party like I used to."

"Not that one. The one at the diner that everyone went to."

"Oh. Yeah. Okay. Enough."

"Tall, thin guy, married to Abby, little baby girl, one of my kids."

"Yeah. Tim, right?"

"Right. That's his dad's ship." He says the next bit voice low, trying to not broadcast this all over the hospital, but his voice is very hot, and Leon notices, watches, as he says, "Son of a bitch abused him as a kid, but he got an assignment on that ship, and he didn't say anything because he's a pro and he'll do his job wherever that job takes him, so he went and that…" there aren't words foul enough for McGee, " _thing_ tried to have him killed while he was on the ship."

"Holy fuck! Tried?"

"He's alive. I'm in the hospital with him, and Abby, his _pregnant_ wife."

"Okay. Got it."

Vance has taken three steps closer to Jethro and motions for the phone, he hands it over.

"Agent Burley, this is Director Vance."

"Director." Burley's confused, and then he's impressed. He was impressed that whatever this was the Director was handling it. He's more impressed now. The Director of NCIS is in the hospital with McGee, which means McGee is connected. Which blows Burley's mind, because the last time he saw McGee at work the only real impression he had was of a somewhat timid guy doing his job quietly.

"Agent Burley, I know you have a reputation for the highest standards of professionalism. No matter how painful this case is and how personally satisfying it would be to absolutely destroy anyone even remotely related to it, you are to do your job, as a professional. You are an officer of the law and you will act like one."

"Yes, sir."

"The Admiral," _Oh God, Tim's father is an Admiral? This is going to be a mess._ "is a well-respected member of the Navy. He is on the President's Drone Task Force. He is on good terms with the Former Secretary of State, who is, as you know, currently running for President. So this investigation will be _letter_ perfect, do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"You will investigate as long, and as hard, and as deeply as you need to. If anyone tries to pull rank on you, shoot them down. If you do not receive the fullest cooperation on every single aspect of this case feel free to charge everyone with obstruction of justice. The Secretary of the Navy has your back on this, but you will also follow all the rules, fill out all the forms, dot all the is, cross all the ts, and make sure that when this goes to trial that no one can claim any sort of partiality was involved."

"Yes, sir."

Vance hands the phone back to Gibbs. Gibbs doesn't have anything to add to that.

Apparently Burley can tell the difference between them by the quality of the silence on the other side of the phone. "I'll give you a call once I get on board and start figuring out what's going on."

"Thanks, Stan."

Leon's staring at Gibbs, and Gibbs knows why.

"The family knows, the outside world doesn't."

"He should have—"

"Mentioned it? Asked for a different ship because his dad was on it? Open this up for everyone to see? You know how private he is. _We_ didn't know about it until last year."

"God."

"He hates ships, gets seasick something fierce, his Dad was a nightmare before this, but the job was on that ship so he went on that ship to do the job. Abby didn't want him to go. I didn't want him to go. Lots of other ships in the Navy. He could run the attack from anywhere, but…"

They hear Jimmy yelling at the doctor who is scurrying along next to him, heading down the hallway. "…What kind of third rate medical school could you have possibly gone to where you don't do a full examination on the patient when he's brought in? Or are you just so personally fucking incompetent that you can't recognize a fucking dislocated knee or broken toes when you see them?" He doesn't allows the doctor to answer. "His wife, who is not a doctor, when she went looking for the four square inches of him that are not covered in bruises found the knee and the toes, and right now we are going back in there and doing a proper examination, and anything you miss on him I will _personally_ do to you!"

There's two nurses a few feet behind them, smirking at this. And Gibbs gets the idea that this is a particularly obnoxious doctor.

Gibbs and Vance shrink back from the storm of Jimmy herding the medical crew into Tim's room.

Vance shakes his head. "Didn't know Palmer had that in him."

Gibbs nods, how Jimmy is handling this is the only bright point of an absolutely horrific morning. "Takes a lot to get him angry, but don't mess with him when he is."

Vance nods slowly at that.

* * *

"We're starting at the toes and working our way up." The nurses start getting ready and the doctor, Jimmy doesn't have his name, is thoroughly cowed, so he just waits for Jimmy to tell him what to do.

Abby's still sitting next to Tim, still resting her hand on that tiny patch of skin.

"Abby, come on, how about you head out for this?"

She shakes her head.

Jimmy gently takes her hands and turns her to look at him. He strokes her cheek. "It's gonna hurt. Can't do this right and not have it hurt. Watching it is going to hurt. Doing it is going to hurt, and when we get done, I'm going to need someone who isn't crying to give me a hug, so you head out, okay? I've got him, and we're going to do the job right, but it's going to be really hard, so… I'm gonna need you in an hour or so."

She blinks the tears out of her eyes. "Okay."

He kisses her forehead and she hugs him, and then walks out of the room.

Jimmy wipes his eye and then turns to the doctor who's in charge right now. "Okay Asshole, let's do this right. This is my best friend in the entire universe so you are going to treat him like he is _your_ best friend in the entire universe." Jimmy pulls the blanket back so they can see Tim's foot. "Right foot, first distal phalange, _what do you see?"_

The doc's voice quavers as he explains bruising and possible broken bones and lacerations and dislocations. And Jimmy wants to quaver, too. The only reason he can muster hard-ass right now is because if someone doesn't grind that asshole into the ground they would have missed the fact that Tim's got three broken toes, broken foot, a cracked tibia, dislocated knee, chipped patella (other knee) and dislocated ankle.

And he was right, doing it was hard, and it hurt. They got a portable X-ray, so they didn't have to try to move Tim but they still had to touch him, slide the plates under his knee, ankle, calf, and thigh. He didn't wake up (or if he did he wasn't letting anyone know) but he did moan and wince at it.

Popping his knee back into place did pull Tim out of his sleep.

He looks around, hurting, bleary, not sure what's going on, but he sees Jimmy there.

"Jimmy?"

"Hey, Tim."

One of the nurses is bandaging up his knee, making sure it's wrapped firmly to give it some support and keep it from slipping back out of joint again. It hurts and Tim hisses at it.

"What?" Tim asks.

Jimmy points to the doctor who is looking at the X-ray of Tim's ankle. "That fucking moron decided that only checking half of you was good enough. We're rectifying that."

Tim tries to nod, but his head is still strapped in, so he can't.

"Why is my head strapped?"

Jimmy doesn't know, so he turns to the doctor, "Well, Asshole?"

"We… uh… there was no neck damage on the films, but you're sitting up for your shoulder and lungs," that's when Tim notices that the bed he's in is inclined, and he is sitting up, "and we figured you'd probably have some muscle strain at least, maybe whiplash, so we strapped your head so you could rest without it dangling and putting extra stress on your neck."

Jimmy nods at that. "And who came up with that decision?"

One of the nurses raises a hand.

"Gold star for you. That's good medicine. You want to take over this case? You're worth at least six of him."

She smiles at that, and goes back to disinfecting and dressing the bite wound on Tim's calf.

"Doctor…" The attending physician says, "His ankle…"

"Yes, I know. Took you long enough to check. Tim, your right ankle's dislocated, they're going to pop it back into place. It's going to hurt."

Tim closes his eyes. "Okay."

The nurses have already gotten into place, holding his leg. Jimmy's not actually treating, he's supervising, so he starts to hold Tim's hand, realizes the hand closest to him is broken in ten places, so he finds that little patch of unbruised skin on Tim's leg and rests his hand there.

"On three," the attending physician says. 'One, two…" Pop. His ankle crunches back into joint and Tim shrieks.

"All done, Tim," Jimmy says. He strokes that spot on his leg. "You're all back in place. Just got to finish bandaging you back up and you're all done."

Tim whimpers. "Can I get more pain medicine?"

"Sorry. You're on as much as we can give you. We can sedate you, make you sleep."

That sounds really good, and Tim thinks he might have said that, but with the immediate pain of his ankle and knee fading, the drugs he's already on pull Tim back to sleep.

* * *

It took forty-three minutes to begin and end the exam, and once they got past Tim's hips, everything had been properly taken care of.

Jimmy, once the rational part of his brain was driving again, knew what had happened. They triaged him on the ship, dealt with the biggest problems: fixing the lung, monitoring his internal organs, securing his arm.

Tim was out if it, he couldn't tell them what hurt. He wasn't wearing pants by the time Jimmy got here, so his best guess is that whoever catheterized him gave him a quick glance over, saw the bruises, but decided that getting him moving was more important that getting those bruises taken care of.

They got him stable, got him strapped down to travel, and got him off that ship as fast as they could.

By the time he got here, the medical records had been sent, and they didn't mention anything below his waist besides the bruises. So Dr. Asshole didn't bother to check.

They pumped more pain meds into Tim, and every time he got close to conscious he hurt all over, so he couldn't tell what was wrong, where in any sort of detail.

Once Jimmy was able to figure out what had likely happened, he drags Dr. Asshole in front of the head of the hospital and the Secretary of the Navy and proceeds to chew him out, in precise detail, as to exactly how shoddy the care had been and how if Abby hadn't decided to look at Tim's legs that damage could have been permanent and that bite could have gone septic.

Once that was done, he storms off to Tim's room, finds Abby and Gibbs in there, and quietly collapses into a crying heap, getting the hugs that he told Abby he was going to need.

* * *

It takes another half hour or so for Jimmy to get himself entirely back together, but he does, and he gets his phone out, noticing it's only a bit past eight thirty at home, and texts Breena.

_We're here, got him taken care of. Who's at home?_

A minute later he gets. _Everyone but Sarah and Glenn. Decided to hold off on calling them until we know how he is. How is he?_

_Bad. Alive and he'll heal, but it's bad._

_How bad?_

Jimmy rubs his eyes. _Did Ducky bring his computer?_

_Yeah._

_Tell him to log onto the Federal Medical Records database and use my ID. It'll be a few hours out of date, because the assholes here didn't notice Tim had legs until two hours ago, but it'll give you a pretty good idea of how bad it is._

Breena knows when he doesn't want to answer a question. _Jimmy, how bad is it?_

_Bad enough I'm crying, too._

_Shit. Any idea when he'll be able to come home?_

_No. Not today. Not tomorrow. Probably not Monday and I wouldn't bet on Tuesday, either._

_Oh God. Ducky just got logged in._

_Go, read, I'm not going anywhere. Text back when you're done._

_Okay._

* * *

Breena waited until 7:00 to give everyone a call. And by everyone, she means Ziva, who will have no problem corralling the rest of the crew and getting them over to her place, because honestly, getting three kids under the age of 2 ½ and a dog all fed breakfast at once while on the phone is just too damn much.

She talks to Ziva briefly, explains that everyone needs to be at her house as soon as they can, and Ziva, who is always rock solid in a crisis asks just enough questions to know that no one is dead, and who qualifies as everyone, and then takes over.

* * *

Tony is stalking around Breena's house like a caged tiger. A deeply unhappy caged tiger. Ziva's still, but no less agitated. Ducky's getting his computer set up and logged onto the Palmers' Wi-Fi so they've got ready communications.

And then…

And then there's nothing to do but wait.

And waiting is not Tony's strong suit.

"Why are we not on that jet?"

Breena shrugs. She assumes that there's a reason why Vance didn't call them to run the case, but off the top of her head, she doesn't know what it is.

"We should be on that jet, and then on that ship, and then making every single other person on that ship sing. We should be hanging John up by his toenails, getting a confession out of him, we should be…" He shakes his head and pulls his phone out of his pocket.

Palmer stalks back into McGee's room less than a minute before Vance gets a call and sees the name on the ID. DiNozzo.

"Agent DiNozzo, calling in to brief me on your current case?"

"Director—"

"No time for that right now. I'm eager to hear about it, but kind of busy. I should be back on the East Coast late tonight, so how about you, Agent DiNozzo, and Dr. Mallard all join me at my house for breakfast tomorrow morning say, 07:00 to tell me all about it?"

"Director—"

"Splendid. I'll see you then." And he hangs up.

* * *

"What was that?" Ziva asks. She expects Tony to get more than two words out. They all do.

"He won't say anything. Didn't let me get a word in. We've got a breakfast date at his place tomorrow at 07:00."

Ziva looks puzzled, but Ducky gets it. "Oh."

"Oh?" Breena asks.

"Do you remember a few years ago when the IRS conveniently lost all communications between its Director and certain outside groups?"

Ziva nods, Tony doesn't. He doesn't pay all that much attention to larger politics.

Penny already knows where this is going so she says, "Last year, after the fall-out from that settled down, all communications for any Director of a Federal Agency is now copied and kept off-site. I'd bet that includes any conversations on their cell phones, or at least phone logs.

"Ah. Breakfast tomorrow, then." Ziva says.

"When we won't be overheard." Tony nods. "I get it." And suddenly he does. Suddenly furious and scared clear enough that he does _get_ it. "We're not on this so that it looks proper. Has to look by the books because he's an Admiral. He'll have top lawyers and there can't be any wiggle room for him." Then he gets the deeper level, the reason why they aren't going to wait to see what whoever actually is investigating this manages to find. There's probably nothing to find to link John to this. They're going off the books on this one, way, way off the books. "Whatever we're really going to do, that'll be what we talk about tomorrow."

Breena's phone beeps, and she spends a few moments texting.

"Ducky, can you log onto the Federal Medical Records Database? Use Jimmy's account. They're a few hours out of date, and apparently incomplete, there's some stuff with his legs that's not on there."

Ducky nods, and gets to it. "Timothy's medical records." Ducky reads the notes out-loud, voice getting angrier with every sentence. While Tony, Penny, Ziva, and Breena hover around, listening, getting paler and more furious by each word.

Ducky's last word falls, and for a second there's just silence then Tony says, "He's dead. John's dead. And if Gibbs doesn't do it, I will." Then he realizes Penny's sitting right next to him. "Oh, Penny… I—" he doesn't know what to say. John's dead. That's a fact, and it's a fact he's in no way sorry about. He will destroy that man if Gibbs doesn't, and he will enjoy every second of it. But his _mom_ is sitting right next to him. Tony weakly says, "Tim's _really_ hurt."

She nods. Ducky explained each bit as he read it. And there's more stuff that isn't in those records, yet. She knows exactly how bad this is. "I know Tony." She rubs her eyes and stands up, heading to the back porch. Ducky follows. They hear the door open, then close, and the faint sound of Ducky's voice, along with the louder sound of Penny sobbing.

* * *

Vance knocks on Tim's door at close to nine and then came in. Tim is, fortunately, asleep.

Vance has three large cups of coffee, and… and he doesn't know what Abby likes when she's pregnant, but he's fairly sure Caf-Pow is not what the doctor ordered right now, so he's also got a large iced-green tea.

There's a bag in his other hand, it's filled with muffins and croissants.

"Jarvis has headed back to DC. He's called John Ramis," none of them recognize that name, "highest ranking Naval Doctor, personal physician to the Vice President. He's looking over the case and will be giving you a call, Jimmy.

"Agent Burley just texted me to let me know he's aboard the _Stennis_ , has finished reading over all the notes they currently have on the case, and is beginning to interrogate the three who assaulted Tim.

"They have Tim's computer, but they think it's been so damaged they can't get anything off of it."

Abby shakes her head. "Give me your phone."

_Abby here:_ She texts to Stan. _What happens when you try to make his computer work?_

A minute later Stan replies: _Hit the power button, the computer whirrs a little, screen goes from black to blue for five seconds, then everything goes black again._

_)9pfhrubgTHF64^^_

_What?_

_Type it in when the screen goes blue. His computer locks and encrypts if he hits a certain key on it. He probably locked it. That'll unlock it._

_Thanks._

* * *

Stan Burley is not a stranger to violence. He's a cop. He's been a cop since 1994, twenty-two years. He has seen fights. He's waded into fights to try and stop them. He's been in fights for his life and fights to protect others.

But that doesn't stop him from feeling nauseous once Olnton, his tech guy, gets McGee's computer open and finds the recording of what happened when those three sailors got into that room.

The angle's wrong for two minutes of the fight, he can just catch glimpses here and there of arms swinging and blood flying, but he can hear everything, including McGee screaming for help and the sickening slaps and crunches of hard direct hits. Then the desk or whatever the computer was on gets hit, hard, and the computer falls to the floor.

The view skews and goes blurry for a second, but the camera refocuses, and he hears the bone break, winces, sees McGee drop, curl into a ball, and get kicked over and over and over for sixty-eight seconds.

Teresa Millin, his partner, is standing behind him, watching, horrified.

When it ends, she says, "How is he not dead?"

Burley shakes his head. "I don't know."

"Who are we starting with?" she asks.

Burley grabs the files on the three perps. "Manz is still in the infirmary and sedated."

"He's the one who lost the eye."

Burley double checks the medical files. "Yeah. Doc says he's not talking for at least another day. That leaves Rodrick Ylyns and David Nordstrom."

She scans the notes he's got open on the table. "Nordstrom's the one who peed himself when he realized what had happened?"

"Yes."

"Weak link."

Burley nods.

* * *

Nordstrom is hurting. He's on a ton of pain medication, and Burley has required a lawyer stay with him, because even though he said he didn't want one, he's stoned off his ass, and Burley does not want this testimony getting tossed because he didn't have counsel present.

"Start at the beginning and tell me what happened."

Nordstrom stares at the ceiling behind Stan for a moment, collecting his thoughts.

"I had oatmeal for breakfast. Then went to run—"

"Okay, that's a bit too beginning. What started the fight?"

Nordstrom blinks, hazy brown eyes floating languidly over everything in the room. "That guy going to be okay?"

"They don't know, yet."

"Damn."

"Why did you decide to beat—"

The JAG breaks in, "That's supposition."

"We have him on tape doing it. We have McGee's blood, skin, saliva, and hair on your client. The Secretary of the Navy, Clayton Jarvis, is one of the men who helped to pull your client off of McGee. We've got absolutely no doubt at all that he was involved, we want to know why."

The JAG nods. "Okay. Go ahead Dave, tell him what happened."

Dave blinks, unsure what he's supposed to be saying.

"Why did you decide to beat McGee?" Burley coaxes.

"Oh. Uh… Earlier… you know, like, after lunch, there was a code-red-all-hands-on-deck. Something went FUBAR with the computers and we were targeting the _Borealis_. We stopped the ship. Contacted them, had them taking evasive action, trying to get them as far away from us as we could. But it's not like you can just unload the guns or pull a plug, you know?"

"Yeah, I know."

"So, I'm on security detail, keeping watch, praying we're not about to kill my brother. He's on the _Borealis_. He's new, eighteen-years-old. This is his first run out. And everyone is yelling, trying to get the guns shut down, but they aren't shutting down and then something happened, I'm not a computer guy, so I don't know what, but we didn't fire.

"All I could think about was having to tell my mom that my ship killed Steve." Nordstrom's crying at that.

Burley pats him gently on the shoulder. Not really wanting to, but between the drugs and the regret, soft-balling him with sympathy is what's going to get everything out of this guy.

"Did you know, during the red alert, that the _Borealis_ was being targeted."

Nordstrom thinks hard on that. "I remember thinking about telling my mom, but… That would have to be later, right? Because I was on duty when it happened, but I'm not one of the computer guys… So, it would have had to have been scuttlebutt, right?"

Burley nods. "Probably. Then what happened?"

"Dinner. Everyone was talking about it at dinner."

"Okay, and then…"

"Lt. Mane, he's only a Lieutenant, but he's kind of like God, anyway, you know? Because he's the Admiral's personal Lieutenant, so everyone does anything he says. Even the XO takes orders from him."

Burley jots that down, not sure if it's true or if it just looks that way to a stoned sailor, but it's interesting.

"Lt. Mane…"

"He shows up and asks if he can talk to me in private, which is like, really fucking weird, because I didn't think he even knew who I was, but I say sure, because I'm not going to say no. No one ever says no, not to Lt. Mane. So I get up, and the guys are razzin' me about getting in trouble for something, and I flip 'em off, tell 'em not to eat my pie."

"Uh huh… What did Mane want to say to you?"

"He asked about Steve and if we were close. And I said yes. Said how scared I'd been. And he told me I was right to be scared, because that was fucking scary. He said I was in security, right? And I said yes. So he said he knew who hacked our computers and made us target the _Borealis_ , that he was on the ship, pretending to be an Irish Navy Captain, but he was really… Something else. Sin Fin? Something like that. Some sort of terrorist. He asked if I could find a spot where we could take him and deal with him ourselves, make sure he knew that you don't fuck with the US Navy.

"That sounded good to me, so I headed to my station, checked the security feeds, and, there's this place… Usually gets used for fucking. Kind of small, but there's enough room to do a girl good there."

"No camera's watching?" Burley clarifies.

"Yeah. Way down, aft end of the ship. Storage area. I made sure the cameras between that guy's room and that spot were all off or pointing so they couldn't get a good shot of anything.

"By the time I'd wrapped that up, Mane was back with Kev and Rod, and they've both got family on the _Borealis_ , too. Mane says he'll meet us down on the storage bay, he's got to make sure everything is clear first, and we're just about to leave security, when it hits me that the cameras are grainy as shit, you can't get enough detail to really ID a face, not certain, but nametags and insignias can get cleaned up enough to stand out.

"So I tell Kev and Rod to take their nametags off. I take mine off, too, and we head to… Is he really the Admiral's son?"

"Yes."

"Fuck." He sounds weary as he says that, voice aching with regret. "We head to McGee's room to grab him, and he doesn't want to come. He was supposed to come. Mane said, he'd come. He's sitting there in that fancy room, fancy uniform, his computer's up and running and I remember thinking he could be doing it again. He could be targeting another ship right now, and maybe this time our guys wouldn't get it stopped in time."

"He asked you to leave…" Burley adds.

"Couldn't leave. Leave a guy like that, a guy who can kill people with numbers, and people die. He was scared, could feel it coming off him. Guilty son of a bitch knew what'd he'd done, knew what we were going to do about it. He'd pressed a button on his computer right when we got in, and the screen went blank, and who knew what the hell it was doing, who was going to die. So we're crowding in, going to get him, and he's telling us bullshit lies, trying to make us go, trying to kill someone else, and then whips that… I don't know what it was, it was small and hit Kev in the eye, and he drops, bleeding out of his eye, and we… I don't know. It's fuzzy, you know?"

Nordstrom looks at his hands. They're covered in bruises, scratches, bandages over his knuckles and wrists.

"Doc said I broke my toe on him. Kicked him so hard my toe broke. Didn't know you could kick someone that hard.

"I hit the table, and the computer fell, so maybe that saved someone, maybe the damn thing broke and…" Nordstrom's flailing between a drugged fantasy in which he's the hero and a horrific reality where he almost beat a man to death on another man's say so for no good reason. Reality starts to win and he says, "If he wasn't… Why'd Mane tell us to… I mean…"

"That's what we're trying to find out, Dave," Burley says gently. "Thank you for answering my questions. This has been very helpful."

"Can I go back to my bunk?"

"I'm sorry. No. I think you're going back to the infirmary, and from there to the brig."

Nordstrom nods at that.

"You'll note that Seaman Nordstrom has been exceptionally helpful?" the JAG asks.

Stan nods. "And we're also making note of the fact that he was basically ordered to do it by a superior who has the ear of the Admiral and that he was under false pretenses as to what he was doing."

"Good."

* * *

Millins took point on Ylyns. Very similar story. JAG on the case because the perp is stoned off his ass on pain meds. The overwhelming pile of evidence proving he was involved meant the JAG decided immediate cooperation was the best way to go, followed by a somewhat rambling, disjointed story about how Mane hunted him down, explained what had happened, and hatched a plan to take care of the Irish Terrorist on board.

They read up on Manz's background, making sure he didn't work on the computer systems, that he, also, hadn't personally seen what had happened with the test.

They reconnect with Olnton, their tech guy, who's been pouring over McGee's computer and is not only very impressed, but thinking that he might actually try that computer job triaging system that went live a few months ago. He hasn't touched it for any of his own work, not having a lot of faith in the DC branch of NCIS Cybercrime, but if this guy runs it, they may actually be useful.

"McGee's still unconscious, right?" Olnton asks.

"Last I checked in he was drifting in and out, but mostly out."

Olnton nods. "Give me an hour to recreate what he was doing. It'd be easier if he could talk me through it, but, maybe I can figure it out. Then let me see if they ever found where the attack was coming from, or if they stopped looking."

Burley nods. He can see one possible defensive avenue for Mane, that someone, somehow, told him that Tim was the hacker, and that he didn't know who Tim really was, and he made a very bad, very stupid, but honest mistake.

Well, he thinks that's the story Mane might try. He's fairly certain it won't stand, but making sure he has the details set ahead of time to shoot that story down will make this interrogation go smoothly.

So he and Millins go off to interview everyone who was on the computer deck, see what they think had happened, how the attack worked, and what they'd learned so far.

* * *

Two hours later, they're ready to take on Mane.

Mane is sharp.

Mane is not drugged.

His JAG is all but quivering with indignation that Mane has been drawn aside, confined to quarters, and prevented from speaking to anyone. He has an _Important Job_ to do, by God, and sitting in his room, he's not doing it… Blah, blah, blah. Burley's heard it a million times. He's fairly sure that day two of Defense Law 101 is how-to-complain-vigorously-about-what-a-pain-in-the-ass-this-whole-thing-is. The JAG was ramping up for a good, long spell about how ridiculous it was to confine someone who wasn't even near the fight when it took place and obviously could not have had anything to do with it.

To which Burley replied, while sitting down across from Mane, "Stuff it, Counsel."

The JAG (who had introduced herself, but in proper Gibbsian technique Burley ignored that) looks utterly appalled to be spoken to like that.

Then Burley went through Mane' Article 31 rights with him. Which shut him and his lawyer up, because that means he's being considered a suspect and not just a witness. The JAG looks surprised by this. Mane does not. Then Burley asked the JAG if there was anything she wanted to add. She didn't; he'd covered everything properly.

"Is it true that at roughly 18:45 you entered the Admiral's mess, whispered something to Admiral McGee, then excused yourself and left?"

"That sounds right. I don't remember the precise time."

"That's fine, at least seven people put you there. What did you say to Admiral McGee?"

"That's classified, sir."

"Not anymore. I am fully read in on the test which sparked Director McGee's presence on this ship." He opens the file of paperwork and hands Mane the first sheet, a signed letter from Jarvis giving permission to Mane to say anything he needs to about the test to Burley or his team.

Mane reads that, nods, and then says, "I'm sorry sir, I still cannot speak to what I said to the Admiral. My lawyer is not read in, and I will not answer questions without her present."

"Uh huh." Burley listens to that for a second, packs his paperwork up, and heads out of the conference room they're using for interrogation. Two minutes later, he's back with his cell phone and a direct line to Secretary Jarvis.

"Would you repeat that to Lt. Mane' Attorney?" Burley says to Jarvis, then hits speaker.

"This is Secretary of the Navy Clayton Jarvis. Lt. Mane?"

"Yes, sir."

"You have permission to speak to anyone on Agent Burley's team, in front of your lawyer. You may speak to Leon Vance, should he arrive. In fact, anyone who is even remotely related to the investigation of this case is now read in on the test and you have permission to speak to them. The only people I do not want you talking to is the press and other people on your ship. If you attempt to avoid answering any questions about this case by hiding behind its classified nature, I have already instructed Agent Burley to hit you with immediate Obstruction of Justice charges. Are we clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Answer his questions." And Jarvis hung up.

Burley smiles pleasant. "Now, Lt. Mane, would you tell me what it was you said to Admiral McGee?"

"I invoke my Article 31 rights."

"Ah. You are refusing to answer that question because the answer is incriminating?"

"I invoke my Article 31 rights."

Burley nods again. Mane is on the ball.

"Did you know that just seconds after the fight stopped that Seaman Nordstrom identified you as the man who put them up to the assault on Director McGee?"

"No."

"Do you have any idea why he would have said that?"

"I invoke my Article 31 rights."

"Uh huh… Did you know that Seaman Ylyns also identified you as the man who told him Timothy McGee was behind an attempted attack on the Borealis?"

"No."

"Do you have any idea why he would have said that?"

"I invoke my Article 31 rights."

Burley nods.

"Did you know you were seen conferring with Seaman Nordstrom in the surveillance deck, and then less than two minutes later all of the security cameras on the hallway Timothy McGee's room is on, in addition to all of the hallways leading to a secluded spot below decks, turned off or were realigned to prevent filming that path?"

"No."

"Did you know that Seaman Nordstrom admits to turning those cameras off/changing their alignment on your orders?"

"No."

"Where did you go after you spoke to Admiral John McGee?"

"I invoke my article 31 rights."

"When did you learn the attack on the Borealis was not real?"

"Af—I invoke my article 31 rights."

"Who told you the attack on the Borealis was not real?"

"I invoke my article 31 rights."

Burley nods again. "According to Nordstrom and Ylyns, you told both of them Timothy McGee was a Sinn Fein terrorist who hacked the _Stennis_ , made it fire on the Borealis, and only by the fast action of the tech crews was the ship able to prevent the attack."

"Is there a question in there?" The JAG asks.

"Oh, yes, do you think that's a rather bizarre story for two guys who don't really know each other, don't know what Sinn Fein is, didn't work on the computer section, barely knew what the code red had been about, and had never seen Timothy McGee before, and didn't know he was on the ship because they never came in contact with him in any way, shape, or form, to come up with on their own?"

"I couldn't speculate as to that."

"Did you see Director McGee?"

Mane thinks about that, and The JAG whispers to him. "I do not believe so. We were not seated in the same room and did not speak to each other, it's possible I passed him in the hallway or something, though."

"That agrees with the movement logs both you and Lt. James kept. From what I can tell there is no time when the two of you were in the same place. When did you find out he was on board?"

"Wh—I invoke my article 31 rights."

"Counselor, I'd like you to explain Article 31 rights, again."

The JAG purses her brow.

"Specifically would you explain to your client that while it is true that he does have the right to avoid incriminating himself, he does not have the right to avoid incriminating anyone else."

The JAG nods. "Your Article 31 rights do not cover anyone else. Go ahead, answer the question."

He watches the light go on for Mane, the hole he's dug himself into. By saying he had not seen or spoken to McGee, he's given himself no way to find out McGee was on the ship. By giving himself no way to find out McGee was on the ship, then he had to be told. Only four people knew Timothy McGee, son of John McGee, was on the ship, John McGee, Tim McGee, Remy James, and Clayton Jarvis. Three of them certainly did not tell Mane McGee was on the ship, and the other one had to disobey a direct order, given to him by the Secretary of the Navy, to do it.

"Lt. Mane?"

"May I have a moment with my lawyer?"

Burley nods. "Certainly. We'll be outside. Knock when you're ready to resume."

"Think he'll break?" Burley asks Millin, who'd been sitting at the back of the conference room, watching, taking notes, and running the recording.

She shakes her hand equivocally. "Can't imagine he won't, no sane person wouldn't, but I'm not feeling it. There's a lot of squirrelly going on in that guy's head."

"Yeah."

Ten minutes later the JAG storms out. "He's fired me. He's all yours."

"Millin…"

"I'm getting the paperwork."

* * *

"You have read and been advised of your rights?" Burley says as he sits before Mane.

Mane sits in front of the paper where he signed away his right to counsel. "Yes."

"You are aware that if you did not like your previous JAG that any other counsel that you like will be found for you?"

"Yes."

"And yet you are choosing to go without counsel?"

"Yes."

"You are waving your right to avoid incriminating yourself?"

"Yes."

"You are aware that you do not have to answer any question that may incriminate you?"

"Yes, let's get on with this."

Burley shakes his head. "Your funeral, asshole. When did you find out Timothy McGee was on board?"

"I learned Capt. T. McGee of the Irish Naval Service was going to be on board three weeks ago. I didn't know he was John McGee's son until after the attack."

"Uh huh. Sure. How did you find he was responsible for the attack?"

"One of the techs told me they had tracked the attack to a computer in Stateroom C."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"The name of this Tech?"

"I don't remember."

"When did you learn the attack wasn't real?"

"Ten seconds ago."

"So, you mean to say, you thought the guest of the SecNav, while on this ship, hacked the ship under the SecNav's nose, while he was in a conference room with the man and the Admiral, and that it was only by the quick thinking of your tech crew that disaster was averted?"

"Yes."

Burley looks to Millin; she rolls her eyes. "Then what happened?" Burley asks.

"After I learned where the attack came from, I reported to the Admiral, told him we had found the attack, but not where it had come from, and that we were dealing with it."

"Did you tell him how you intended to deal with it?"

"No."

"And you and the Admiral have the sort of relationship where you just 'deal with things' and he doesn't ask any questions."

"Yes. He trusts me to handle his affairs in a satisfactory manner."

"That's a lot of trust," Burley sounds disbelieving.

"I've earned it. He doesn't have to worry about anything. Whatever the issue may be, I deal with it."

"And you dealt with this issue by finding three sailors who had family on the Borealis, lying to—"

"I was not lying to them. As well as I understood the situation that was true."

"Really. Sinn Fein member? A member of the _political wing_ of the IRA decides to hack a US Naval ship? Where precisely did you manage to get that from?"

"I don't remember."

Burley stares at Mane, _don't try this shit_ , in his eyes. Mane stares back at him, eyes trying to look innocent. "You're going to have a whole lot of convenient amnesia aren't you?"

"It's possible," Mane replies.

"You corralled three sailors, tasked them with bringing Captain McGee to you, what was going to happen to him when they got him to you?"

"We were going to kill him. And we were going to make it hurt. Then we were going to dispose of him. No one hack as US Naval ship."

Burley nods. "This is how you handle things for John McGee? How many other people have you murdered for him?"

"I invoke my article 31 rights."

"Oh, so you're not entirely stupid."

Mane shrugs at that.

"So, let's get back to how you found out Timothy McGee was on this ship. You are telling me that no one, say the Admiral for example, told you he was on this ship?"

"Correct. Admiral McGee did not mention his son was on the ship."

"And to make sure I'm perfectly clear, no one, like, say, The Admiral, told you that targeting the Borealis was a test?"

"Correct. I did not know it was a test until recently."

"Good, splendid. And were you handling the hunt for who had hacked the _Stennis_ for the Admiral?"

"Yes."

"I see. I was under the impression that Thomas Russle, this ship's XO was doing that."

"He oversaw everything. It was my job to run information to the Admiral, keep him up to date."

"Ah. I talked to Russle about an hour ago, do you know what he told me?"

"No."

"It's fascinating, but according to him, they are still trying to find out how the ship was hacked."

"Really?"

"Yes. And you know what, my tech guy, he got a hold of McGee's computer, which still works, by the way, and not only did the attack not come from that computer, but anyone tracking his logs can see that no one on the tech team even got close to finding where the attack came from."

"Interesting."

"Yes, utterly fascinating. Now, tell me again about your tech."

Mane's eyes jerk to the upper left. "About six one, blonde, female, pretty eyes, said they'd tracked the attack to a computer in the C stateroom. Maybe she's got something against the Irish? Saw McGee on deck and decided that he was trouble? Hell, could be an ex-girlfriend for all I know."

Burley nods. "Uh huh." He pulls out his phone and beings texting to Millin. She quietly begins searching staff records behind him.

"So, is it your habit to order a man to death based on the word of a nameless woman you've never met?"

"I invoke my article 31 rights."

"Good plan. If I was digging myself this deep into a hole, I'd be invoking them right and left, too."

His phone buzzes, text from Millin, and he reads quickly.

"As the Admiral's secretary, you'd know there are sixty-two techs on this ship, right?"

"Didn't know the exact number, but that sounds about right."

"Would you be shocked to know none of them is a tall, blonde woman?"

"A tall, blonde Tech told me they tracked the attack."

"Uh huh. Look, we can go through the pictures of everyone on the damn ship if you want, but that's just a waste of time. There is no tall, blonde woman. You knew Timothy McGee was on this ship from probably about ten minutes after the attack when Admiral McGee ripped you a new asshole for not noticing the name on the visitor roster and checking closer."

"There was a blonde woman."

"Quit the bullshit! I've seen junkies going through withdraw who are better liars than you. And do not even think of using this to build-up an insanity defense, I've got your psych evals, you did not just have a psychotic break, start imagining a blonde woman, and then have a man beaten three-quarters to death based on that imaginary blonde's say so.

"Now, start at the beginning, when did you learn Timothy McGee was on this ship?"

Mane blinks, thinks for a moment, and then says, "13:02. The Admiral headed into the conference room. Jarvis said hello. He was about to say hello back, he saw Tim, and began to ask questions."

"And how did you know that?"

"The same way I know what all of his issues are and how to deal with them before he even knows he needs them dealt with, I've got everywhere he goes without me bugged. I knew it was a test by 13:05."

Burley looks at Millin, she starts checking to see where Mane was then.

"Can you produce the recording?"

"No. I didn't make one. I just listen in, I don't record."

"Can you produce the bug?"

"No. I destroyed it."

"Why?"

"Listening in on a top-secret classified meeting is a felony."

"How did you destroy it?"

"Stomped on it."

"In those shoes?"

"No."

"In a different pair of shoes?"

"I got rid of the shoes, too."

"How?"

"Tossed them in the incinerator."

"How about your ear piece?"

"Destroyed."

"Also in the incinerator?"

"Yes."

Burley leans in closer to him, takes a sip of his drink and says, "Let me ask you something, are you just going to keep coming up with bullshit story after bullshit story in an effort to try and avoid saying that you knew Tim McGee was on this ship because the Admiral told you?"

"He did not tell me."

"Right. I believe your tall blonde story more than I believe that."

"The Admiral was ordered to secrecy."

"Uh huh, and you know that because…?"

"I heard the order."

"Of course you did." Stan nods as he says that. "So, you're listening in on this conversation, and you know this is a test, you know nothing bad can possibly happen from this test, you know that Captain McGee is in fact Tim McGee, Admiral McGee's son, and you decide that having him beaten to death is an appropriate response to…"

Mane stares at him blankly.

"What grievous injury or insult was so bad that a man who was here on the orders of the SecNav had to be murdered for it?"

"Like you said, they still haven't tracked his worm. He embarrassed his father; he embarrassed our crew."

"Ah. Kill many people for embarrassing Admiral McGee? Never mind, you invoke your article 31 rights, I know. How close are you and Admiral McGee?"

"How do you mean?"

"I've never had a secretary before, but I've got a partner. I've had several really good ones, men and women who would die to protect me and kill to avenge me. Would you say you've got that sort of relationship with the Admiral?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Would he die to protect you?"

Mane looks very disturbed by that idea. "You'd have to ask him that."

"No, then. You know when that's true about someone. Now, my partner, Millin," Burley points to her and she smiles. "She's the best. She's got my back, watches me like a hawk, my wife loves her because she's the woman who makes sure I come home at the end of the day in one piece."

"Uh, congratulations."

"Thank you. It takes a lot of work to build up that sort of a partnership. We've been together four years now, and I love working with her, but you know what, last year, one of the guys in our office thought it'd be fun to prank me, bad, by loosening all the screws in my desk so when I leaned against it, the whole thing collapsed. Everyone in the office thought that was hysterical, and I have to admit, I blushed. I was EMBARRASSED," Burley shakes his head in mock shame. "But you know what Millin didn't do? She didn't hunt Harker down and kill him." Millin's shaking her head at this. "So, in what possible sane universe do you have a man killed because he embarrassed your Boss?"

"The Admiral is an Admiral, he's the face of the Navy, and insult to him is an insult to the Navy."

"Oh," Burley turns to Millin, "This keeps getting better, doesn't it?"

She nods. "You should write books. Of course, once we drop your ass in jail for the next twenty-five years, you'll have plenty of time to do just that."

Burley nods at that, too. "So, back on track, you were defending the honor of the Navy?"

"Yes."

"You were defending the honor of the Navy against a test authorized by the SecNav to find weaknesses that could then be corrected so that when the Cyber version of Harper Deering shows up he won't find a weakness to exploit thus killing hundreds of sailors? This makes sense to you?"

"He humiliated his father, he humiliated this ship, he humiliated every tech on it."

"Uh huh. How was this ship chosen?"

"McGee told his father he picked it. Wanted to rub his nose in it."

Burley's eyes narrow, and he goes through the papers in front of him, he finds the one he wanted… Lt. James recorded the test, and he's got a copy of the conversation.

"McGee picked the ship?" Burley asks.

"Yes."

"Uh huh. What kind of relationship do Admiral McGee and Director McGee have?"

"I couldn't say."

"What size pants does the Admiral wear?"

"34x32."

"How does he like his coffee?"

"Black, one sugar."

"Steak?"

"Medium rare."

"The Admiral has a daughter as well, right?"

"Yes."

"When's her birthday?"

"July 25th, 1987."

"So, you know all sorts of personal details about the Admiral's life, but you couldn't say what sort of relationship he has with his son?"

"Correct."

"Why not?"

"He doesn't talk about his son."

"At all?"

"Rarely. Last I heard anything about him, Sarah had dropped off one of the wedding pictures and a scan of the baby."

"What's the baby's name?"

"I don't know."

"Why didn't the Admiral attend the wedding?"

"He wasn't invited."

"Did you think that was a slight?"

"Yes. He's a great man, and his son belittles and ignores him."

"And it must piss you off that there's only one picture of the baby, who's name you don't know, because that punk-ass kid of McGee's won't let anyone in the family tell him about…" Burley's about to say her, but realizes that the blackout on information on Kelly is so complete that Mane doesn't know that she is a girl. "it."

"It does."

"And that part, during the test, where McGee told his father to just sit down and shut up, because he was running things, that must have made your ears burn."

"It did."

Burley nods. He can see that Mane is genuinely pissed at Tim, and it has a whole lot to do with whatever sort of personal relationship the McGees have and nothing to do with any sort of slight to the ship.

"Do you respect the Admiral?"

"Couldn't do this job if I didn't."

"Do you love him?"

Mane's eyes go wide and he jerks a bit at that question.

"Not romantic or anything," though the amount of cold fear Burley's feeling pouring off of Mane right now makes him think there may be a romantic angle on this, "just as an important person in your life, father figure, maybe?"

"Yes."

"And whatever he needs, whatever he wants, you do it, and you do it right, and you do it perfect, he doesn't even need to ask, because you're so good at your job, you just know?"

"Yes."

"And Tim McGee doesn't respect him, doesn't love him, doesn't even bother to invite him to his wedding, right?"

"Right."

"He didn't show the proper respect during the test, did he?"

"No, he didn't."

"Ten minutes together, and he couldn't keep his mouth in line, he had to be a smart-ass, showing up his dad in front of his dad's Boss, explaining what they were doing slowly, telling Jarvis that his dad was old-school and wouldn't understand the sort of attack he was doing."

"Right."

"According to Jarvis, he told your father, during the test, that you claim you were listening in on, that the ship was picked at random. According to Lt. James, who was recording the test and everything that was said, absolutely nothing even remotely like what you just said happened. So, let's try this again, how did you know Timothy McGee was on this ship?"

Mane chews his lip, and Burley can see the look shift in his eyes, the moment he takes the plunge and commits to whatever he's going to do next. "If I plead guilty there won't be a trial, right?"

"Correct."

"I walked Admiral McGee to his meeting with the SecNav. I opened the door for him and saw Tim McGee at the table. I knew that he was bad news. I knew he was a disrespectful asshole who never showed the proper gratitude to the great man his father is. I planned the assault on Timothy McGee. I found three sailors who had family on the Borealis. I lied to them about how dangerous the attack was. I told them Timothy McGee was behind it. I instructed them to bring him to me. I plead guilty to the assault and attempted murder of Timothy McGee. It was entirely my idea, and I am the sole person responsible for it."

"Uh huh. Just like your article 31 rights don't cover other people, you also can't get out of answering questions that may implicate someone else by confessing."

"You have my statement. It's complete. I refuse to answer anything else."

"We'll add obstruction of justice charges."

"I just plead guilty to attempted murder, obstruction of justice charges do not scare me."

"Fine. You've said you're very good at your job."

"Yes." Mane's annoyed by this.

"And you love the Admiral like a father, look up to him, idolize him maybe."

Mane nods a little.

"You do everything you possibly can to make him happy, right?"

"Yes."

"So, this is a sticky position, because either I have to believe that the Admiral would have been happy to have Tim killed, or that you, even though your entire life and everything in it is devoted to the Admiral, decided to have his son murdered and make him sad, make him angry, make him want to find out who did it and destroy that person because as a 'great man' he loves his ungrateful little bastard of a son."

Mane blanches and swallows hard.

"So, which one is it?"

Mane shakes his head. "You have my statement. I'm done talking to you."

He texts the MA, who then returns Mane to his quarters. (They're out of places in the brig to put people where they can't talk to each other.)

"So…"

Millin shakes her head. "He knows McGee wasn't supposed to talk about the test. At the very least he's covering for his Boss on disobeying a direct order."

Burley nods. "Think they're lovers?"

Millin raises her hands, wiggling one in an 'eh' sort of gesture. "Didn't get that vibe, but… It'd explain the level of devotion on this better than father-figure worship."

He thinks about it. "Fingering McGee on this, even for the disobeying the direct order'll get McGee stripped of rank, maybe tossed out. That'd pretty much kill him, wouldn't it?"

Millin shrugs. "That's what everyone else thinks. We'll know when we talk to him. Better question, would you be willing to beat a man to death, with your own hands, because the plan was Mane would get his licks in, too, because he insulted someone?"

Burley shakes his head. "So, are we missing a pile of motive here, or is Mane really that warped."

"I'll check for pressure points."

Burley nods. "I want to see McGee's office and quarters, without him in it."

* * *

Burley gives the MAs a few minutes to get Admiral McGee out. He doesn't want to lay eyes on the man, or, more importantly, let him lay eyes on him, until he's ready to interrogate him.

As an Admiral's flagship, the _Stennis_ boasts more "entertaining" capacity than an average Nimitz class aircraft carrier.

And as an Admiral's flagship, there's a significantly nicer suite available for him.

By aircraft carrier standards, it's huge, which boils down to about 200 square feet. It's extremely tidy. Burley has the sense that even dust is afraid to fall out of place here. (Not that a speck of dust would dare to land anywhere in this sacred temple to all things Navy.)

The sleeping quarters are sparse. Large bed (navy and white linens, perfectly made), night table (clean, nothing on top of it. Burley opens the drawer: kindle, tissues, eyeglass case, eye drops, small humidor) light over the bed, photographs on the walls of several ports, Burley knows Hong Kong, San Francisco, and Pearl Harbor, but the other three are a mystery to him.

Like the sleeping quarters, the private bath is immaculate. One thing catches his attention, the shaving kit is a brush, a soap mug, and a straight razor. The man who shaves with one of those at sea is hardcore.

Closet is tidy. Everything perfectly pressed and hanging. He assumes that John has to have some off duty clothing, but he's not seeing it. Probably in the impossibly neat looking chest at the foot of the bed.

He opens the lid, extra blankets, clean towels, a pair of sneaker, sweats, t-shirts, a few off-duty, laying around outfits, underwear, and socks. Apparently, this isn't the kind of guy who just shows up for something in a suit. He's an Admiral, and he wants everyone on earth to know it, always.

Spartan. That's the main thing he's getting from this room. This is a man who pared everything that wasn't essential to his job out of his life. There's no sign of friends or family in here, just a space to rest between shifts.

So, the office has to be more revealing, because that's where he really lives.

And it is. Like the sleeping quarters everything is beyond tidy. The Navy thrives on paperwork, but there's none on the desk. It's plain, functional black plastic and cool gray metal. John's computer is up on it, but off right now. Burley is tempted to snoop, but he's already pushed his without a warrant leeway as far as he can.

Behind the desk is something he'd call a shrine. There are two officer's swords up on the wall, each one with a brass nameplate. "Capt. William McGee 1893-1918" "Adm. Nelson McGee 1919-1988" Below them are two flags in shadow boxes, one is clearly old, the stars are… well, they look wrong to Burley, but in 1918, there were only… 48, he thinks, states. Under the flags is a the traditional ribbon salad.

Tons of them. Medals all over the place. Between what must be McGee's father and grandfather, it looks like every single medal a man could win from the Navy had been won.

A little further down is John's sword, along with his formal medals.

Burley shakes his head. ' _Respected member of the Navy.'_ Trust Leon to understate the case. _He's a Four Star Admiral, son of a Four Star Admiral, with more decorations than the fucking Christmas Tree in Times Square._

_'Child abuser'_ Gibbs had said. To the right and left of the shrine are book shelves. The left is filled with naval histories and technical manuals for planes, drones, electronics in general. On the right is… Fluffy stuff. Fiction. Odd for a man who owns a Kindle to have two shelves devoted to…

There's a shelf of… Burley doesn't recognize the books. He picks one up. Mysteries. There are five of them, and next to them is a picture of Tim and Abby at what has to be their wedding. It's a candid shot, unplanned from the looks of it. Tim's smiling at Abby as they dance. It's really sweet. The costumes are kind of weird, sort of Victorian or something, and he's not sure what's going on with that, but he makes a mental note to badger Gibbs for more pictures, later, when they aren't in the middle of this case, because he can't wait to see what Gibbs wore to that thing.

There's a grainy black and white ultrasound in a frame next to the shot from the wedding.

The shelf below it has… He picks one of them up, too. Some sort of horror thing. Then it clicks, the name on those books is Sarah McGee. He opens one of the mysteries and sees a picture (old picture) of Tim smiling at the camera.

He didn't know that McGee wrote. He checks the publication date and saw the last one came out in fall. Writes. He flips to the end of the last one and sees that there's a book due out later this year.

He feels his respect for McGee rise, he knows how busy he is running a team. Running a department, writing novels, family: the man can't sleep.

He puts the novels back and picks up the picture next to the horror ones. It's a shot of the Admiral. He's got a young woman on his left, his arm around her. On the right is a young man, and he's got an arm around him, too. All three of them are grinning for the camera. Tucked into the corner of the frame is a save the date card. Apparently Sarah McGee and Glenn (must be the guy) Holland are getting married in March.

On the walls are more pictures. More ports (New York, he knows), and then a gallery of shots of drones, some in the air, some on the ground, some John was putting together or taking apart.

One more wall of pictures, this one has shots of John with _Important_ people. There he is with the President. And the previous president, and hell, the one before that. He's rubbing elbows with Hillary and Bill Clinton at Chelsea's wedding. There's a shot of him with two Supreme Court justices. More people Burley doesn't recognize. A group shot of all the current Admirals. There's a picture of a kid, can't be more than six, but he's guessing it's got to be John, sitting on John Kennedy's lap.

He's on buddy-buddy terms with everyone who's ever mattered.

Burley has never called Jarvis before. He called Leon, Leon called Jarvis, Jarvis called back two seconds later to let him know that yes, this mission was unclassified for the JAG. He doesn't exactly want to call Jarvis, but… he doesn't know who else would know.

So he does call.

"Jarvis."

"Excuse me, Sir. This is Stan Burley, I'm running…"

"I remember Agent Burley, it's only been two hours. How are things going?"

"Well, I hope. I'm getting ready to talk to Admiral McGee. I'm in his office, trying to get a better idea of who he is. I was wondering… his ambitions don't end at Admiral, do they?"

"No, they don't."

"Is he gunning for your job?"

"No. Higher. He's on the short list for the next Secretary of Defense."

"Okay, thank you. Will he get it?"

"Depends on who wins in November, but right now, I'd say the odds are even if Hillary wins."

"Thank you, sir."

"Anything else?"

"Yes, actually. The conference room where you ran the test. Where was McGee sitting?"

"Middle of the table, facing the big screen TV."

"So his back was to the door?"

"I think so."

"Thanks."

"Why does that matter?"

"Lt. Mane is telling any and every lie he can think of to avoid having to say McGee told him Tim was on the ship. Just making sure his current one, 'I walked Adm. McGee to the door and saw Tim,' Doesn't hold."

"I was facing the door, getting myself a drink. John opened the door himself. Mane wasn't anywhere around. He couldn't have seen Tim from the doorway because he wasn't in the doorway." Jarvis thinks for a second and adds, "But even if he had been, the way the door opens would have blocked his view of Tim."

"Thank you, sir."

"You're welcome."

Almost time to talk to the Admiral.

Burley leaves McGee's quarters and head for the conference room they are running the interrogations in.

Millin is waiting for him, along with Olnton.

"Do we have shots of McGee?"

"Got some from when he was in the infirmary here," Olnton says.

"No, newer… I want all the bandages and swelling and bruises visible." He gets Gibbs' number up on his phone. _Can you send me shots of McGee?_

Two minutes later his phone beeps, new email. Burley opens it and winces, all the swelling and bruising and everything else is indeed visible now. He looks about fifty times worse than he does in the infirmary shots. "God." He taps the phone a few times and begins to print the shots out.

_Going to talk to The Admiral?_ Pops up on his phone.

_Few minutes._

_Crucify him, Stan._

_On it, Boss._

* * *

"Admiral." Given his status and rank, The Admiral gets to have his "interview" in his office. Burley goes there to see him, not the other way around.

Admiral McGee, wearing glasses, reading a report or something, snaps the folder he was looking at shut, and says, "You are wasting my time and my ship's time. You have the three men who assaulted my son in custody, we should be back on the move, heading toward Pearl, not sitting here in port doing nothing."

The Admiral does not offer them chairs. He does have a small sofa against the wall of his office. Burley nods to Millins, who sits down, opens her lap top, points it toward them, and begins recording. Burley remains standing. "We're recording this. Have you been made aware of your Article 31 rights?"

Annoyance is clear on John's face. "Yes. Are you actually accusing me of having anything to do with this?"

Burley doesn't answer. No way he's getting off track until he's got all the points of the Article 31 regs recorded. "Are you aware you may have the counsel of your choice present at this time and that we will wait as long as necessary for said counsel to become available."

"I don't need counsel. I had nothing to do with this. What I need is my ship moving, heading west!"

"Are you aware that you may request counsel at any time?"

"Yes. I know my Article 31s in and out. Come on, we're wasting time! Let's get this over with."

"Tell me about your relationship with Lt. Mane."

McGee looks irked by that. "Tell you what? He's my secretary. I'm fond of him. Love him like a son. He's the right hand I've always wanted."

Burley can feel Millin think, _fat lot of good that ever did anyone_.

"Is he good at his job?" Burley asks, voice flat and even.

"He wouldn't have his job if he wasn't."

"Your fitness evals for him show that he's an exemplary secretary."

John nods. "He is. I've had many assistants over the years, and he's the finest one so far."

"Uh huh. And is he anything other than your secretary?"

" _What_ do you mean by that?" The Admiral is spitting mad from that accusation. Interesting. Cold fear off of Mane, rage from the Admiral. Have to see how the questions go, but this might be something he can poke the man with later.

"Exactly what I said, do you have a relationship beyond the professional? What precisely is involved in being your 'right hand?'"

"He handles everything for me. Being an Admiral is 90% tiny details and 10% very big decisions. He takes care of all the tiny details for me."

"So he does 90% of your job?"

"Yes."

Burley finally lets some attitude out. "Then why do you have the title?"

John gives him a cold look. "Because I'm one of the eleven men in this country who can do the other ten percent."

"Ah. And doing your job, making sure the big decisions get made, is that why you haven't been in to check on your son?"

"No. I am not there because I've been confined to quarters by the Secretary of the Navy."

"Of course."

"Is he still alive?" That didn't sound nearly as insistent as Burley thought it should, and for that matter, it should have started off this conversation.

"Yes."

"Good."

Burley's seen people get more excited about paint drying. He waits for a second to see if McGee will ask anything else, but he doesn't, so Burley says, "Can you walk me through the test."

"Certainly. It was scheduled to begin at 13:00. One of the details I did have to personally attend to delayed me slightly, so it was 13:01 when I got into the conference room."

"On your own?"

"Of course. Jarvis said that this was a meeting for me and me alone."

"And Lt. Mane did not accompany you to the conference room?"

"No. At lunch, he brought me a collection of papers I needed to sign, that's the detail I can't palm off, so I was signing, and then he took the papers to handle them, and I went to the meeting."

"So, where was Mane from say, 13:00 to 13:30?"

"I don't know where he was from 13:00 to 13:14, probably my office, but I don't know that for a fact, but by 13:16 he had joined me among the computer techs."

"And what did you do?"

"Stood around looking cool and commanding. Told someone to go find the semaphore flags so we could get communications up between the ships. I know when to stand back and let the people who know what they're doing give orders, and for that test, it wasn't me. After five minutes, when we had full communications up and running, and it was clear to my techs that whatever had happened had finished happening I left the bridge and let them handle it."

"Looks like Tim planned and handled the test well."

The Admiral didn't comment.

"Do you disagree?" Burley asks, wondering if he's so hell bent on this that he can't even lie about it being a good test to make him look better.

"I'm sure the wisdom of SecNav in testing our cyber-warfare skill is sound."

"Not what I asked, did your son do a good job designing the test?"

"You'd have to ask the Cyber-techs."

"Because as one of the pre-eminent drone architects in the Navy, you don't personally have enough of a computer background to tell if he did a good job?" Burley can sense Millins smiling at him for that.

"I don't appreciate your sarcasm."

"I don't appreciate people who don't answer my questions. According to your CV you are qualified to have an opinion as to the effectiveness and quality of that test. Was it a good test?"

"It was an adequate test. It did the job. It had the proper safeguards built in. It worked."

"But not a good one." McGee nods. "What would a good one have had that this test didn't?"

"My approval before it was started."

That touched a nerve, McGee's sounding hot, angry, a whole lot more emotionally involved than he was with anything about Tim's injuries. Then Burley gets it, McGee not being told implies a lack of trust in his ability to keep a secret, implies a lack of belief in his honesty. "Ah. Sounds like a quarrel between you and SecNav."

McGee doesn't comment on that, either.

"When did Lt. Mane find out the test wasn't real?"

"I have no idea. The last time I saw him, toward the end of dinner, he still seemed to be under the impression that the test was real."

Burley nods.

"And how did he learn that your son was on the ship?"

"He handles the visitors rosters. He knew Tim was coming before I did."

"Was he part of the delegation that greeted SecNav, McGee, and James?"

"No. Russle handles greeting all visitors to the ship."

"So, can you think of a time when Mane would have seen Tim?"

"No." McGee shrugs at that. "But I wasn't with either of them all day. I only saw Tim for the ten minutes we were both in the conference room. I saw Mane on and off all day. After the targeting went down and the techs got a handle on finding where the hack had come from, I left the techs, and returned to Jarvis to finish the inspection. Throughout the afternoon and evening Mane kept updating us on how the tracking was going."

"Okay. What did you say to Mane when you realized that he had missed T. McGee on the visitor's roster. After all, that wasn't exactly the most clever cover name, ever."

"Nothing. I was forbidden from speaking about the test."

"Ah." The fact that Burley doesn't believe that at all is abundantly clear on his face. "So you never said anything about your son being on the ship?"

McGee's eyes narrow in annoyance. "No. I did not mention him. I did not mention why he was on board. I did not discuss anything along those lines with anyone other than Jarvis. To do so would have been a violation of a direct order."

"Good." Burley says it deadpan, no joy in his voice. "So, just to make absolutely certain, you had nothing negative or chastising to say to your extremely talented secretary when he missed the fact that your son, using the exceptionally clever ruse of his own name and an Irish Naval Uniform, walked onto your ship incognito to spring a test on your system you didn't approve of."

"Correct. Had I not been ordered to secrecy I would have had _many_ things to say to Lt. Mane, but I was, so I didn't."

Burley nods.

"And toward the end of dinner, Mane came to see you, what did he say?"

"That they had traced the hack, and that they were handling it."

"And what did you think that meant?"

"I assumed it meant that someone had found the attack came from Tim's computer and that the MAs were in the process of dragging him to the brig."

"Did you intend to go to the brig?"

"No." John sounds appalled at that idea. "I was going to leave him there until we got to Pearl or Jarvis requested his release."

"Why? Brig might not be a very healthy place for a man accused of hacking your ship."

"It's not." John thinks about that for a second. "Probably a safer than his room turned out to be. Yes, they would have roughed him up some. Probably not that badly. The MAs don't allow fighting in the brig. They may have closed their eyes for a minute or two, but not beyond that." McGee sounds like he's enjoying that idea. "So, yes, it would have been a rough night for Tim. However, it was a classified operation, and if he suddenly got out of the brig, especially on my orders, that would have raised questions. He wasn't going to leave here unless he was under armed guard and in handcuffs."

"You think things through."

John accepts that as his due. "Part of the job. Part of the 10%."

"What did you do after dinner?"

"I excused myself, headed to the aft deck for my nightly cigar, and then was about to return to my quarters for more work when two MAs found me and escorted me to my quarters."

"When did you find out about your son?"

"Shortly after that, Lt. James came to talk to me. He told me what had happened, and since then I've been confined to quarters with no contact with the outside world."

"Okay. So, this will probably come as news to you: your techs didn't track the attack until a bit under three hours ago."

"Oh." The Admiral does not look surprised at that.

"This is likely also news to you, the attack came from a computer array in the Navy Yard in Washington DC, not your son's computer."

That does surprise the Admiral, and Burley thinks there might be a hint of fear hovering in the back of his eyes, or maybe just anger at having to deal with this.

"So, you see, we've got this problem here, your secretary, your exceptionally competent, lives to serve you, his whole life is all about making you happy, secretary, _somehow_ found out that your son was on the ship and _someone_ told him that he was responsible for the test on the ship.

"Now, Mane's told us every damn lie he can think of, but I'm interested in hearing some of yours now, so let's have at it—"

"You are accusing me of lying?"

"I've already caught you in some. But I'd certainly appreciate some honestly for my next question. How did Mane find out Tim was involved in the test?"

"You'd have to ask him."

"I did. And as I said, he's lying his ass off, so how about you give it a try?"

"I do not know." John's grown very still, very quiet in his manner, and right now he's putting Burley in mind of something very dangerous that hides in plain sight by blending in so well nothing can see it until too late.

"Of course you don't. Who was in the room when Tim said that if he got arrested for espionage that'd be the way to know the hack had been tracked?"

"I was, Jarvis was, Lt. James, and Tim."

"Ah… And yet somehow Lt. Mane got that story. But you didn't tell him, right?"

"Correct." Very quiet. He's barely making noise as he speaks. "That would have been a violation of a direct order from Jarvis."

"And you'd never violate a direct order."

"Never."

"Uh huh." That makes McGee's eyelid start twitching. "So, if you had to lay odds, do you think Jarvis, James, or Tim decided to have a little chat with Mane and spill the beans? Follow up question, why wouldn't Mane just tell us that?"

"I don't bet, and I don't know."

"Sure. What have you told Mane about your relationship with Tim?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?" Burley's voice makes it exceptionally clear that he knows that's utter horseshit.

"Was I unclear?"

"No, I just don't believe you. You never said anything, at all, about Tim to James? Novels and pictures show up in your office, but they're just this mystery person. He completely cuts you out of his life, but you say nothing."

"Nothing." McGee nods.

"Not even an 'ungrateful son-of-a-bitch can send a father's day card'?"

"I do not speak of Timothy."

"Ah. See, now I've got an even more bizarre conundrum. You have this, once again, top of the charts, ultra-efficient secretary who does everything for you, a man you love like a son. Hell, is it safe to say you love him better than your own son?" John's eyes narrow, but he doesn't comment, "Who thinks the world of you and would do anything to please you. And yet, in addition to having no way of knowing Tim was on the ship, or responsible for the attack, he's also never heard you say anything, at all, about this person, and yet somehow he thought this," he flips over two of the shots of Tim; one's a close up of his face, the other further back showing him half-reclined, fortunately unconscious, in bed, "was an appropriate response to Tim daring to set foot on your ship and test your men."

Admiral McGee studies the shots, looking them over critically. He doesn't wince or flinch. There's no sign of any recognition that Tim's human, let alone family.

"I always told him that if he didn't learn to fight someone would hurt him."

"Didn't…" Burley wants to spit. Instead he calmly gets the photos of the sailors. "This is Seaman Kevin Mans, fighting Tim cost him his left eye. This is Seaman Ylyns: broken nose, broken orbital, broken jaw, two broken fingers, two lost teeth, more sprains then they could count. This is Seaman Nordstrom: cracked wrist, broken toes, broken nose, broken ankle, two sprained elbows, and a dislocated ankle. All three of these men are at least ten years younger than your son and have at least twenty pounds on him. The only reason Tim's alive right now is because he's a _fucking_ ninja.

"Didn't…" Burley shakes his head. He places the shot of Tim's face back to the top of the pile. "Tell me Admiral, you work with Lt. Mane every single day, you claim to love him, you must know him, what could possibly have made him think this would be desirable to you?"

"I don't know."

"And, just once more for the record, you are saying that you did not tell Mane that Tim was on the ship, you did not tell him he was behind the attack, you did not tell him the attack was a test. You said absolutely nothing, at all, about this to him?"

"Yes."

"Your cigar break, did anyone see you back there?"

"I don't know. I didn't talk to anyone."

"Fine. Thank you Admiral. That's all for now."

"I won't be allowed to return to duty, will I?"

"How long have you been in the Navy?"

"First tour in '73."

"Forty-three years, that's a good long time, so you've dealt with your share of assholes trying to pull one over on you, right?"

"Yes."

"And when they're trying to con you, did you let them just go about their duty, say, maybe ship out, maybe destroy evidence, maybe get a shot to chat with the other asshole who is also trying to con you? No, you didn't. You're going to be staying here for the rest of your career. Good bye."

Burley turns to leave, hoping he never has to set eyes on that man again.

* * *

"What'd'ya got Stan?" Gibbs asks as Stan walks towards him and Vance. It's been a hell of a long day. Almost dinner time. They moved a cot into the room for Abby, and she's sacked out on it. Jimmy's napping on the sofa.

Supposedly he and Vance are getting dinner, then Vance is taking the jet back to DC. In the morning he'll let Tony, Ziva, and Ducky know what the plan is.

"Let me sit down first, okay?" Vance leads them into a waiting room and finds a cup of coffee, handing it to Burley. "Thanks." He drinks deep and sighs. He's been on for nineteen hours and he's tired. "I've got a brick wall. Everything comes to an end with Mane."

"The secretary?" Vance asks.

"Yeah. And at this point, I honestly don't know if McGee ordered it or if Mane knows his Boss so well he did it without orders. Either way it stinks. I know McGee approves of it, but I can't _prove_ he ordered it. Technically I can't _prove_ anything, not for McGee."

"What can't your prove?" Vance asks.

"I've got the best damn circumstantial case _ever_ that McGee told Mane Tim was on board. Best I can tell there's no other way he could have known, but he's lying his ass off, lame ass lie after lame ass lie, as to how he knew, and McGee's swearing up and down that he never said a peep. I've got a pretty good case that McGee wanted Tim hurt, because otherwise it's ridiculously out of character for Mane to order this. My wife isn't as devoted to me as Mane is to McGee, so the idea that he'd try to have Tim beaten to death for no reason, or that doing so would piss McGee off, makes no sense."

"You talk to the JAG about suborning perjury?" Vance asks.

Burley shakes his head. "Fired his JAG and is going without counsel."

"What's Mane doing now?" Vance asks.

"Pleading guilty. On all charges. He finally just shut up and stopped answering questions. And like he said, 'I've already pleaded guilty to attempted murder, obstruction of justice charges aren't exactly scary.'

"Best I can do is make a very good case that McGee told Mane that Tim was on the ship, why he was on the ship, and then Mane went for it."

Gibbs nods. "Bet he chewed out Mane. Rode him hard. Ripped him a new asshole for not noticing Tim was coming and figuring out the test was happening."

Burley nods. "According to him he wanted to, but didn't, because that would have been a breach of Jarvis' order."

"Uh huh." Vance says, not buying it at all.

"If you asked me to guess what happened, based on absolutely nothing, at all, that I can _prove_ , McGee ripped Mane up something fierce. Then he probably hinted that Mane could redeem himself. My guess is, that even if there was a recording of this conversation, but there isn't, because McGee's too careful for that, McGee's hint would be so vaguely worded that anyone listening could come to the conclusion that he was talking about just doing the job perfectly from here on out.

"I know for a fact that at the same time those three sailors were starting things up, Mane went to talk to the Admiral. He told McGee something. Both of them claim he told McGee that they'd tracked the hacker and it was being handled. McGee smiled then excused himself from dinner, no one knows where he went for the next ten minutes. No one knows where Mane went. I've got our people looking over the surveillance footage, but I also already know that some of the cameras were moved or turned off to provide cover for the sailors who were committing the attack.

"But, by the time Lt. James was shutting everything down, the MAs sent to find McGee located him on the path he usually takes to return from his nightly aft deck cigar break."

"Did he smell like cigar?" Gibbs asks.

"They don't remember." Burley had already thought of that. He'd asked the MAs, hoping that they might be able to shed some light on what was actually going on.

"Pretty strong and distinctive smell," Vance adds.

"I know, but I didn't get the sense they were bullshitting me. Big day, lots of crap going on, the SecNav just told them to confine an Admiral to quarters. Those were two _nervous_ MAs."

Both Gibbs and Vance nod at that. They've both done versions of that. Vance says, "So, you're saying the only case you can make against McGee is that he violated a direct order?"

"Yeah. I'd have no problem convincing a jury of that. So that's something—"

"It's not enough." Gibbs says, savagely. "Not, nearly enough. We've got to break Mane."

Burley shakes his head, and gulps more coffee. "Mane might not have anything to break. His, 'it's all me' line may be true, enough, at least."

The look on Gibbs face was utterly terrifying. "I don't care if it's true. Here's the play…"

* * *

Lt. Mane is not happy to be sitting in the conference room, again.

"You've already got my statement," he says to Burley and Millin as they walk in.

"Yes. Just double checking." Millin heads to the back of the room, setting up her laptop and recording. Once she nods to him, he says, "You are claiming that you, on your own initiative, decided to order the assault on Tim McGee."

"Yes."

Burley shakes his head. "That's unfortunate."

"Unfortunate?" Mane doesn't know where this is going.

"Well, not for you. You'll be in custody. Between attempted murder in addition to assault and attempted abduction, plus in the obstruction of justice charges for all the damn lies you're telling, that should keep you behind bars, and safe, for the rest of his life. In twenty-five years when you get out, assuming you act like an angel the whole time you're in there and you get paroled early, he'll be too damn dead to do anything about you. Admiral McGee on the other hand… He's _fucked_."

Mane stares at Burley, eyes narrowed, he looks to Millin, who doesn't offer any enlightenment, and then back to Burley. "Okay, I know this is some sort of game, where you get me to implicate John, but… What the fuck are you trying to do?"

Burley laughs. "Game. Oh, it'll be a game all right." He smiles widely, eyes hard. "It'll be a wonderful game. See, there's a reason why no one in his right mind in the Navy or the Marines fucks with an NCIS agent, and that's because we're really protective of our own. So, if someone does fuck with one of us, we have a tendency to not… exert ourselves… when it comes to protecting them later.

"And as for Tim McGee, personally, God…" Burley shakes his head. "If you were to spend all year looking for a worse target, you couldn't find one. I mean, how fucking stupid do you have to be to order an attack on a guy who is friends with SecNav, while SecNav is there? And Vance…He's the Director of NCIS. You don't want to know what they whisper about Vance and McGee. But let's put it this way, Vance _owes_ McGee, so he's not exactly going to strain himself making sure the crime gets solved if something happens to you or the Admiral. But they aren't the problem, not for the game that's coming.

"No, they're the ones that'll let us play." And Burley smiles again, big, wide, happy, _terrifying_ smile.

"See," and here Burley took out the first of the shots. It's one Gibbs gave him. "This is McGee, his wife, their daughter, and the guy next to them, with the white hair, kissing the baby girl, he's Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and he's the guy who's going to kill your Boss."

Mane snorts at that.

Burley shakes his head. "No, you don't get it. I'm not kidding. I'm not exaggerating. I'm not pulling any shit on you. I'm smiling, that's true, but that's because I'm enjoying the idea of seeing John like this," he flipped over the next picture, it's a proof of death shot from Colombia, one more shot, from Somalia, and another, from Paris, one more, from Moscow, and the last one, from Iraq. "Leroy Jethro Gibbs is a sniper, and he's got over 50 confirmed kills, 10 of them at more than two klicks out. Gibbs is retired now, officially, but you and your idiot Boss picked his son, the father of his grandkids, yeah, Abby's pregnant again, to beat the hell out of. You picked a man who's already buried one child, and you threatened to make him do it to him again, and make his daughter a pregnant widow. You are fucking _morons_ , and without protective custody you are going to die.

"So take this as literal truth, the only way Admiral McGee is going to keep breathing is if he's in custody, and honestly, even in prison, he better stay inside and away from windows."

"So, if you think this whole, 'it was just me,' thing is protecting John," Burley smiled again, "you're just signing his death warrant. And let me make this abundantly clear, no one will _ever_ lift a finger to solve his murder.

"Now, you and that folder, the official, un-redacted file on Gibbs, are going to get to spend some quality time together. And in a few hours I'm going to come back. And you're going to decide if your statement is going to stand, or if you think John's safe out there on his own."

* * *

Three hours later, Burley went back in. "Well? Is this your official statement?"

Mane looked up at him, still calm. "Did you know I did a stint with JAG before transferring onto Admiral McGee's staff?"

"No."

"Did you know your friend is recording everything?"

"Yes."

"This is my statement. I, of my own volition, ordered Seaman Nordstrom, Mans, and Ylyns, to remove Tim McGee from his quarters and bring him to me. Upon gaining custody of McGee, we were going to beat him until he wished he'd never set foot on the _Stennis_. Upon finishing that, he was to be incinerated with the rest of the garbage. By the time anyone noticed he was gone, he would have been ash. NCIS Agent Afloat Angua would have investigated, she would have been suspicious, but she wouldn't have been able to prove anything. One minute Tim McGee was in his room, one minute he was gone. Done, just like that.

"I'm curious about one thing, what are you going to do when I ask for a JAG and he brings charges against you and Gibbs for threatening the life of Admiral McGee?"

"Laugh." Burley turns slightly, so the camera is behind him, recording the back of his head, no profile shot. "It's perfectly legal for me to lie," and he winks at Mane, "to you to get a confession. As someone who worked for the JAG, I thought you'd know that."

Burley tidies up the pictures, except for the one of Gibbs with Abby, Tim, and Kelly, he leaves that one face up. "I mean, come on, look at him, white hair, old, he's even wearing glasses for God's sake. What kind of sniper wears glasses? It's been years since the President personally sent him on a wet work mission. He's completely harmless," wink, "now. I'm sure John'll live to a ripe old age," wink, "enjoying his retirement, as you rot in your jail cell for a crime you committed to please him. Maybe he'll remember you fondly in his dotage, but probably not."

Burley takes the shot of Tim's family and puts it on the stack.

Then he gets up and leaves. As he's at the door he says, quietly, as an aside, "Just to be on the safe side, I'd request a cell without a window if I were you. Rumor has it, back in '10, he nailed a guy from two klicks out through a window that was less than one foot wide and two feet tall."


	107. Waiting

Eventually, all there's left to do is wait.

If you're investigating a crime, you've got things to do, people to track down, questions to ask, backgrounds, financials, a scene to process.

But when you're the victim, or the victim's family, there's nothing but waiting.

Tim's sleeping or passed out. No real way to tell. And honestly, given how hurt he is, either option is vastly preferable to awake.

Jimmy's been going over his medical records, and has his computer out, researching both PT routines and top of the line care for what's wrong with him.

One of the nurses noticed Abby was drooping, sitting next to Tim but asleep on her feet, so she brought in a cot, which means Abby's curled on her side, dead to the world asleep.

Gibbs is sitting next to Tim, hand on that little patch of unbruised hip, waiting.

While it's true that Gibbs ran his team hard, all the time, more or less demanding they constantly be on the move finding new stuff, turning over every stone and then finding new stones when all the other ones have been turned, he knows that sometimes, you just have to wait.

Sometimes, the ball isn't in your side of the court, and you've got to sit there, on alert, watching, waiting for the chance to return it.

He's pulling back, to sniper training, to finding that quiet spot in his mind, planning everything out, and locating the precise right moment to strike.

Eventually, that moment will come, and when it does, he'll be ready.

* * *

The plastic surgeon shows up for a few minutes in the morning. They talk about fixing Tim's nose and sinus. He'll have to rebreak both, set Tim's nose back in place and pop the sinus back out to where it belongs, sooner rather than later, so that's on for late afternoon.

They talk about skin grafts for the bites on his arm and leg, but that doesn't have to happen right now, so Abby's content to wait until he's with it enough to decide for himself if he wants grafts. She's not sure if he wants to take skin from his butt or inner thigh to cover scars on arms or legs. She's leaning against it. (That's fairly sensitive skin, and he'd probably like it to stay put.) The less cutting Tim up they can do the better, according to her, but she's comfortable letting him decide that, and if he doesn't want bite marks, then he doesn't and she's comfortable with that, too.

So, tonight, more surgery.

Gibbs's sitting on the sofa, next to Jimmy, just waiting, when his cell buzzes. _Wake me up before you run off in the middle of the night._

Abbi. He'd left a note, short little thing, basically Tim's hurt, going to California, call when I can, and she must have found it. _Okay_ he texts back. He knew that if anyone gave him any sympathy last night, he was going to completely break down and be utterly useless, so he let her sleep, and just left.

_Want me to call? Tell me what's up?_

_Tim's sleeping, text is better._

_Okay, what happened?_

_He got onto that ship and his… The Admiral tried to have him killed. Three guys tried to drag him out of his stateroom. He's alive. In the hospital, broken arm, hand, foot, knee, leg, ribs, nose, something else I'm forgetting. His whole body is one big bruise. But he's alive, and they say he'll heal. Hand guy's supposed to be in this afternoon to talk about how much use he'll have in his right hand when all this is done._

_But he'll be okay?_ she asks.

_Jimmy says he will. Right now he's sleeping a lot._

_Probably the best thing for him. Where are you guys?_

_Alameda_

_You want me to come?_

He stares at that. Yes, he wants her here. He wants someone to hold and to make him feel better. No, he doesn't want her here. He'll fall apart if she gets too close. _You've got work._

Two seconds later: _Screw work, they owe me three months of vacation time, anyway. You want me there?_

He stares at that, amazed to see her write it. Not amazed, but very pleased, by how good it feels. _Please._

_On my way._

_Thanks, Abbi._

_You're welcome. Wake me up next time._

_Didn't think you'd want to come._

_Didn't want me to see you that upset?_ Comes back to him. He smiles grimly for getting called on his BS.

_I'll let you know when I'm in the air._

_Okay. I'll be here. Vance doesn't want to let me near the ship._

_Wise move on his part._

_Why is wise always such a pain in the ass?_

* * *

The hand specialist shows up a little before lunch. Tim's even awake for a minute or two of it. The upside is that yes, given enough time and physical therapy he will, eventually, if he really keeps working at it, get full use of his right hand back. Probably.

Likewise, wrist, arm, and shoulder, will, eventually, with a lot of work, probably, get back to full strength.

His wrist and hand will be in traction all of today and tomorrow, and once they're out, they'll put one cast on his wrist and hand, mostly a system of different metal and plastic braces. Another one will handle his upper arm and forearm. Because they had to go in and operate, using a pile of different screws to put his humerus and radius back together, he's got open incisions under the cast, and they want to make sure they get seen to regularly and don't get infected.

All of that will get held together in some sort of sling that'll keep his shoulder and arm in the right position. It was dislocated so badly that two of the tendons that hold that joint in place ripped free, and they had to go staple them back into place, too.

Gibbs came away from that conversation feeling nauseous and certain that Tim's never going to be able to go through a metal detector again without setting it off.

* * *

"It looks good, Jimmy. I don't know what state of the art is anymore, but everything I'm seeing appears solid."

Ducky nods, listening to whatever it is Jimmy's saying on the other side of the phone, and then says, "Okay. Call when he's out of surgery. Thank you, Jimmy."

Ducky puts the phone down and gets everyone up to date on how Tim is doing, wrapping up with, "The plastic surgeon is with him now, and will be tending to his face in an hour or so. They're letting Jimmy observe, so he won't be in there alone. Apparently, at any given time when he's awake, Timothy has been quite confused as to what's going on, so, if he wakes up as they're prepping him for surgery he'll have a friendly voice nearby."

Okay, yeah, that's goodish news, but… It's been a very long day at the Palmer house. There's nothing to do. Just sitting around, pacing, waiting for news, hoping or praying.

Kelly's fussing, which isn't making anything better. She knows everyone she's with, but she wants her mom and dad, and they aren't there. She keeps asking for Mama and Daddy, but "soon" means nothing to a not-quite-one-year-old.

They'd be tempted to let her talk to Abby, but given how disturbing she found Tim on the phone last night, no one wants to try that again.

Tony's been half-heartedly rough housing with Molly when what Ducky just said filters all the way through. "Wait, why is he seeing a plastic surgeon? Doesn't an ENT handle broken noses?"

They've read the medical reports, but… Ducky could tell how bad it was going to be by the second line, and he deleted the pictures before anyone else noticed them. He didn't think anyone in this room needed to see them. Do No Harm, means many different things in different circumstances, and right now, he can't imagine any situation where seeing the pictures of how badly hurt Tim is would help anyone.

Ducky nods at that. "Usually an ENT does handle something like that."

Tony winces and shuts up.

* * *

Burley calls Vance when he gets done with the second wave of the interrogation. "How's Tim?"

"Still sleeping last I heard. I'm back in DC now."

"Oh." Burley rubs his eyes. He's losing details which means it's time for sleep.

"Tell me you've got news, Stan."

Burley shakes his head. "No. Mane won't flip. If McGee was just some run-of-the-mill sailor, I'd be tempted to try and take it to court anyway, just the smear the son of a bitch, but… Four Star Admiral, President's buddy, I can't move against him with anything less than an iron clad case, and I don't have it."

Vance nods. "I'll call Clayton. You've got disobeying a direct order, right?"

"Oh yeah."

"Write it up. Jarvis'll take care of this."

* * *

Stan calls Gibbs next. He doesn't really need to say anything, Gibbs feels it through the phone.

"Nothing?" he says by way of greeting.

"Nothing. Short of trying to beat it out of him, and I'm not doing that, because I don't think it'll work, I've got nothing for you."

Gibbs closes his eyes and sees the rifle in his duffle. "Not asking you to, Stan."

"Thanks."

* * *

Today has not been the longest, least fun, most grueling day of Jimmy's life. Nor is it the second. Or the third, but it's homing in on number four and definitely in the top ten.

He's heading back to Tim's room, in scrubs, just having watched a group of surgeons break his best friends' face, for the second time in two days, and then put all of his various bones back where they go again, (Tim's in recovery now and will be out cold for at least another hour) when he sees Gibbs standing in the hallway, clutching his phone like he's going to kill it.

Then he hears, "Nothing?" and he knows who that call is, and what Stan's got to say.

And it's just too much. It is too fucking much. There's a restroom down the hall, so he makes a u turn, and heads there, locks the door, sits down, and lets himself break down.

Couldn't the shit with Tony have been enough? Did this really have to run right on its heels?

He's sobbing as quietly as he can, pouring out this, and well, everything. Right now he wants Breena so badly, needs to bury his face against her neck and just let go, but she's corralling the crew back home.

He knew, as he was reading the medical records, that he wasn't going to be able to handle this, not the way he needs to handle it. He's a doctor, emotions shut down, logic, calm, healing, that's supposed to take over. And he's trying, but… _That's why you don't treat your family._

He wipes his eyes, which isn't useful, he's still crying. He wants to rage. He wants to break people. Wants to break everyone who laid a hand on Tim. And he can't. Burley can't get anything on them, what the fuck is _he_ going to do.

He hears a soft knock. "Occupied," Jimmy chokes out.

"It's me." Gibbs' voice.

He gets up slowly, wiping his eyes, and takes the two steps to the door, opening it.

"Trying to not lose it in front of Abby." His voice cracks on that.

Gibbs nods, shutting the door and locking it behind him. "You've taken more of it than I could." Gibbs wraps him in a hug, and Jimmy sobs more. He's done his job. He's probably saved Tim a lot of pain and a lot of infections, and all the rest of it, but right now that job hurts so fucking much.

After a minute, he steps back. Taking a deep, shuddering breath. "I heard what Vance said to you."

Gibbs raises an eyebrow.

"Yesterday, or this morning, or whenever the hell it was. About the rifle. And come on, I know what your go bag looks like. You don't need a duffle for however long we're going to be here. So, I know what's in there. And I know you can't take the shot."

Gibbs is looking stunned and angry at that.

Right now Jimmy's just telling the truth. No plan, just talking. "And you can't get close enough to him for a knife. He's an Admiral, and he's always got people around, and you're not getting close to him."

Gibbs' eyes narrow. "Why can't I take the shot?"

"Because you're a fucking sniper Jethro! People who hurt your family end up dead by a sniper's shot, and unless at least fifty people can place where the hell you are when the Admiral bites it, you're going to jail for the rest of your life. And it's basically the same goddamned reason why Ziva and Tony can't take the shot, either." Jimmy swallows hard, and a plan does begin. A plan that blends very nicely into his desire to hurt people for this, and the practical realities of who is in their family and what they can do. "First time Tim took me shooting, I said to him, 'It's like yoga with explosions. Relax, find your center, slow down, focus, target, gently squeeze.' He said not to let you know that, because you'd turn me into a sniper." Jimmy's staring at Gibbs, eyes red and puffy, very determined.

"It's a patience and focus skill, right?"

Gibbs is staring at Jimmy, really seeing him, thinking. "Yeah, it is. Some math, too. Some mechanics. Mostly it's waiting until it's time to pull the trigger, not rushing."

"And by this point, my vision's not much worse than yours is. Probably better when I've got my glasses on than yours is. Just you and me. The rest of them don't need to know. Take an hour or so to practice every time when we're supposed to be working on the house. Got lots of room out there. Take Shannon out, teach me how to sail, too, shoot down the water, no one to see, no risk of hitting anyone."

Gibbs shrugs. "You won't pick it up fast."

"It's a patience skill. It doesn't have to happen overnight. One day, something'll happen to John. And Leon'll hand it over to whoever, Metro, so that he can claim everything is above board, no cover up. Every cop'll show up at your door, asking lots of questions, but you'll have a solid alibi, in public, probably with Penny. They'll poke around Tony and Ziva, hell, maybe even Ducky, he's got a military background. But they aren't going to ask about me, not deep. They'll run a quick check, and I'll have cover for it, and that'll be that, because I'm the only person in this family who 'doesn't know how to shoot a rifle.' Never solved."

Gibbs licks his lips. "We telling Tim?"

"Were you planning on telling him what you were going to do?"

"No, but he'd know."

Jimmy nods at that, and remembers what Tim's said to him about when Gibbs offered to kill John the first time. "Permission. We're asking permission and leaving it there. He gets to decide what happens to John. But if he says yes, one day, something is going to happen, and you're going to be with Penny when it happens, so she won't think you killed him, so she'll be able to… pretend or whatever."

Gibbs nods. "You and Tim have just done handguns, right?"

Jimmy nods, too.

"It's different than a handgun."

"I'd imagine." Jimmy heads to the sink and begins to wash off his face, hoping cool water will help with the red and puffiness from crying.

"Say the words, Jimmy."

He looks at Gibbs in the mirror, unsure of what Gibbs is telling him to do. "Not teaching you how to do this if you can't even say the word."

"Show me how to take the shot, and I will kill John McGee with it."

"Okay." Jimmy straightens up, grabs a paper towel, dries his face off, and then turns to Gibbs. "Your turn."

"If you'll kill John McGee, I'll teach you how to take the shot."

"Um… No." Jimmy steps closer and hugs Gibbs. "Your turn to let it out. We need to be her rock to cry on, doesn't mean we don't get to cry, too. And I know you're holding on by your fingernails, too."

For a second Gibbs stands there, stiff, uncomfortable, but Jimmy is holding him, gently rubbing the back of his head, and from the feel of it, isn't letting go anytime soon.

"Abbi won't be here for hours. You can't spend the whole time we're here hiding in the hall or raging about this. Which means you need to do something with it. We're not killing anyone today, so let go. I've got you."

And eventually, after a few more breaths, Jimmy feels Gibbs start to shake.

* * *

Jarvis looks at the case in front of him. He knows what sorts of things Leon wouldn't put in writing to go with it, the things he hasn't said.

"James, we're going back to San Francisco, sooner the better."

"I'll get it done, sir."

"Thank you. And James..."

"Yes?"

"If I ever hint to you that I want someone murdered, do not do it."

"Goes without saying, sir."

"Thank you."

* * *

No one has ever accused Penny Langston of being a weak woman. A raving bitch, oh yes, but weak? No.

But right now she hurts so bad she just wants to collapse. She hasn't slept. Ducky didn't either.

She's sitting on the Palmer's back porch, Ducky's arm around her, silent, wrecked, watching the sun rise. Soon, Ducky, and Tony and Ziva will go off to meet Vance, and then they're going to plan how to murder her son and get away with it.

Whether John did it or not, they're going to kill him. She wants to believe he's not responsible. She needs to believe it.

But she doesn't. She knows her son, and she knows the man he was raised and trained to be. She knows the man he is. Nothing happens on his ship without his approval.

"You're going to kill my son," she says quietly, to Ducky.

He holds her a little tighter, kissing her gently, not denying it.

"He's my son, and I know… I know… But…" Sobbing replaces words. A moment later she gets out, "I've already outlived one child; I don't think I can do it again."

"Shhh… None of that. Whatever comes next, we'll get through, together."

"No _we_ won't. You didn't raise a monster. It's not your child that tried to destroy your grandchild. It's not your family that's going to murder your son."

He closes his eyes and opens them slowly, acknowledging what she's just said. "If we are even remotely lucky, John will have the good sense to do the right thing and take this out of our hands."

* * *

Jarvis checks in at the hospital before heading to the _Stennis._

He doesn't see anyone in the hallway, but he hears voices from inside McGee's room. He's wary about just going in, and hasn't seen Tim since they rolled him in there the day before yesterday. So, he does want to check in, see how he's doing. He knocks quietly and hears nothing, but a few seconds later Jimmy opens the door.

Jarvis glances around. Abby's sleeping on a cot. Gibbs is sacked out on the sofa. Tim's on the bed, of course. He wonders who Jimmy might have been talking to, himself, phone call, something… He steps in and take the time to look, really look.

Tim's better, ish, maybe. The swelling is down some. Maybe. "He's looking a little better." But there's not much certainty in his voice as he says that.

"Yeah. Maybe. It's been…" Jimmy's eyes wander around the room. "I have no fucking idea what time it is. There're no windows in here, the lights the same twenty-four seven and I'm in the wrong time zone."

"Sunday morning."

Jimmy rubs his eyes. "Great." Bitterness tinges every syllable of Jimmy's words. "They'll rebuild him, and he'll heal, but it'll be at least a month before he's on his feet again, and probably another six months of physical therapy on top of that, and God alone knows if he'll ever get full function back in his right arm. Whoever got hold of it tried to rip it right off of him, and almost succeeded, and from the looks of it, they stomped his hand and forearm a few times after that just for kicks." Jimmy's angry enough at that his voice could boil water.

He shakes his head, makes himself calm down. "Didn't you go back east?"

Jarvis nods. "And now I'm here. On my way to have a chat with John concerning his future."

Jimmy's eyes narrow at that. "He doesn't have one."

Jarvis' face is calm, implacable, no hint of joy, anger, or scorn on it. "You might be right about that."

* * *

At exactly seven o'clock both DiNozzos and Dr. Mallard are waiting on Vance's doorstep.

He can see by the looks on their faces there are a lot of things they want to know, a lot of things they want to say.

He nods at them, getting across 'we'll talk in my office' in his look. Once they get in there he asks, "What was the last update you got on McGee?"

"Jimmy texted us a few hours ago. He's still stable, still resting. His last blood tests came back showing that liver, kidneys, and spleen are all functioning properly, so they've moved him off the critical list," Ducky replies.

"That's good news. I know you have questions, and I have answers."

"Good," Ziva says, voice hard.

"Before I get going, let me say this, as frustrating as this is, none of you are going to touch this case. At all. In any way. If any of you go near it, I'm not going to sit here and wink at you about it. I'm not just covering my ass by saying I want you to stay away from it. I actually want you to stay away from it. That said, let me get you up to date, and then we'll get into what the plan for this is…" So Vance told them about Burley's case, about what he had learned, and where things were.

He wraps with, "Jarvis is heading back to SanFran to have a chat with McGee. He said he'd handle it."

"Sweep it under the rug, you mean." After his own dealings with Jarvis, Tony's not impressed with him.

Vance shakes his head. "In other circumstances, maybe. But this one won't sweep. Vance knows you can't get your people to go the extra mile if you take them into danger and don't back them up. Beyond that, he knows that if he doesn't go the extra mile the Navy is going to be horribly embarrassed when stories start leaking out of NCIS about conduct unbecoming. Making sure the Navy looks good matters more to him than just about anything else. So he'll make sure it looks good."

"Sounds like sweep it under the rug," Tony says, not pleased.

"Director, what, exactly is this plan we're supposed to be talking about?" Ducky asks, noticing that so far there's no reason for them to be out of this.

Vance shakes his head again. He's got an idea of what's in Jarvis' arsenal for this one. "Depending on what John chooses to do with the options he'll be given, something bad is going to happen to him in the next year or so. He's probably going to catch a sniper's bullet. In that he's a former Admiral, I will need to put my A Team on finding his killer." Vance looks at the DiNozzos. "Now do you understand?"

They nod. That's the last piece of the puzzle.

"Similarly, something nasty is probably going to happen to Lt. Mane. I have this sense that he's going to have some sort of unfortunate accident, as well. It might also involve a sniper's bullet. And, in that Burley is in charge of his security, if something were to happen to him sooner rather than later, he'll take care of it. But, if something happens later rather than sooner, well, Stan's out in Pearl Harbor, so you guys are a whole lot closer to Leavenworth."

"What about the men who actually attacked Timothy?" Ducky asks.

Vance shakes his head. "No one touches them. They were told by a trusted officer, basically the second highest ranking man on the ship, that they were going up against a terrorist who tried to kill their families. They made a bad mistake, and they'll do their time, and that's that."

The other three nod.

"Dr. Mallard, how would you feel about taking your old job back for a few days, at least until Dr. Palmer is back?"

Ducky smiles. "I'd like that very much."

"Splendid. As for you two…"

"On Monday, we'll get back to work."

"Good."

* * *

Jarvis nods to the MAs at John's door. They salute him. "Go take a walk. Lt. James will keep watch. Come back in ten minutes, okay?"

They look nervous but nod and head off. James stands, back to the door, blocking access to anyone who might want to visit.

Clayton knocks, and then heads in. "John, I wanted you to know Tim will be all right."

John is sitting at his desk, reading. He looks up and says, "Good." He, once again, sounds about as excited as he would be if Jarvis had said, "John, the paint on your wall is dry."

Jarvis shakes his head, and sits on the edge of the desk. "They aren't sure if he'll regain all function in his right hand, but everything else will heal up. Probably a good six months of physical therapy before he's mended, but he'll get there."

"I'm pleased to hear it."

"He'll be in a wheelchair for a while. His lung will heal, but it'll take time. If he was still an NCIS Field Agent, this would have been the end of his career, so it's a good thing he's a Department Head now."

John nods.

"There's still the mystery of why anyone decided to go visit him."

"I know as much about that as you do," John says blandly.

"I doubt that intensely." Jarvis thinks about that. "Actually, that's likely accurate, but not the way you mean it. But, even if it's true, the way you mean it, it means your flag ship is so laxly run that your secretary thought he'd be able to order three men to kidnap your son off it, murder him, and incinerate his body, and get away with it." He and John just stare at each other, neither showing a particularly readable face. "However you mean it, you are no longer qualified to be an Admiral in the US Navy."

That makes John blanch.

"I've been CCed on this case, reading all the reports, the transcripts of everyone's testimony, watching the interrogation videos, and this _stinks_. It _reeks_ of shame. And it is my job to make sure that fetid aroma of dishonor does not cling to the Navy. So, right now, you have two options for helping me clean everything up."

John raises one eyebrow.

Jarvis takes the folder he has under his arm and opens it up.

"On the left we have the paperwork for your resignation back-dated to the day before the test and your guilty plea for the attempted murder of Timothy McGee.

"On the right is the paperwork for your dishonorable discharge. In the next ten minutes we will settle on one of these two options."

There's horror on John's face and in his voice as he says, "You can't prove—"

"Stuff it. I can prove everything I need to prove for the dishonorable discharge. No Admiral has ever been court-martialed, but if you do not plead guilty to attempted murder, you _will_ be the first. No jury in their right mind will believe Mane's seventeen stories of how his psychic vibes told him Tim needed to be targeted."

John looks at both stacks of paperwork, jaw clenched, eye's flicking between them.

"Let me pass along the unofficial sentiments of the President: As you know, he's out stumping away, making sure that Hillary has the best possible chance of election. Both of them have been taking more than enough heat lately on the use of drones, and he does not need his top drone man mired in a long and scandalous trial about how he disobeyed a direct order resulting in the attempted murder of his son, and trust me, if you make me strip you of your rank every, single disgusting detail of your relationship with Tim, including the crap you pulled on him as a child, will come out, and it will be _horrendously_ embarrassing to the Navy and the President during the election season. Let me add in Hillary's also, unofficial, sentiments on the subject, in that it is an election year and image is everything, she does not need pictures of you, standing next to her, arm around her, both of you smiling, flashed all over the news when the fact that you've been arrested for ordering the murder of your son breaks." Jarvis passes over his pen. "Pick one."

John glances between the two pages and then looks up at Jarvis. "Neither of these options are acceptable."

Jarvis stares at him for a moment. "Then do what 'honorable' men have done since the invention of swords and _fall on yours_ ," Jarvis says, voice frigid, eyes unblinking.

John swallows, blinks, exhales, long and slow, fingers lightly brushing over the edges of the dishonorable discharge in front of him. He looks up at Jarvis, eyes clear, very determined.

"May I have a few minutes alone to consider this?" He stands up very straight, looking Jarvis directly in the eye.

"Certainly." Jarvis stands up, shuts the folder, tucks it under his arm, making sure McGee cannot be found with it, and heads off to stand outside McGee's door with James.

Three minutes later he flinches, but isn't surprised, when he hears the gunshot.


	108. Aftermath

Situations like this are always messy. When the shot fires, James jumps, and turns toward the door. Jarvis rests his hand on James' shoulder.

"Give him a minute."

James' eyes go wide at that. But he holds in place. No one is storming toward John's office, so it appears the sound of the shot didn't travel too far. Thank God for the fact that aircraft carriers are noisy.

After a full minute passes, Jarvis says, "Go to the infirmary, ask the commanding doctor to come to John's room. No details. He's coming at my request."

James nods and head off.

Clayton stands, back against the door, waiting.

After several moments Dr. Haggerty, who had overseen Tim's treatment and put his lung back together sees Jarvis standing at the door. "I take it there was some sort of accident?"

Jarvis inclines his head. "We were talking about the attack. He told me his arm hurt, and he was feeling a heaviness in his chest, then he slumped onto the ground, unconscious. I performed CPR for a full five minutes while James went to fetch you. I was unable to revive him."

"Uh huh." Dr. Haggarty nods. "You're looking awfully cool for five minutes of CPR."

"You're welcome to make up any other version of that story you like, as long as the real story doesn't get out." Then he opens the door, and allows Haggarty to enter on his own.

A minute later Dr. Haggarty comes out. "Lt. James if you would go fetch Dr. Henner and Dr. Cox, tell them to come prepared for a code black."

"Of course, sir."

John McGee's official cause of death was Cardiac Arrest. Official time of death was 9:14.

* * *

Tim didn't want to wake up. Waking up meant hurting. Sleeping meant not hurting, so right now he'd sleep 24/7 if he could.

But low voices are trying to pull him out of sleeping.

He's gotten pretty good at sleeping through people talking around him, but there's a flavor to this quiet conversation, a sort of nervousness to it, like, they're trying to not wake him up, but they don't want to talk about this in the hallway, either.

And there's a new voice. Abbi… He doesn't know when she got here.

Then… Jarvis. Jarvis was back east last he heard, so… break in the case maybe…

He pulls himself a bit more awake and focuses further in.

"I offered him two options, he didn't like either of them and took a third one."

Jimmy asks, "What was… Oh. I see."

He doesn't hear anything after that, so he tries to open an eye. That takes effort. His eyes don't want to open. That had been getting better and easier, he thinks, now it's worse. Then he sort of remembers something about his nose, and sinus, and surgery, and…

He manages to get it open a crack. Jarvis, Abby, Jimmy, Gibbs and Abbi, all of them looking grim.

"When did it happen?" Abby asks.

"About nine."

"Has anyone told Penny?" Abbi asks.

"She's listed as his Next of Kin, so yes, someone should be at her home," Jarvis replies.

"We haven't heard from her, yet," Jimmy adds.

"I have no idea if anyone has actually gotten through to her, yet. It's…four back east, now, would have been a little after two before someone could have gotten to her."

"What about Sarah?" Jimmy asks.

"I don't know. She would have been the next name on the list, right?" Jarvis asks.

"I'd assume," Jimmy replies.

"She's next of kin now," Gibbs says, quietly. "Penny cut ties."

"What's the official cause of death?" Abby asks.

"Cardiac arrest."

Jimmy snorts at that. "That's everyone's official cause of death. That doesn't happen, you're still alive."

"I've told the Doctor Haggerty that he had a heart attack while we were talking. The Doc's agreed to toe the line on that. He oversaw Tim's care, too, and could tell this was a case that didn't need any extra attention. In proper Navy fashion he'll fill out the paperwork, and then do a proper job of losing it."

"He'll be buried with full honors, with his rank intact, won't he?" Gibbs asks, furious.

"Yes, but keep the bigger picture in mind, he'll be _buried_ and his daughter and mother aren't about to have their whole worlds come crashing down."

No one had any argument against that.

* * *

When Jarvis leaves, Gibbs and Abbi head for a walk. She can feel that he can't just sit anymore. "Come on, let's get out of here for a bit."

Jimmy and Abby are both giving them _go on, get out_ sorts of looks, so they do.

She holds his hand while they wander around, finally finding a small garden off the chapel.

Little patch of grass, several benches, and the stained glass windows of the chapel are visible from the outside. It's peaceful, and they aren't the only people sitting there.

She strokes his back. "Talk to me?"

"Son of a bitch cheated."

She nods. "It was supposed to be your bullet?

He shrugs, and that surprises her. He reads the surprise on her face. "Jimmy."

Now there's real surprise on her face. "Jimmy can shoot?"

That gets a shrug, too.

"Oh." She can figure out how the plan would have worked. "You'd have the alibi, and no one would ever suspect him."

Gibbs nods. "Moot now." They sit there quietly. "Not sure if I should call Penny."

"She might like a call."

"Can't feel sorry for John, but I've been where she is… Not sure she wants a call from me right now."

Borin reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone, holding it out to him. "Not like you've got to say much."

* * *

After lunch, Penny heads home. Breena's got all three girls sleeping. Tony and Ziva are coming over to help out some more around dinner.

She's feeling numb, disassociated.

She doesn't want to see Ducky, or Tony, or Ziva, or any of them right now.

And she doesn't want to be alone.

Ducky won't lie to her, he won't insult her intelligence by pretending. They're going to kill John. He's going to help, however he can. And that's that. It's just a fact, like the sun rises in the east, and like the sun rising in the east, there is literally nothing, at all, she can do about it.

She can get up and face it, or hide in bed and pretend, but the sun will rise, and John will die, and that's that.

She wants to scream at him. How could you be so stupid? How could you be so hateful? How could you fuck it up this badly and put us all through this? How could you do that to your son?

But screaming won't stop the sun. And she has screamed in the past, and it didn't avert this.

She could call and warn him, but… What would be the point? He wouldn't listen to her, and they aren't going to be thwarted by a warning.

John will die, and that's that.

He's literally dug his own grave, polished the bullet that will kill him, loaded the gun, and handed it to Gibbs.

And all that's left for her is figuring out how to face the day when the sailors show up at her house…

She pulls into the parking lot for their condo complex. She knows who is supposed to be here on a Sunday afternoon. She knows all of the cars. But there's a new one, a black sedan, with a Navy bumper sticker, in her usual spot next to Ducky's Morgan.

Ice runs through her body as she sees it.

She shuts her eyes, feeling tears starting again. _Not yet._

She parks, walking toward the home she shares with Ducky. The door is closed, but she can see extra forms sitting in the front room through the curtains. Guests, on the sofa. Two of them.

The sun rises, and the sun sets, and it doesn't care about the people below it.

When she opens the door, a sailor and a chaplain leap to attention, and she's crying before they can get the words out.

* * *

"Feels so hollow," Jimmy says to Abby as they sit in Tim's room.

"I know. Been coming up with plans, and other plans, and really, horribly, painfully evil ways to hurt him. Hurt him long and crippling. Poisons that work slow. Just need a drop or two, I can make them in the lab. Making them's the easy part. How to get it to him… Food? Have to make sure he got it, and someone else didn't. Lace it onto the paper in a letter or something… He's got a secretary who reads his mail. Or he did. If I could do it fast enough, he's probably still reading his own mail… I've got a collection of antique poisoner's rings. Some of them still have traces of the poisons they used to hold. Never thought I'd use one, but…

"It's stupid, but I kept thinking that Sarah's getting married, and he'd be there, like she'd let him come after this, but, he'd be there, and I'd have my ring, just slip it into his drink…" She shakes her head. "Yeah," she sniffs, "hollow."

Jimmy slips his glasses off and rubs his eyes. "Jethro was going to teach me how to shoot."

Abby's eyes go wide at that.

"He can't take a shot like that, not anymore. No amount of cover ups going to let him get away with it. Not for an Admiral. So… I'm a quick learner, and it's about patience, right? I'm good at that. Settle in and wait for the right moment. I can do that.

"I wanted to do it." He's smiling and crying.

"Me, too."

* * *

It takes Tim a while to untangle what everyone was talking about. (It's possible he dozed off while thinking about it.) (Several times.) Eventually he comes to the conclusion that his father is dead and that he killed himself.

He's not sure what to think or feel about that. (During the minutes he can keep it in mind. The painkillers he's on may not be killing all the pain. He aches all over, but they're certainly dulling his mind.)

Right now it's a lot like the pictures on the wall, he's certainly aware of their existence, but they don't mean anything to him. They're just this far away thing that could, possibly, in the right circumstances, be interesting.

* * *

Knocking on the door. Odd time for it. They aren't expecting anyone. "Can you get it?" Sarah McGee calls to her fiancée. She's right in the middle of a hot bit of the chapter she's working on and she doesn't want to pause.

"Sure." A few seconds later she hears footsteps, and the sound of muted voices at the door.

Glenn Holland is not military. But he is a fire fighter, from a family of fire fighters, and he knows what it means when two people, in full uniform, show up at your door in the middle of the day.

When his father died, two men, members of his squad, had showed up, like this, to tell them, and pay proper respects.

His voice shakes as he says, "Sarah. It's for you."

He hears her fingers slow down on the keyboard followed by, "Fine, I'm coming."

Her office is off a hallway that leads to the front door. He's already heading toward her when she steps out, sees the sailors, stops dead, and says, 'Oh no… No… But…"

He's holding her close as the Chaplain says, "We're so sorry, Ms. McGee, but as of 9:20, Pacific Time, your father is dead."

"What… They're not fighting… How?"

"He had a heart attack in his office. The medics came, tried to revive him, but were unable to. According to his papers, it was his desire to be buried at sea, we're authorized to make sure you and your fiancée can get to the _Stennis_ should you wish to attend the burial."

* * *

Penny's phone flashes up _Gibbs_ as it rings.

She answers, but doesn't say anything. He can hear by the way she's breathing that she's crying, and like Tim, she can do it without making any 'crying' sounds.

He doesn't say anything, either.

Thousands of miles of silence is strangely comforting.

Eventually, after about half an hour or so, he says, "Can I talk to Duck?"

He hears the phone handed over and then, "Jethro?"

"Hey, Duck."

"They're saying he had a heart attack."

"According to Jarvis official cause of death is cardiac arrest. But somewhere in the report'll be the fact that it was brought on by a slug from his service pistol."

"So, none of you…"

"No," he says that loudly enough, so if Penny's anywhere nearby, she can heard it. "None of us had anything to do with it. Given the option of dishonorable discharge or pleading guilty, he decided to take the third way."

"Ah."

"You guys coming out?"

"I don't think so. Like you heard, she's not talking. The sailors offered us transport to the _Stennis,_ but she shook her head at it."

Gibbs nods at that.

"Jethro, Sarah and Glenn are heading toward you for the burial. No one's said anything, yet, about what's happened to Timothy. Penny's not speaking. Sarah's furious at her for not coming along, to support her, even if she can't stand to honor him, and he's boiling mad that Timothy isn't answering his phone, either. I started to try and explain, and… And words failed. I didn't even know where to begin on this one."

"Okay. When were they going to leave?"

"I think they're in the air already. The burial is scheduled for tomorrow morning. Something of a rush job."

"Yeah." Gibbs sighs. "Okay. Jarvis will probably stick around for the funeral. I'll have him send her to us after."

* * *

When Gibbs and Abbi get back to Tim's room, Abbi chases Abby and Jimmy out.

Abbi hands over a keycard. "Checked in before I came here. Both of you, go, get a real meal, showers, sleep in a real bed for a few hours, and come back tonight with some food, and we'll swap."

Abby especially doesn't look like she wants to leave, but Jimmy does a good job of pulling her out. "Come on, he's been awake for less than an hour in the last day. He's not going to notice you aren't here."

"Jimmy…"

"Come on. Abbi's right, we both need some real down time." He pulls her out of the chair and grabs both of their bags. "Do you have a car? Vance got us here."

Abbi pulls a set of keys out of her purse. "Red Taurus, front parking lot, on the far left."

"Okay, good. Come on."

* * *

Tony and Ziva are at Breena's when Jimmy calls to give her the news about John. If anything, Breena's relieved. Jimmy hadn't said what he was thinking about doing, but it's not like she just met him, there was a lot of… foreboding tension in those words he wasn't saying.

She might not have gotten the entire idea, but she had a fairly accurate understanding of what he and Gibbs were hatching.

She hangs up her phone and looks at the DiNozzos.

"John killed himself this morning. Apparently Jarvis went to see him, and he decided death was preferable to being raked through the mud."

"FUCK!" Tony just about shouts it. Much to Breena's surprise, but not Ziva's.

He turns to Ziva. "I told you he'd sweep it under the rug! John's dead, and now there's nothing. He gets to ride off as a respected Four Star Admiral, with all his medals and honors and… And this is fucking bullshit! He needed to be…" Tony notices there are three baby girls all staring at him when Anna and Kelly pick up on his mood and start crying, while Molly's tugging on Ziva asking what 'fuck' means, so he stalks out of the house. They hear the door to his car open, slam shut, the radio blast loud, and Ziva nods.

"Slightly more polite than shouting profanities to the heavens."

"Yeah. You okay?"

Ziva shakes her head. "No. But once we got word of this, I did not expect there to be any sort of 'okay.'" She picks up Kelly, bouncing her, keeping her voice soft and perky. "After my father died, I learned that… nothing makes this better. The pain doesn't go away, and revenge is better than nothing, but not by much."

"Oh." Bodnar. The thing they don't talk about. But because they don't talk about it, Breena doesn't know how it worked out for Ziva, just that it happened.

Ziva manages a half smile. "We will heal, scared and broken, but we will keep going, and that is all anyone ever gets to do."

* * *

"Have you told him, yet?" Abbi asks, as they sit with Tim.

"No. He's really only awake for minutes at a time. Usually just enough to ask for more pain medicine or drink something."

She nods, watching Gibbs sitting there, next to Tim, not holding his hand, because it's still too bruised and banged up for holding, but very gently resting his fingers on the back of Tim's wrist.

There aren't a lot of words in his head right now. That's not unusual, he often thinks in images and feelings. Part of the reason why his exterior monologue can be so silent is because his interior one is often silent, too.

But right now he's aching for Penny. No matter how much he hated John, no matter what he was going to do to John, he doesn't wish the loss of a child on anyone.

He's mourning the loss of the chance to hurt John. Having Jimmy take the shot wouldn't have been as good as taking it himself, but, it would have been _something_ , and the hours of training, especially in the months of healing up that Tim's facing, that would have been something useful, something to put all that anger into.

Still might teach Jimmy to shoot anyway. Mane's out there, rotting in prison. Might be worth taking the shot.

But he can't get properly fired up about that. Not right now, at least.

He's angry at Tim, which surprises him. Angry that he got on that fucking ship, and he must have opened the door, because they wouldn't have broken it down, not without attracting a whole lot of attention that would have stopped the fight before it started, angry that he took his life, his precious, adored, cherished life and risked it for _nothing_.

He must be tensing up on that, because Abbi's gently rubbing his back, making a soft, comforting sound, sub verbal, no words to it, sort of a shushing sound.

"I'm okay."

"No, you aren't."

He wipes his eyes, letting go of Tim, heading to the sofa to sit next to Abbi on it. "No, I'm not." He inhales long and deep, trying to keep himself together as she holds onto him.

"It's okay."

He nods, not looking at her, staring at Tim, lying there, somewhere between drugged asleep and unconscious. "Did this with my Mom. And I know he's getting better, not worse, but it still feels the same."

"Yeah."

"And I get it now. This is why my dad fought so hard against me enlisting. He never wanted to be here."

She kisses his forehead.

"I don't want to be here, either." She knows he means fearing for a child, not here as in literally in the hospital.

* * *

Tim wakes again, later, probably. Time doesn't really move in here, it always looks exactly the same, but he can smell food. He's kind of interested in eating, whatever it is smells good, but his teeth hurt and his lips hurt, and his jaw hurts, so maybe not.

His brain drifts back to his dad, and he wonders if they're going to tell him about it. Of course, since he's not exactly sure how long he's been awake at any given time, the fact that they aren't talking to him about it might have something to do with him not really being all there.

Apparently his eyes are open this time, because Abby looks over to him, "Hey, how are you feeling?"

"Hurt." His voice still sounds a whole lot rougher than he expects it to. Apparently screaming followed by intubation isn't good for the vocal cords.

She nods. "They're swapping out the morphine for..." she says something, but he doesn't recognize the word so it just dances through his mind without ever touching it. "They don't want you to get dependent on the morphine."

"Oh." He blinks. (Maybe falls asleep for another bit.) He's fairly sure she was on his left side when he said 'Oh,' and now she's on this right as he asks, "What day is it?"

She checks her phone. "Monday, for the last half hour."

"Only three days?"

"Only three days. They're saying tomorrow they'll take your arm out of traction. Get you unstrapped. You can't get up, but you can at least change positions."

Maybe it's the new drugs, maybe it's that he's starting to heal, but he can make out individual hurts right now, (instead of one big, all-over hurt) and moving is the last thing he wants to try.

"Probably skip that."

"Fine with me if you want to put it off another day or two."

"Feet hurt."

"Three broken toes on the right, dislocated ankle and broken tarsals on the left." She's seen the x-ray, so she knows the break pattern on his foot closely matches the boot print of one of the guys who Tim fought.

"Fuck."

"Yeah. They all agreed to plead guilty. You're not going to have to testify."

"Good. Do… Do you know what happened? Why… I know why… How they came for me?"

"It's a long story." Abby says gently, "You think you can stay awake for an hour to hear it?"

He thought about it seriously. "Don't know. Do you really mind telling me twice if you have to?"

"Nah." Abby shakes her head. "Are you hungry?"

"Some. Mouth hurts."

Abby steps out of his view, and he hears her talking, ordering beef broth. A few seconds later she back. "You're not supposed to be on anything even similar to solid food, yet."

"Okay. Is my jaw broken. No. I'm talking, it's moving, can't be broken. What hurts?"

"Whole thing is bruised up, lips are split, and you've got a chipped tooth. Or you had one, they've already got a cap in place, didn't want you cutting your tongue or lip on it."

"Oh." His tongue slips over his teeth, but he can't tell which one has the crown. "Abby, tell me about the case."

"Okay." And she did. A few minutes into it, as she was getting to who Lt. Mane was, the broth showed up. It's hot and salty and vaguely beef scented. His mouth waters at the smell, and Abby begins to carefully feed it to him. He almost says 'I can do that for myself,' but it hits him that Abby can see him a whole lot better than he can see himself, and it's entirely possible that he can't, actually, do this for himself.

He gingerly flexes the fingers on his left hand, and they all ache and sting.

"Is my left hand broken?"

"No. Just bruised and cut up. Your left arm is… the least damaged part of you. Nothing broken, nothing dislocated, just sprains, cuts, bruises, and one bite mark."

"One of them bit me?"

She nods. "Couple of times. One got a chunk of your leg, too. Apparently you got two of them, also."

"I don't remember that." And he doesn't. Most of the fight, most of what happened after is locked away in flashes of images and sounds, but no coherent narrative.

"Good." She reaches to stroke his hair, and stops halfway, sad smile on her face, hand falling to his hip. "That's good. I don't think you need to remember that."

He'd nod, because he's not feeling dismayed about not remembering that, but his head is still strapped in.

"I won't mind getting my head unstrapped."

"Once you can lay down."

"Tomorrow?"

"Probably, as long as you're awake. Depends on how you're breathing. They're checking your lungs every day, making sure you don't develop an infection. So far, so good."

"Okay. So, Lt. Mane is the Admiral's Secretary…"

"Yeah…" And Abby continues along on the tale.

* * *

Tim falls asleep again long before she gets done with the story, long before he gets done with the bowl of soup, too.

But it's food he didn't get through a tube, and he was awake for more than fifteen minutes, so that's progress, right?

She wants so badly to get onto the bed and curl up against him, rest her head on his chest and listen to his heart and breath.

But not today, and not tomorrow, and given how many broken ribs he's got, not anytime this month.

She gently strokes his face, that tiny strip of skin-colored skin near his ear is almost an inch wide now, and she traces her fingers along the unbruised skin of his upper chest, maybe three whole square inches of flesh that doesn't hurt, spread like a spider web between black-purple-blue-green-yellow fist or finger shaped blotches.

Her hand hovers, flat, above his chest, drinking in his heat, feeling the gentle rise and fall of him breathing. And with his nose back in the right place and his sinus popped back out, that breathing is almost silent again.

He's getting better. Tomorrow they'll take his hand out of traction, let him move a little bit.

But it's not enough, doesn't sooth her the way she needs, but it's better than nothing. She kisses that patch of unbruised skin on his leg, resting her cheek against it.

A moment into that she feels a warm hand on her back. She stands up, and Jimmy sits down. She sits on his lap, and he gently strokes her back.

"Need more chairs in here."

She feels him nod, and then sit up a bit to hug her, chin on her shoulder. "How are you doing?"

She sits back a little, snuggling into him, wiping her eyes. She's done a pretty good job of not bursting into tears every single minute of the goddamned day, but that still means there's been a lot of crying. "I've had better weeks, Jimmy."

He gently kisses her cheek. "I know." He holds her, letting her cry. Eventually she calms down some, and cuddles into him.

"I'm so tired."

"Me, too." And he is tired, bone deep tired, that these little four and five hour naps aren't touching.

"I know. It's been a bad week for you, too, and… Thank you. I know you're doing everything you can to keep me sane, and I appreciate it."

He kisses the top of her head, and then gently gives her a little push, signaling _stand up_.

She does, and he goes to lay down on the cot, on his side, holding his arms out. "When I needed someone to hold onto me so I could really rest, you and Tim were there. Come on, let's see if we can get you some decent sleep."

Abby curls into him, tugging the blanket over them. "You're missing Breena, aren't you?"

"Yeah, I am."

"You don't always have to be keeping me sane. It's okay to be having a bad time, too."

He nods as they shift around a bit, neither of them next to the person they're supposed to be next to right now.

She squeezes his hand, grateful for the comfort of a warm, living person next to her, and for someone to wrap her in his arms and love, but very aware of the fact that this isn't the man she wants to be cuddled up against. "I'm glad you're here."

He hugs her a little snugger. "Wouldn't be anywhere else." He kisses her hair. "But in two hours, we're flipping over and you're spooning me."

She laughs a little at that. "No problem."


	109. Sarah

Gibbs takes a deep breath as she sees Sarah storming up the hallway.

"Sarah…"

Gibbs is standing in her way. Big men, in uniforms (though Gibbs isn't wearing one) have been standing in her way all damn day. And she is _done_ being stonewalled by big men in uniforms.

"Get the fuck out of my way, Gibbs."

"Sarah, just…" He's trying to be calm and gentle, and she's trying to sidestep him and get into her brother's room.

"No! You do not Sarah me! My father is dead. I stood there, on his ship, without a single other member of my family, and took his flag after they dropped him in the ocean. His doctor is telling me he had a heart attack, but he won't look me in the eye. Everyone is whispering that he shot himself. Penny's inconsolable; she's not talking, at all. _At all,_ Gibbs; she's gone silent! I finally find out Tim's in the hospital, from the SecNav, not my brother, or my sister-in-law, or _you_. Been here for three days apparently, and none of you bothered to call, because why the fuck would I want to know he's in the hospital? But Jarvis won't tell me why, or how, or anything, just that he's here. And I'm starting to put two and two together and I'm begging God that I'm coming up with five, because _no_ _one_ will tell me anything, so you get the _fuck_ out of my way and let me talk to my brother!"

Gibbs takes her shoulders in his arms. "Stop. Now. You're not going in there cold. I should have called. It's bad, real bad, and no one wanted to have this conversation with you over the phone. None of us thought we'd have to have this conversation with you over the phone.

"No one thought you needed to know until after Tim got home, got off the drugs, and could talk with you, himself."

"What happened?" Her eyes are full of tears and her voice is quivering, and finally, Glenn catches up to her. (She hopped out of the car and got moving, fast, when they got to the hospital. He still had to park and then find her.) He wraps his arms around her, and is staring at Gibbs, lots of questions in his eyes, too.

"Tim ran a cyber war game on Carrier Group Three, on the _Stennis._ It was and is classified. That's also part of not calling. Your dad's men failed the test. He wasn't happy about that. He… set his men on Tim. They almost killed him."

Gibbs opens the door for her. She takes one step in, looks at Tim and gasps, a wounded sound tearing out of her, and luckily Glenn was a step behind her because her knees went out from under her, and he caught her.

"Sarah?" Tim sounds drugged and three quarters asleep, because he is. (But Gibbs notices this is the first time in a while where waking up actually involved his eyelids opening without a struggle. Getting his nose back in place has helped a lot on the swelling in his face.)

"Oh, God, Tim." She gets herself standing again and takes a few steps over. Tears are streaming down her face as she sits down. (Abby scooted out of the chair so Sarah could sit next to Tim.) She takes his hand in hers, but he hisses at that. His left hand may not be broken, but it's cut and bruised and sprained and has an IV leading into it. Having someone just grab it hurts. She jerks at that, dropping it like it burns. She's staring at him, astounded, and it occurs to Gibbs that she's likely never seen anyone this badly beaten. It hits him that she's likely never seen anyone beaten, period, not for real.

"Oh, God, no." Her hands are covering her face, like if she doesn't have to see it, it'll magically go away or get better. "No."

Tim gets she's not denying that it happened. She's wishing that it didn't.

"Yeah." He's crying as he says, "He did it. He threatened to hurt me on his ship when I was a kid, and he did."

"Oh, God, oh God, oh God… Tim… Did you… No… No…" She's still sobbing and no one's entirely sure what she's asking right now. But Glenn gets it, but he's looking at Tim, and doing the math.

"It wasn't him, Sarah." Glenn looks around at the rest of them. "No viewing, burial at sea, everything was already 'taken care of.' They wouldn't let us see his body."

Gibbs gets what 'five' means suddenly. "No. Tim's been here since Friday. Your dad really did die Sunday morning. Tim never touched him."

Sarah whips towards Gibbs, "And how do _you_ know it was Sunday morning?"

"Sarah," Tim's voice is almost back to normal again, just slow and loopy sounding. "None of us did it. We were all here. 'Death before dishonor,' remember? We knew he ordered it. Only way it could have happened. SecNav offered him plead guilty to the attack or dishonorable discharge."

She swallows hard, still whimpering.

"Had to disobey a direct order to let anyone know I was on the ship."

"But… It had to be someone else… He wouldn't… Oh God…"

"There was no one else. He was the only person on the ship other than the Secretary of the Navy and Lt. James who knew I wasn't an Irish Captain doing an inspection."

"It had to be—"

"It _wasn't_!" Tim's voice is savage as he says that. "He said he'd do it. Told me that if I didn't shape up he'd have his men take me onto his ship, cut my dick off and rape me, and twenty years later, I'm in my room, monitoring the test, and then three guys show up and they tried to take me away." He's crying now, too. First time he's said anything, really, about the attack. First time he's remembering it, really, too. "I was supposed to just go with them. Wasn't supposed to fight. Just stupid, cowardly, pussy Tim, too wrapped up in his own fear to fight. I was supposed to just let them take me off to die. Well _fuck_ that, and _fuck_ them, and _fuck_ him! I fought, and I screamed, and he didn't get to watch them rape and mutilate me and jerk off to it, or cheer, or whatever the fuck he was going to do with it, because I was going to die in that goddamn room and kill as many of them as I could before I let anyone take me to what _he_ wanted to do to me!"

Sarah's bowed in on herself, arms wrapped around her waist, sobbing. Tim's crying, too, Abby's trying to hold him, but she can't because there's nowhere she can wrap her arms that doesn't hurt. Glenn's just standing there, stunned. Yeah, he knew John and Tim didn't get along, and Sarah had told him that it was a mess and that her Dad had said some really horrible things a long time ago, but he didn't really _mean_ them, couldn't have _meant_ them, no one could _mean_ that sort of thing, but he's standing here, seeing how badly beat up Tim is, just having come from John's funeral, and _shit_ , John meant them. No way you do that to someone and not _mean_ it.

Abbi's standing very still. That's a whole hell of a lot worse than what she had thought was between Tim and the Admiral. A lot worse. That's more levels of worse than she even guessed could have existed. She looks at Gibbs, sees that he already knows this, and is amazed that he had the self-control to even let Tim get near that ship, let alone on it. Amazed John kept breathing as long as he did.

Gibbs is frozen. He's got nothing. He's in a room filled with sobbing people, and even on a good day that's not his forte, and right now, he couldn't find a good day with a map.

A nurse runs in, probably heard the yelling and sobbing and decided something bad was going down in room 245. She sees sobbing people, way more of them than are supposed to be in here anyway, and starts trying to pull people out, which is when Jimmy jerks into action.

He steps over to her, ushering her out of the room. "We're okay. Very sad right now, it's been a very bad week for everyone, but this has to happen. That's Tim's sister. Their father died yesterday. She's back from the funeral. It's been a really bad day…" He gets her out of the room. "Okay, Gibbs, Abbi, come on, we're going out for a bit." He heads over to Tim, gently strokes Tim's hair, "Gonna let you and your sister have some time, okay? And then we'll be back."

Tim blinks. "Okay."

Jimmy kisses the top of his head. "When we get back, anything you want or need to say about it, I'm here. You're safe, and you're whole, and you made it out. We've got you, now." He very gently kisses Tim again. "You're alive, and he's dead, and it's over."

Tim nods very slightly. "I know."

"Good. Okay, we'll be back in twenty minutes or so."

* * *

The problem with the amount of drugs Tim's on right now, is that if he stops talking, his eyes just close, and next thing he knows it's four hours later.

So, if he's trying to stay awake, which he is, he more or less has to keep talking.

But no one, and certainly not him, wants to talk right now.

He finally comes up with, "Did you talk to Penny?"

Sarah wipes her eyes, inhaling hard and fast. "Tried. After the Chaplain came, we went to her place. She wouldn't talk. Just shook her head about the funeral. I yelled at her for not being willing to come with me. Said some things about how if she couldn't stand to bury the hatchet with him, she could at least… She could at least let me cry on her. Then she shook her head again."

"Oh."

"She knew about this, didn't she?"

Tim looks at Abby. He assumes that's true, but he doesn't actually know. "Yeah. She knew."

"Should have called," Sarah says.

"Been kind of out of it," Tim says, tired.

" _Not you_. She should have called."

Tim would shrug if he could. "What'd Ducky say?"

"Nothing. He started to say a few things, but I was yelling at him, so finally he just shut up, and eventually the Chaplain said if we wanted to get here, we needed to leave." She's crying again. "So we left." She's still crying. "I was calling you."

"Phone's gone. In evidence probably, or broken." He looks at himself. "Only thing of mine I still have is my wedding ring." He swallows, flexing his fingers on his left hand. "Where's my wrist cuff?"

Abby shakes her head. "I don't know. Like your phone, evidence or… They probably cut your clothing off of you… I don't know."

Sarah watches his hand, and the way he's moving tentatively, she looks up and really sees the bruising, the swelling, the broken limbs, the casts, all of it. "Are you going to be all right?"

"Maybe? If I really work at it, I may get full use of my right hand back. Everyone's saying that, but I don't know if it's bullshit to keep my hopes up."

"It's not bullshit. Jimmy says you keep at it, and you'll get it back."

"Are you?" he asks Sarah.

"My dad tried to murder my brother." She wipes her eyes again. "No, I am not all right!"

"Yeah."

* * *

He's drifting back toward asleep when Sarah says, "I couldn't make myself ask him about it. You told me what happened and… And I didn't want to believe it. I didn't think you were lying or making it up, but…"

Tim's eyes laze open. "But he's your dad."

"He's my dad… And you're my brother… And… And if I ignored it I could pretend…" She lightly strokes the back of his hand. Fingertips barely grazing over bruised skin. "I'm sorry!"

"You don't have to be sorry. He can be fucking sorry. You don't have to be."

"I should have broken away from him. I should have…"

"I don't think he ever cared enough about another person to find their absence a punishment. _Me_ cutting ties with him didn't encourage him to treat me better. I don't think you leaving would have made a difference."

"Might have made me feel better. Make me feel less like the idiot who couldn't see what was really there."

"Would have rather you never needed to see what was really there."

Sarah doesn't know what to say to that. She strokes his hand again, blinking back tears that won't stop. Tim's basically gone by the time she says, "Always were looking out for me."

"It's my job." Came out pretty slowly a few seconds later.

* * *

On Monday, Stan Burley sits down, across from Lt. Mane, this time in a proper interrogation room, in a prison.

"You wanted to talk to me?"

"Yes. They tell me Admiral McGee is dead."

Burley knows they've told him that, in that he's the one who told them to do it. He doesn't like not knowing why, and if anything will get why out of Mane, this'll do it. "As of yesterday morning, yes."

"How did he die?" Mane looks utterly wrecked as he asks.

"Sniper's bullet. One minute he was on deck, the next minute he was dead. No one knows how. Haven't even found where the sniper was shooting from. Shame he wasn't in custody. We could have protected him in custody. Was that all?"

Mane stares at his hands for a long minute. "He's really dead?"

"He's really dead."

"No bullshit to get me to talk?"

"Why, do you have something to say? New and interesting bullshit story for me? Aliens beamed McGee's ID directly into your head and you went on a berserk rampage against him?"

Mane looks away from Burley. Everything about him looks beaten down and heartbroken. "He was telling lies about the Admiral. Told his grandmother, John's mom, that John abused him. Told his sister. His mom stopped talking to him. Sarah… She never said anything, didn't cut him out, but you could see it in her eyes, she was worried. He never got to meet one grandchild, and he was never going to be allowed unsupervised time with any others he may have had.

"He was trying to destroy John. Make him look like some kind of pedophile or something. And he shows up with that test… Picked our ship just to show him up. Make John look bad in front of the SecNav. Who knows what lies he told the SecNav?

"He was _never_ a good son, did everything he could to piss John off, wouldn't talk to him for years, called him up the night before his wedding to yell at him and tell him he was a bad husband. But telling his grandmother… spreading those lies…" Mane shakes his head.

"John was mad he was on board. He was furious about the test. Furious at me for not sniffing Tim out. Furious at Tim for those lies, those awful, vile lies. He never, _ever_ laid a hand on Tim, but Tim… just splashing it all over the place, telling anyone who'd listen to his lies… And that kind of lie…" Mane shakes his head again, lip curled in disgust. "John was one step away from Secretary of Defense, and if any of that ever got out… I knew how to fix it. I knew how to make those horrible lies go away. I knew how to make him keep his fucking mouth _shut_ about John. One way or another, Tim would have just vanished one day and that would have been that. Nice and tidy. No more lies."

That's so many levels of fucked-up that Burley doesn't even know where to begin. "Did John know what you were going to do?"

Mane's studying the wall behind Burley. "He told me Tim was on the ship. He told me that the test had gone badly. He…" Mane keeps staring at the wall behind Burley, horror and regret in his eyes. "And when he was done, I told him I'd take care of it. And I did. And he would never, ever ask what I'd done, deniability and all, but he'd know. He always knew, and he never said anything, but he always approved."

"Did you handle anyone else for Admiral McGee?"

Mane shrugs. "It doesn't matter."

"It does to me."

"Had a sailor go overboard during a storm a year ago. If anyone had ever found him, they might have noticed he was dead before he hit the water."

"Was the sailor telling more lies?"

"Not when I was done with him."

Burley nods. "Handle anyone else?"

"Hooker in Thailand."

"What kind of lies was she telling?"

"He. Claimed he'd call it rape if John didn't pay up."

"Uh huh. And you took care of him."

"Can't have people like that around if you're going to rise high."

Burley shakes his head. "No, you can't."

"He was a great man… vision… Vision like you couldn't believe. He would have saved so many lives. Those drones… Wars where our soldiers would all be safe and sound and here, robots and drones doing the fighting. Boots on the ground but no lives risked. Automated tanks, automated subs. I had a brother, naval aviator, killed in a training mission. They fly close, in formation, and something went wrong with his wingman's plane. They were both killed. John was putting a stop to that. No more pilots, not in the planes, not anymore." Mane shakes his head. "He was making it happen. And if he had been the Secretary of Defense… No more 'deeply regrets' visits, no more knocks on the door or a folded flag, and it's all gone now because of that _fucking liar_ of a son."

Burley stands up. "It's all gone because you decided to try and have him killed. If you had kept your hands to yourself, Tim would have stayed in his quarters, monitored the test, and then been on the next plane off the _Stennis_ as soon as possible. John would still be alive, still on the fast track, if you had sat on your hands."

"No."

"Yes." And with that Burley left.

* * *

When Tim wakes up again, his sister and Glenn are gone. So's everyone else, but Jimmy. For a few minutes he just lies there, watching Jimmy read something on his phone. Either Jimmy's looking up just to look up, or he senses Tim's awake, either way his eyes lift and he smiles at Tim.

"Hey."

"Where's everyone?"

"Sarah and Glenn are heading back to DC. They're going to come visit again when you're home, feeling better, and can stay awake for more than twenty minutes. Gibbs and Abbi are seeing them off at the airport, filling in as many details as they know, and all the rest of it. The nurse said you could have some real food if you felt up to it, so Abby's out getting us some dinner."

"Oh."

"She said something about you liking cioppino?"

Tim blinks, thinking about that. "Yeah. Used to live out here, you know? Couple of years, twice… Maybe." He's having a hard time remembering how many years he's been here. "Special treat with Gran and Pop. Go into the city, do something… museum, something like that, get cioppino and sourdough bread before going home."

Jimmy nods. "That sounds good. Couple more years, that'll be us. Smithsonian with the girls."

"Yeah."

Jimmy smiles, touching Tim's hand. "You're here for it."

"I know."

"Maybe I'm convincing me, too."

"Okay."

"Scared the shit out of me when Jethro called."

"Wasn't fun on my end, either."

"I know."

"Will I sound too much like a girl if I say I'm glad you're in Cybercrime now?"

Tim laughs a little at that, and then winces. "Fuck, that hurts."

"Sorry."

"I was in the field for fourteen years, and I never got this badly hurt."

"I know." Jimmy looks at Tim seriously. "No one wants to say it, not yet, but, don't you ever do something so fucking _stupid_ again!"

Tim gets a flash of how scared and angry Jimmy's been, and for a moment he's clear enough to see how much Jethro and Abby must be hurting, too. "Never again."

"Good. 'Cause I'm not burying your ass because you decided to run off and kill dragons, okay? You do anything like this again, and I will boycott your funeral."

"Okay."

"I'm not kidding. It is your job to outlive me and take care of Breena when I'm gone. That's how this works. I am not planting you, so don't you dare do something stupid and make me do it."

"Okay."

Jimmy's still looking at him, mad, but he stands up and carefully kisses Tim's forehead, then pulls back, looking him in the eyes. "Never again."

"Never again." Tim blinks, slowly. "When'd you get so kissy?"

"When you got so goddamned hurt that there's nowhere to hug."

Tim exhales slowly, eyes closed. "Never again."

* * *

Food. Food is an amazing thing. Tim loves food. He loves the way it smells. He loves how it feels in his mouth. He loves the taste. Right now, sourdough toast and cioppino, rich with crab and shrimp and scallops is the most brilliant thing he's ever had in his mouth.

Nothing like not actually eating anything for days to make real food taste like heaven.

Also, nothing like not actually eating for days to hammer home exactly how tired and weak you are because you're having a hard time lifting a fork all the way to your mouth. And nothing like soup with crab in it, in the shell, to really make it very clear you've only got one working hand, and it's barely working.

That crab would have died of old age, been reincarnated as a tortoise, and that tortoise would have also died of old age, before he could have gotten it out of its shell one-handed.

But Abby was willing to wrestle it out for him, and feed it to him, and yes, he'd rather be able to feed himself, but he's tired, and his arms ache, and it tastes good, and maybe it's okay to get some coddling right now.

* * *

He wakes up again later. No idea how late it is, but the tray table with the food on it is close enough for him to reach. He's munching on a bite of toast when he notices Abby's cell phone on the tray.

He looks around, sees that Abby's on the cot, sleeping, and besides her, he appears to be alone.

So he picks the phone up, puts her password in (only takes three tries. He's not sure if that's because he's doing it one handed or the pain medication is keeping him _that_ stoned) and eventually finds Penny's number.

He hears the phone pick up, but no words. But Sarah said she wasn't talking, so…

"It's me, Penny. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gotten on the ship."

He hears a deep inhale, and a harsh exhale followed by. "Timothy McGee, none of that from you."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault."

"I know, but… If I hadn't gotten on-"

"Oh, honey." She sighs. "It's not your fault."

"Thank you." He didn't know until he said it, but he did need to hear that, from her.

"I'm still sorry. I didn't want this for you."

"I know. And I never wanted this for you or your sister."

"I know." A few quiet second pass. "Shit. What time is it there?"

He hears her laugh a little. "Doesn't matter. You just wake up?"

"Yeah, been in and out all day for… for a while, now."

"You go back to sleep, baby."

"Soon, Penny." Another quiet moment. "Penny, it's not your fault either. You know that, right? It's not me, and it's not you, and it wasn't Grandpa Nelson. He just… was who he was."

"I know, Tim."

"Good. I need you to know that."

"I do. Okay, enough talking. Go get more sleep. I'll see you when you get home. "

"Okay."


	110. Bodies At Rest/Bodies In Motion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pictures of the cast is up on the blog version of this. http://charactersaremyheroin.blogspot.com/2014/09/shards-to-whole-miles-to-go.html

Tuesday was the first day Tim was, for the most part, sort of, awake. Awake is highly overrated.

Bodies are highly overrated.

For the most part Tim loves his body. It does everything he wants it to do. It makes him feel really awesome. It has been the source of much pleasure and joy over the years, and these last four years especially, he's been awfully fond of it.

But right now, he'd give all four eye teeth and maybe even a few toes if he could upload his brain to a computer and hang out there until his body gets working again.

He hurts. Okay, that… sucks, honestly. Everything that can hurt does, and he's not seeing an end of that anytime in the near future. They keep giving him pain meds, and given how much of them he's on, he's pretty horrified at the idea of how bad this would hurt without them. With them, he feels like he's got an all-over toothache.

But that's not nearly as problematic as the issue currently facing him. They started giving him solid food again yesterday, which he wholeheartedly approved of. But, his body is done with that food now, and would rather like to get rid of it, and he can't figure out how to accomplish that on his own.

He tries, very gingerly to move one leg toward the side of his bed, with the plan of somehow getting himself standing up, but his left leg sent him a very clear, 'Oh no you aren't!' signal to his brain.

He tries it again once more, just for... for a chance at not having to tell someone he needs to shit. No dice. His body is not going anywhere on its own.

(What he thought he was going to do if he had gotten his foot off the side of the bed, what with his arm in traction, a broken foot, dislocated ankle, broken leg, and dislocated knee, is something of a mystery, but, yeah… _Lots_ of painkillers.)

Which means he needs help. Help he doesn't want to need. But he can't get himself up, and wishing isn't going to make this issue go away.

Abby's napping. She's his first choice for help, but he's pretty sure, (she's got black circles under both eyes) that she's not getting enough sleep, so he doesn't want to wake her up.

Press the help button? He sighs at that. The nurses are all women, at least, on this shift, and he's fairly sure he's not going to make it to the next one.

He reaches over and gets his phone. (Returned yesterday night, amazingly enough, unbroken, along with his wrist cuff. Case is officially closed, so he can have his personal effects back.) He doesn't know where Jimmy is, but… he's strong enough to lift him, and a doctor, and a guy. If anyone can help him to the head…

_Need some help._ He texts very slowly, having to keep going back and deleting to get it in right.

_There in a sec. You okay?_

_Need a hand getting to the head._

Jimmy steps into his room shaking his head. "Not gonna happen."

Tim's giving him his best, _oh come on_ look. "It better happen." They're both talking quietly, so Abby can keep sleeping.

"Even if you weren't strapped to the bed, broken ribs and dislocated shoulder means I can't lift you. Broken leg, dislocated ankle, dislocated knee, and broken foot and toes means you can't stand, even with help."

"Yeah, well, I can't hold it until I'm all healed up."

"No one's suggesting that. Ever hear of a bedpan?"

Tim winces, yes, he has, though it hadn't occurred to him. "How does that even work?"

"Roll on your left side, someone'll situate the pan, roll you onto it, you do what you need to do, roll on your side again, and they'll clean you up."

"If you shot me in the head right now, it'd be a mercy killing."

Jimmy snorts a quick laugh at that. "I'll get a nurse."

* * *

Given that he's the parent of a one year old (who he desperately wants to see again), and as a result of that, he's done this roughly seven hundred (if not more) times in the last year, dealing with poop shouldn't be that big of a deal. Bodies eat, bodies excrete. Should be very matter of fact.

Still embarrassing as fuck, and he hopes he never has to look any of those nurses in the eye again.

The best thing he can say about it is, it was fast.

And he's never going to suggest that heated diaper wipes are a ridiculous luxury. Those little bastards are fucking _cold_ right out of the pack.

He's also thinking that a mostly liquid diet seems to be a really good plan right now. He can go back to food he chews when he can get himself to the john.

That lasted for two meals, when Jimmy figured out what he was doing and told him that wasn't going to work. He'd need to be on clear liquids for that plan to work, but if he wants enough calories and vitamins to actually heal up, he needs real food. Then Jimmy left, and came back an hour later with grilled salmon, roasted veggies, and a mocha cupcake. Unsurprisingly, it did not take a lot of persuading to get Tim to eat that. (Though he regretted it when four hours later his body was done with that, too.)

* * *

"Okay Mr. McGee, let's see about getting you out of this!" The Orthopedist says, very excited.

Getting out of traction was supposed to be Tuesday, but it's Wednesday now, and they're just getting around to it. Something about 'waiting for the casts to arrive' whatever the hell that meant. (Jimmy's explained, but Tim lost track of it while he was doing so.) What he does know is that both Jimmy and Abby thought waiting for the cast was worth an extra day here, so… Yay, the cast is here! (Insert heavy sarcasm. He'd be more enthusiastic about it if he remembered what was special about this.)

"Please," Tim says, and while that's not excited, it is sincere. Getting out of this damn bed is something he wants, and supposedly getting casted up is part of that.

In that he's attached to his right arm, he hasn't been able to escape noticing that it's swaddled in a huge mass of bandages, casts, various support structures and the like. He's seen buildings covered in scaffolding that had less crap on them than his right arm does now.

When he sees the new casts, Tim understands what he was waiting for. He's approving of the small and light looking gear the Doc's brought in. The biggest one kind of looks like what would happen if Spiderman built Bucky Barnes' prosthetic arm, with a few extra electronics tossed in for… he doesn't know, shits and giggles maybe. He notices there are two other 'casts' on that tray as well, so looks like both legs are getting this treatment as well.

The arm cast is a rigid web a plastic, that from the looks of it, is going from his pectoral muscle to his fingertips. It's not what he thinks of as being a 'cast' though. Nothing even remotely like what they put on him when he got hit by the bus.

"That's new," Tim says as the nurses are very gently detaching the weights from the cords that are attached to his fingers and keeping his wrist in the right place.

"Yeah, it is. Those two," The Doc looks at Jimmy and Abby, "said you wouldn't mind being a test case."

"No. Don't mind at all."

The Doc holds it up. "We're really excited about these. Once we got your arm back together, we took scans of it, and fed them into the computer, and got this printed out."

Jimmy rolls his eyes. This is the Doctor who handled Tim's arm, and he did a fine job. The jerk-off who took care of his legs had to be reminded of this whole cast concept, which is why the damn things are a day late.

"3D printed casts, made for me?"

"Yep, strong, light, because of the web-like structure you can get it wet with no problems. Plenty of ventilation for your skin, so it won't start to smell funky and don't have to worry about accidentally tearing up your skin to scratch an itch. It's thin enough it should fit under most of your clothing without a problem." The Doc picks up the electronics. "These are the really cool part. They make tiny sonic vibrations, that encourage your bones to heal faster. With the number of breaks you've got it's going to take a while, but twenty minutes a day, pop the vibration head into the right hole in the web." The Doc holds up the vibration head, and the cast, and Tim does notice that some of the holes… _Shit, more than I can count_ … are white while the rest of the cast is black. "Let it do its thing, then onto the next one for another twenty minutes, and, assuming it works the way it's supposed to, we should have you down to a sling and braces for your wrist and fingers in only six weeks."

Tim nods. _Only_ six weeks was actually longer than he was hoping for, but judging by how excited the orthopedic specialist is, and the way Jimmy's grinning at him, _only_ six weeks is apparently a major improvement over whatever the normal length of time someone with as many breaks as he's got would have spent in a cast.

"We've got one for your foot, and your leg as well. Probably only need those for a month."

That sounds a bit better. Still, a month on his ass.

"I can't walk on these, can I?"

The Doc shakes his head. "No, and even if you could, it's a bad idea. On the left you've got a dislocated ankle and nine broken tarsals… The little bones in your foot."

"I know what they are."

"Okay, good. On the right, dislocated knee and cracked tibia. Your right will heal up faster, but give it at least two weeks before you try putting any weight on it, and three is better." As the Doc is saying that, one of the nurses is unwinding the bandages from his knee and ankle, getting him ready for the casts. He looks at them, realizing that his right leg's going to be extended straight out for the next three weeks, at least.

Tim sighs. "Wonderful. Ribs?"

"We'd offer for your ribs or face, but it's not tested, at all, for any sort of break near a vital organ, and we wouldn't cast them anyway. If you mess around with it, write down what happens, okay."

"Uh… okay." He's thinking 'not tested for any sort of break near a vital organ' means he's happy to just leave it alone, but maybe if he gets frustrated enough on slowly healing up he'll do some research and mess around with it.

By now the other nurse has his arm out of the previous bandages and casts and he's getting a chance to look at it for the first time since… God, his shower Friday morning.

"Is it… Wednesday?"

Abby nods.

He sighs. His arm is still covered in blue, purple, green, yellow bruises, swollen more or less from top to bottom, and there's a long incision down his bicep and forearm.

"Cuts?"

"We had to use screws to put your humerus and radius back together. Can't do that without opening your arm up."

"Oh." On the upside, they didn't have to cut through his tattoo. He thinks it'll still look right when everything heals up.

"Good to see no infection." The Doc cracks open the cast. "It's got hinges on this side, and fastens together here. Antibiotic ointment on the incision sites for the next few days."

"All right." Abby says. "Bandages?"

Doc shakes his head. "You need to be in the casts as much as you can. In a week or so, it's going to start to seem too big, because the swelling will go down and you won't be moving your arm, so you'll head to your orthopedic surgeon back home, and he'll hook you up with a new cast that'll fit better. And probably once more before you're out of this all together, but except for when he's popping your arm out of the one and putting it into the next, you stay in the cast."

"I can do that."

"Good. I run into too many kids who look at one of these things, notice they can open them, and then decide that since they're feeling mostly better it's time to get out of it. The only thing I like better about plaster casts is that most people couldn't get out of one on their own without letting me know they'd done it."

"I'll keep it on."

"Very good." The Doc very gently places Tim's arm in the new cast. Even very gently, it hurts. And he gently closes it up and snaps the web into place. That hurts, too. And then it's done, and Tim can at least see his arm, and he's not tied to little weights that were pulling his wrist into the right place.

That's progress. After a minute he's done the same thing for Tim's foot and leg.

"Okay, if you want, we can get you into a wheel chair, and you can move around a bit. Maybe get you to the bathroom for a shower."

"Yes, please."

"Good. Nurses will finish getting up unhooked and show you and your wife how to get you in and out of the wheelchair."

* * *

Once he's got the casts in place and the instructions for dealing with them, (And more importantly, Abby has those instructions, because right now he's doing well if he can keep a constant thought in his head for half an hour) everyone other than Abby heads out to let the nurses get him completely unhooked.

So, he can understand, rationally, why you'd tape the catheter tube to the leg of the person who's wearing it, but in that he's been strapped to the damn bed (so it's not like he was going to go anywhere) and they didn't bother to remove any of his leg hair first, peeling the tape off hurt like a bastard, and set him up with a perfectly rectangular patch of brand new bruise on what was one of the few places he didn't have any bruises.

As for removing the tube… Okay, honestly, not that bad, more an issue in his head than his dick, still having a strange woman grab his penis is really off-putting, and he's very glad he was unconscious when they put it in.

Saying goodbye to the IV meant more bruises on top of skin that's already bruised. He's got no idea what the hell adhesive they used on the tape but apparently it's designed to create unbreakable bonds with human skin. He feels like the back of his hand and wrist got peeled off along with the tape.

Last bit was the bandages binding his chest. He looks at them, but the nurse shakes her head. "You can get them wet, and when you get out of the shower we'll change them, but for at least another week, we want you to keep your chest wrapped. You had a really bad break and some nasty lung damage, so we don't want anything slipping out of place."

That makes sense.

"Okay, let's get you out of this bed!" the nurse says with a cheery voice.

He's sitting up, on his own, without the support of the mattress behind his back and eyeballing the bathroom where rumor has it there's a shower.

Abby smiles at him. "Twelve feet to the door, and four more to the shower. Let's go."

Tim starts to try and turn himself toward the bathroom, and the nurse shakes her head. "Nope, not like that." She lowers the bed so it's the same height as the wheelchair, and then puts down one of the arms on the wheelchair, and parks it right next to the bed on his left side. "You're going to use your arm and hips to scoot over, into the chair."

Tim wants to say something sarcastic like, 'No, really? I thought I'd just float over,' but this woman is trying to be kind, trying to teach him something he needs to know, and she does not need him being a smart ass about this. So, he says, "Okay," and begins a very long, very slow, and rather painful process of trying to scoot his ass off the side of the bed, without really using three of his limbs.

It takes close to two minutes, but eventually, he does get himself into the chair.

"Until you've got the ability to stand, you're better off sleeping and resting on something close to the height of the chair. Lateral movement is tough, with only one arm, up and down is going to be even more difficult."

"So, you're saying I'm spending all my time on the sofa when I get home?"

"Sofa, chair, bed if it's the right height."

"Great."

"Won't be forever," she says kindly. Tim realizes that he is at a Naval hospital and that the nurses here deal with people who only have one arm still attached to their bodies, not just cracked, sprained, and broken limbs.

He is going to heal. Eventually. Maybe not entirely what he was before, but at least all of his pieces are still attached. "No, it won't." He smiles a little, not really feeling it, but perspective is probably a good thing.

"And with those casts… We've been having good luck with them. Two, three weeks, and you'll be ready to start crutching around some."

Tim smiles limply at that, too. Sounds better than on his ass for a whole month, but crutching around… He wants to walk, and run, and… and not hurt. He wants to not hurt. Every move, every breath, all of his body _hurts_ right now.

He's in the chair, looking at it, as the nurse puts the arm rest up. (Though why is a mystery, not like he can rest his right arm on an armrest. The cast is keeping it turned inward, across his stomach.) "Okay, Abby, your turn."

"I can't wheel myself?"

"Only one arm, you'll just go in circles," the nurse answers. He looks over her scrubs and finally locates a nametag. Dee.

"Any shot of getting one of these where both wheels are on one axle?"

She shakes her head. "Don't have one on hand. If you were going to be using it for longer, we'd see about ordering one, but for only a few weeks…"

"For only a few weeks I can be a massive pain in someone else's ass, requiring someone else to move me around." He tries but doesn't succeed in keeping the bitterness out of his voice on that.

Apparently Dee's heard this, and all the other versions of it, before. "Think of it this way, this chair allows you to move around enough so you don't go stark raving mad from cabin fever, but it makes sure that you rest, take it easy, and lay around, so that you can heal, and you end up spending the least possible time in it."

Tim takes another deep breath. _Perspective. Two or three weeks._ Another sigh slips out of him, and a fake smile. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. Once you get into the bathroom, do you need more help?"

Abby answers, "Same basic idea, pull up along side to the little seat in the shower, scoot over, wash off, dry off, scoot back?"

"Yes. It'll probably be easier for you to get your pants on lying down than sitting down, so hold off on that until you're back in the bed."

"Okay."

"Go, get showered off. It'll help you feel better. When you're done we'll have fresh sheets on the bed, get you all snug in something comfy, then more pain meds, another nap, dinner, more sleeping, and tomorrow you get to go home."

Tim smiles, genuinely, at the idea of home.

* * *

The bathroom. First change of scenery in days.

"How depressing is it that I'm excited to see tiled walls and a sink?" Tim asks Abby, dryly.

"I felt pretty excited to see something new after Kelly was born, too."

It's a small bathroom, probably a good thing, not like he can really cover much ground on his own.

There's also, on the back of the door, a full length mirror. Which, since Abby shut the door, means he can actually see himself. A horrified and pained whimper slips out of him as he sees his face. Five days means that a lot of the swelling is down, and they did put his nose back into the right place, but his face is still black and blue, his lips and eyebrow and the bridge of his nose are all cut and split.

"Oh God."

She kisses the top of his head. Well aware that there is literally nothing she can possibly say that can even begin to make this better.

He whimpers again, looking at the rest of himself. He could see some of the damage before, mostly his left arm. He had a blanket over most of him, and bandages on his right arm and chest for almost all of the last five days, so this is really the first unobstructed view of most of himself and the fact that this is how he's looking five days after the attack makes him want to throw up.

Abby very gently strokes his back and neck as he stares at the bruises and the cuts and all the swollen, strained bits. He thought he hurt before, but being able to see all of himself makes it that much worse. Every inch, every bruise, every break, every cell of his body is screaming in abused pain. He starts crying, deep, wracking, sobbing tears, half physical pain made that much worse by seeing himself, half emotional distress at what happened to him.

"You're safe, Tim." Abby keeps murmuring that as he cries, kneeling in front of him, holding his leg, kissing the unbruised bits of his knee, very, very gently stroking her hands over his skin.

"You're safe. You're with me. Tomorrow we're going home, baby. We're going to see Kelly tomorrow. It's her birthday, tomorrow, and we're going to get home, and hold her, and you're safe, you're going home." She keeps murmuring things like that, gently, so gently, feather light touches, petting him as he alternates between sobbing and staring at himself.

When he's quiet, when a good two minutes have gone by without any crying, she stands up, fiddling with the shower controls, turning the water on so it's coming out of the shower head that's attached to the hose, and letting it pour down the drain right now, warming up.

She kisses the top of his head. "Back in a few seconds, gotta get your stuff."

Tim nods at her and starts to shift a bit, trying to get himself over, but the shower seat, like everything else on fucking earth, is made for a right-handed person, so the goddamned hand rails are on the wrong side for him to scoot himself over. So he just sits there, feeling devastated.

He thought he'd gotten through and around and dealt with and all that other shit you do when your Dad's a complete fucking asshole and you've got to live with it. He thought he was done. But he's looking at his body, beaten to a pulp, and dealing with that fact that John didn't just let it happen, he made it happen. He wanted this, and more than this, and it's hitting Tim in waves of revulsion how deep that hate has to go, how sick you've got to be that this would be okay. He's breathing deep (as much as he can without hurting) and steady, because he doesn't want to throw up, and even though the toilet and sink are only a few feet away, he doesn't think he can make it on his own, and given how much breathing hurts, puking's going to kill him, so, deep, steadying breaths.

Abby comes in, sees the way he's breathing, and drops the clothing and toiletries. She's kneeling in front of him again, holding his left hand carefully, stroking the back of his neck.

"He let them do this to me."

She nods.

"He wanted this." The crying ramps back up again. "Wanted worse than this." Tim's shaking with fear and anger in addition to crying, a horrifyingly vivid image of what he would have looked like if those guys had gotten him out of his room, and if they had made good on this Dad's threats clear in his mind. Abby's holding onto him as best as she can, cuddling and wrapping him in as much love as touch can convey.

Several minutes later, they both hear a tentative knock on the door along with Jimmy saying, "Need an extra hand?"

Tim shakes his head, so Abby calls out. "We're good."

"Okay. Holler if you need help."

Tim wipes his eyes, forcing fear and anger back, some. He's alive. He's in one piece. His dick is still exactly where it's supposed to be. They didn't pull him out of the room. They didn't mutilate him. They didn't rape him. He's ALIVE. And he can't spend all day in here, crying. He sniffs. "Let's get this done."

Abby strokes his face. "We can take as long as you need."

"I know. Just… want to be done. Want to get home and back to normal as soon as I can."

"Okay. Let's get you washed off and dressed." She helps him scoot onto the shower seat, and then begins rinsing him off.

Warm water feels good. Gently being washed is nice. Abby naked in the shower with him is something he approves of, but mostly in a this is pleasant and comforting and intimate sort of way. The sex part of his brain isn't online right now. Getting his hair washed feels really good, apparently his scalp isn't too badly bruised up.

"Want me to shave you?" Abby asks once she's got his hair rinsed out.

Yes. He wants to goatee and any reminder of what happened off of his body. No, because his face is bruised, his jaw is a mess, his lips are split, and right now having a razor play over his skin sounds like torture.

"No."

"Then I think we're done." She turns the water off and begins to gently dry him off. That's good, too. When she's done, she eyeballs the toilet. "Want some alone time?"

And like with the shower, the toilet is also handicapped accessible, assuming you've got a functional right hand.

"I'm good on that for right now. But… I've got to figure out how to get on and off on my own, so… stay with me, so if I fall you can help me up?"

"You don't have to do it yourself. I can help you get on."

"Remember when you were taking Kelly's pregnancy test?" She had told him then that she didn't want him watching her pee.

She nods.

"This, too gets to remain a mystery, or at least as much of one as I can possibly maintain."

"Okay." So she gets dried off and dressed as he tries to figure out how to get himself, with only his left arm, onto the toilet. It takes a while, but he doesn't fall on his ass (or into the bowl), and he does eventually get himself on, and off, and back on, and back off, and by that point he's done. He's tired. He's sweating. He's ready for a shit ton of pain meds and a nap.

"Almost done," Abby says to him.

"Almost." Tim's eyeballing his deodorant when it hits him that he can't put it on. Can't use his left arm to put it on the left side, (He guesses that maybe he could, normally, but the idea of trying to get his arm into position for that makes him want to break into a cold sweat.) and the cast covers his right from just about his nipple to fingertips.

Abby sees the way he's looking at it. "You want me to do the one side or just skip it?"

He closes his eyes, hating how helpless he is, and lifts his left arm as high as it will go, just a bit above shoulder level.

He winces a little as she does it.

"Hurts?"

"Tickles."

"Sorry." Abby puts the deodorant down after a swipe in each direction. "Is that enough?"

He nods.

"How do you even do that with armpit hair? Are you even getting it on your skin?"

He laughs, slightly, at that. "I've never thought about it. You just do it, and it works."

"Okay." Abby gets toothpaste on his brush.

He looks at that, wondering if he can even get a tube of toothpaste uncapped on his own. He decides yes, bite the cap between his teeth, unscrew, apply, rescrew, brush… He can do that. Apparently it shows on his face because Abby says, "Feeling a little more like yourself?"

"Little." He takes the brush from her and gets to it. While he's brushing he checks out both his teeth (Upper jaw, second front one on the right appears to the be the one that ended up with the cap. At least, it's not the same color the other ones are.) and his face.

It looks a little better than before the shower. Apparently some of what he thought were bad cuts was actually dried blood. So, he's a little less beat up looking. But only a little.

One of the cuts goes straight through his left eyebrow. "They think that'll heal?"

"No one's said anything about it in specific. The plastic surgeon was more concerned about the bites and getting your nose and sinus back in place. But, if it scars, two seconds with an eyebrow pencil will cover it."

He nods at that.

"Plus, if it scars, and you like it, having a bisected eyebrow's pretty cool."

He looks at her wryly, finishing up with his teeth, and then says, "I know you love James Marsters, but…" and then shakes his head.

She grins at him. "It'd look awesome! Okay, you look done, back to bed. Then we'll get some pants on you, and then new wraps for your chest, and a shirt, and…"

He sighs. "Bed." He'd like to be somewhere else, but he's hurting, and tired, and his internal clock's telling him pain meds are coming soon, and as soon as they're in his system, he'll be asleep again.

"Okay, back to bed. Get a good nap. Dinner. More sleeping, and then tomorrow, bright and early, on the plane and home we go."

"That sounds good."

* * *

Someone changed out the sheets while he was getting washed off, and Tim appreciates that. And, with his arm no longer in traction, he doesn't have to be on his back, reclining, or smack dab in the middle of the bed. Which he also appreciates.

Once he's out of the bathroom and next to the bed, Jimmy hops up and takes over from Abby on giving him a hand getting onto the mattress. Stronger, a bit steadier, and slightly taller makes that easier. Once he's on his bed, Jimmy calls the nurse.

Abby roots around in her bag and finds his pajama pants. "Nurse said this would be easier lying down."

Jimmy nods, holding out a hand. "Did this as a resident. Did a lot of stuff as a resident. Okay, smush up the legs," Jimmy takes the legs of the pajamas in hand and accordions them into an inch long tube, "Foot through each one," he carefully threads Tim's broken foot through first, then the other one, "always do the more damaged side first. Then carefully tug up." He makes sure that the pants don't catch on his casts. "Up to the hips, roll on one side." Tim does, and Jimmy slips the pants up, "Roll on the other side," and again Tim complies, and again Jimmy gets his pants up, "And in no time at all, you're dressed!"

Tim smiles a little. "Some."

"One other thing to keep in mind. You can't pee standing up, and getting out of your pants is going to be a similarly involved project, so…" Jimmy taps a white plastic device that's hooked onto the left (looks like Jimmy at least knows which hand works) handrail of his bed. "Urinal."

"Great." Tim rolls his eyes.

"You could be in diapers," Jimmy says dryly.

"This is better."

"I thought you'd agree."

Dee came back in. "Feeling a little better?"

"Some. Better yet when I get my next dose of pain medication."

She checks his chart. "Ten minutes. Once I've got you re-wrapped and your shirt on, more OxyContin for you." Then Dee cuts the bandages that have been keeping his chest tightly compressed off.

Tim winces. The scissors are cold, and the ability to actually breathe, let alone needing to support his chest using his own muscles hurts. Jimmy helps keep him up as she re-wraps him, nice and snug again.

Finally, he's got a Dixie cup of lukewarm water, a little, white tablet, and the ability to lie down. Since he's not in traction, he doesn't need to be on his back, so he gingerly rolls onto his right side. That doesn't hurt any more than his back did, so he stays there, close to the side of the bed, and Abby doesn't need a spoken invitation to know what he needs.

She carefully gets onto the bed, snuggles up behind him, arm slipping under his neck, and holds (as gently as she can) his left hand in hers.

Since he doesn't have the IV in anymore, an idea hits. "Jimmy, can you get his wrist cuff?"

Jimmy nods, then heads to Abby's purse, rooting around in there, finally locating the cuff. For a second he holds it out to Abby to put back on, but she's not well positioned for it, and moving around just means more pain for Tim, so he carefully, gently, snaps it into place on Tim's left wrist.

"Good?" Jimmy asks.

Tim nods, eyes tearing up.

Abby kisses the back of his neck.

Jimmy's still holding his wrist. "Want me to take it off?"

Tim shakes his head, not trusting his voice. It's not that there's anything wrong about the cuff. It's his cuff. Back on his wrist, one more step closer to whole, but… But he's not the cuff. He won't be all together again for weeks, months, and it's not as simple as just putting a piece of himself back on.

He squeezes Abby's hand a little tighter, and that hurts, too, before closing his eyes, and curling in on himself. (At least as much as he can with one leg that doesn't bend.)

She can read that as a pretty definitive _I've dealt with everything and anything I can deal with today, time to check out gesture._

She kisses the back of his neck again. "Okay."

* * *

It's an hour later, when Jimmy is absolutely sure that Tim is completely asleep when he quietly says, "Lots of healing to do."

"Yeah. What happened to him really hit when he saw himself."

Jimmy closes his eyes and swallows, gritting his teeth. Then he looks back at Abby, who's cuddling Tim, gently stroking her thumb over the back of his hand. "When we lost Jon, before they let us leave the hospital, a social worker visited to talk to us about PTSD."

Abby nods.

Tim shifts, moans a bit, and seems to settle in to deeper sleep.

Abby kisses him, then speaks a little more softly, "I know. Breena told me. And… when he started having nightmares, and when I figured out what he was dreaming about, I studied up. On PTSD, on repressed memories, on being a survivor of sexual abuse."

Jimmy raises an eyebrow.

"He'd dream about it, talk about it in his sleep, and I thought it happened. Some of it, at least. Obviously, not all of it. But… No idea where the line was, what was fear, what was real."

Jimmy shakes his head. "I want to fish him out of the ocean and kill him all over again."

"I know. Me, too. And Gibbs…" Abby sighs, quietly. "I just want to hurt him, so bad, all over, in every way, and it's just gone. Lord." Abby goes quiet, praying for peace and calm and… and hoping that there's comfort somewhere.

* * *

Dinner comes and goes.

Tim eats, but he's quiet.

Night comes and he's sleeping, but fitful. Another shift in his pain meds means they aren't doing quite the job of knocking him out that they had been. Instead of falling asleep within seconds of closing his eyes, he's got this sort of strange half-awake half-asleep sensation where he's aware but his body doesn't want to do anything for long stretches.

So he sleeps, and dreams, nothing bad or disturbing, waking up and not being home with Abby and Kelly and all healed up is the disturbing part, and lays there, feeling Abby against his back, the soft puffs of her breath on his neck. He can hear Jimmy's quiet, steady breathing, and the little night sounds people make, shifting around, bits of vocalizations, getting up to hit the head, stuff like that.

Morning comes and with it a huge stack of paperwork encompassing all of Tim's release documentation, prescriptions, what he needs to be taking when, appointments made with the one orthopedic specialist in the DC area who works with the kind of casts he's got, and all the rest of it.

But, eventually, Abby's wheeling him out of the hospital, and they're heading toward the jet, and from there, home.

* * *

They're bouncing him between steadily lower doses of OxyContin and Percocet, trying to walk that tightrope between keeping his pain between a two and three on a one to ten scale, and not setting up an addiction, but for the flight home, they give Jimmy two tabs of Dilaudid, with a 'you'll know if he needs them' sort of conspiratorial doctor's wink.

Jimmy gets it, traveling in something that vibrates with broken bones might be absolute shit. Or not. And they don't want Tim nervous about getting on the plane. So, if it really hurts, he's set to completely knock him out, but if he's okay, then he's okay.

Tim's face is already pinched from the pain on the car ride, so they don't even get to the air strip before Jimmy's broken out the first tab.

* * *

The good thing is that it's a private jet. The seats are soft, comfy, and recline. Tim's right knee, the one that was dislocated, is on the same side as the cracked tibia, so there's one long cast from just above his knee to just above his ankle. That leg can't bend, so Jimmy locks the wheels on the wheel chair, and uses that as a prop for his right leg once they get him set on the plane.

Fortunately, he's out of it by the time they're in the air.

But every time they hit any turbulence, he whimpers. And it doesn't look like his dreams are easy. His face is still tense, and his eyes flicker fast beneath his lids.

When Abby gets up to just move around some, stretch out the kinks in her back, and hit the head, he wakes a little, looking sad and lost and scared, so Gibbs comes over, holding onto him, gently stroking his head, as Tim burrows into him.

"I've got you, Tim."

"I know."

Gibbs gently kisses his forehead, holding him close. "Shhh… You just rest easy, okay."

"Okay, Dad."

Abby saw it happen while she was getting a drink, and smiles at Gibbs, knowing how much that moment mattered to Gibbs.

* * *

No one's called him Dad, not like that, since 1991.

And even if it was high as a kite and three quarters out of his head on whatever it is Jimmy's given him, it matters. He's missed that so much, didn't know how just hearing that word aimed at him would fill him up. Pop is good, and he loves when Kelly calls him it, but… Dad's better, fills a different hole, one that's been empty too damn long.

Abby's smiling at him, as she sits down on Gibbs' other side, she keeps her voice low as she says, "He probably won't remember he did it, but if you tell him what it meant to you, he'll do it when he's sober."

Gibbs shrugs. "I can wait until he can do it on his own."

Abby shrugs at that, too. "Might be too much baggage with that for him to come up with it on his own when he's sober."

Gibbs nods. "That's why I can wait."

She cuddles into Gibbs. "Even with all the baggage, it might be something he needs, but can't say, when he's sober."

Gibbs nods briefly at that.

* * *

Tim's awfully tired by the time they get home. Tired and aching. Plane travel followed by car travel with as many broke bones as he has is pretty much torture.

The original plan was everyone was going to be there to say 'Hi' see he was all in one piece offer welcome, but by the time they were on the runway, heading toward Abby's car, that plan had been scrapped. Jethro and Abbi are heading back to Jethro's. Breena and the girls are going to meet them at the McGees', and then that's it.

Visitors tomorrow, if he's feeling up for it.

So, as Jimmy's helping him get up the stairs on their front porch, and Abby's running ahead to get the door open, Tim wants to sack out, take about fifty pain pills, and more or less just die.

But he can't, not yet. There's something very, very important he needs to do first.

Abby's giving him help because between the arm and the ribs he can't get a very good hold on her, but more than anything else right now, he wants to cuddle his baby girl, and he is. (Jimmy's similarly wrapped in a pile of hugging girls.)

"Happy Birthday, Kelly." He kisses her, holding her close, crying some. "Told you I'd be back for today."

"Dadadadada!" She's in his arms, and squirmy, and laying big, wet, (ouchy) kisses all over his face, and right this second Tim couldn't be happier or more relieved.

A minute later, he gets a gentle hug from Breena, and a not so gentle hug from Molly, who's fascinated by his casts and bruises, and wants to touch and poke him all over, which means it's time for the Palmer branch of the family to head off before she decides any really tender bits of Uncle Tim need to get poked.

He's fading pretty fast by that point. Weary, really not all there, but on the sofa, with Kelly lying on his chest, and Abby kneeling next to him, on the floor, lips against his temple, and he's drifting off to sleep, in his own home, his girls by his side.


	111. Visitors

"What happens tomorrow?" Abbi asks Jethro as they get to his place.

He rubs his eyes as he flops onto the sofa. He's tired and feeling pretty lost right now. No case to solve, no revenge to get, just dealing with the emotional fall out of this, which isn't his strong suit. "Pick up Mona. Get over to Tim and Abby's, build a ramp for the front porch."

That's a good idea. Concrete plan. Something he can _do._ Of course, they've only got two steps up from the front walk up to the porch, so it won't take him, long, but it's _something._

"You?"

"Gotta go back tomorrow. Haven't gone this long without checking in since my sister's wedding."

"Good wedding?" He's wondering how intense it would have had to have been to have gotten her to go five days without calling in.

"Eh. Out in the middle of nowhere. Sunrise and sunset ceremony at Mt. Kimball, in Alaska. The wedding part was fun. _Cold_. Grow up in Montana and you think you know everything there is to know about cold and snow, but you're _wrong_. Because your insane sister really likes the idea of having a wedding that starts as the sun rises and ends as it sets so your ass gets dragged to a mountain in Alaska in November where you can freeze in the cold and miss the damn sunrise and set because it's snowing. No cell reception for five days."

Gibbs nods at that. With the exception of when he went to Mexico, he doesn't think a week passed when he was a cop where he didn't check in at least once. He pulls Abbi close to him. "Thank you. I…" he licks his lips. "I needed that. Needed you."

She smiles and nods, kissing him gently. He holds her tighter.

* * *

When he heads over to Breena's place the next morning, she gives him a warm hug, and Mona's leaping all over him, ecstatic to see him again. The doggy version of _I thought you left me forever! Don't ever do that again! I love you! I love you! I love you!_

He pets her vigorously, with many versions of 'good girl,' and she glows with it.

He looks around, noticing that besides leaping doggy, the house is awfully quiet. "Jimmy and the girls?"

"I'm taking a day on my own. He took them to daycare, I took the day off, and I'm sucking up some quiet time."

Gibbs nods. Three baby girls, one dog, no husband around. He knows Shannon had plenty of days where it was just her and Kelly and she was ready to scream by bedtime. Three girls under the age of three. _Yikes._

He hugs Breena, kissing her forehead. "Thank you."

She nods. "You do what you need to for your family."

He smiles. "I'll let you get your down time."

"You going to Tim and Abby's?"

"Yeah."

"Might see you there later this afternoon. Might just jell all day."

"Okay." He hugs her again. "Thank you. Come on, Mona! We're going to the hardware store!"

Mona likes trips to the hardware store, and so does Gibbs, so at the very least, this morning is starting out well.

* * *

Tim wakes to the sound of saw. Maybe. He wakes to a rough, raspy sound, and before he can identify it, the pain that had been hiding behind sleep came galloping over and crashes into him.

He whimpers at it, slowly opening his eyes, wondering where the hell he is, and why he hurts so bad, and as he's looking at a familiar ceiling and the back of his sofa, he knows he's home, and is coming to the conclusion that, unlike in the hospital, where people came in every four hours to nudge him awake enough to take his pain medication, (Which he had found annoying. He wanted to _sleep,_ not get poked every four hours.) Abby just let him sleep.

And now he's paying for it. Everything hurts.

He tries to sit up, but that hurts too much, his chest is on fire, limbs screaming, he feels like he can't breathe or think.

Apparently though, he's making enough in the way of distressed noises that Abby runs in. "What's wrong?"

He manages to gasp out, "Hurt!"

Her skin goes white as she runs into the kitchen to get him a glass of water. Another few seconds she's out of his view and he hears fumbling around, followed by her running back in, sloshing water around, pill and glass in hand.

He takes the pill (left arm crying at how much that hurts) and dry swallows it, because he'd have to sit up to take it with water and that idea hurts too much.

"I'm so sorry, Tim. I forgot. I fell asleep and then Kelly was up and… Oh God."

He's breathing as shallowly as possible, trying to keep his lungs still, nothing has ever hurt the way they do right now and he never, ever wants to feel this again.

"Mama!" Kelly's yelling, not appreciating being just abandoned in the kitchen without any idea of what's happening in the rest of the house.

Tim blinks at Abby, as close as he's going to get to saying, 'Go get her,' but Abby gets it.

He's got no idea how long he lies there, whimpering in pain, begging the meds to kick in, but eventually Abby and Kelly are back with him, very carefully not touching him, which he appreciates. Kelly's playing on the floor, stacking up blocks, and snuggling with Mona (which means Jethro must be here somewhere, which is when he finally decided that raspy sound was a saw.)

He's partially aware of Abby's half of a conversation. "There has to be something that works faster... That other Dilaudid tab… What about morphine? Don't they have drops you can take under your tongue, Jimmy?... Okay, not morphine…" He sees her walking around, agitated, nodding. "Okay."

She kneels next to him. "I am so sorry. The pill should kick in in about fifteen more minutes. I asked Jimmy if there was anything that works faster, but the only stuff that does is morphine drops, and they screw with your breathing."

Tim blinks again. Right now he'd be willing to trade not breathing for faster pain relief.

"If I can get you up enough to drink, that'll help you digest the pill faster."

He nods, gingerly, feeling like his head is going to fall off, and she gets her hand at the base of his skull, holding it up gently, and giving him a drink of water. It's cool and sweet, and maybe it helps, maybe it's just a distraction, maybe he's thirsty, but it doesn't hurt as bad as he thought it would.

He does drink it down. Then Abby lies his head back down on the sofa, and he settles in to wait.

* * *

Abby feels so guilty she wants to throw up and cry. First night on making sure he gets his pain meds and she failed.

Every five hours. Four really. Supposed to be five, but at the hospital he was usually getting restless and achy at four. They don't want too much in his system and they're supposed to work for four to six hours. So, enough to keep him not hurting too bad, enough to keep the levels even, but not so much they lose efficiency.

Meds at 10:00. Meds at 3:00, she did fine with them. Got him up enough to take the pill and helped him hit the head, then back to sleep, for both of them. Kelly was up at 7:00, but he was sleeping, so she didn't want to wake him. Then Gibbs came over, and he was still sleeping, so she wanted him to get his rest, because rest is good for healing, and more time with Kelly, and…

And she just forgot. And then it was 8:45 and he's in so much pain. He's lying there, rigid, whimpering, skin ashy, pain sweat pricking out on his forehead. He'd probably be crying, but crying requires moving your lungs and ribs and that hurts too much right now. Even Kelly can tell something's wrong, so she's crying and Abby's ready to break down, too, and it's only day one of this.

She calls Jimmy to see if there's anything she can do to get him feeling better, but there isn't. And she knows there isn't because even if there was some sort of miracle drug that instantly took pain away, they don't have it in the house, so she'd have to go get it, wait for the pharmacy to make it up, and bring it back, and by then what he's already on will have kicked in.

She can't touch him. She can see from how he's looking that every inch of him hurts right now and any touch will just make it worse.

She turns the TV on, hoping to find something that might be even vaguely distracting, but he shakes his head.

"I'm so sorry."

He nods very slightly again, eyes closed, tears leaking from them.

* * *

Longest twenty minutes in the history of time, and he's including the time he was trapped in freezer in that count.

But eventually it does start to ease up some. Eventually he's noticing he's breathing deeper and not whimpering with each shallow exhale.

Eventually, he starts to notice things like he's hungry, and he has to pee, and he can't hear sawing anymore.

"You feeling any better?" Abby asks, popping up from nowhere.

He nods a little.

"Want help sitting up?"

"Sure." She gives him an arm up, and he looks around some. Still in his living room, on the sofa, wheel chair next to the sofa, within arm's reach, as well as a table with pills and water.

"I'm so, so, so sorry." She hugs him gingerly.

"I'll live. All the phones set to go off every time I'm supposed to get a new painkiller?"

She nods. "And the alarm on the stove."

"Good. I don't want to do that again."

"Once and done. So, food, bathroom, drink? What do you need?"

"All three."

Mona sees him sitting up and stands up, heading over to him and was about to plop her head on his knee when Abby grabbed her.

"Not today Mona."

"Pretty sore." He reaches over and gently strokes her ears. She licks his hand. "Yuck. Yes, you're glad to see me, great. Stop that."

She does, nosing his hand as he pets her.

"I take it Gibbs is here," Tim says as Abby gets the chair right next to him on the sofa and he starts the very slow process of twisting around so his left side faces the chair, and the even slower process of getting onto it.

"Yeah. He's building a ramp on the front porch so you can get up and down easy."

He's got a vague, uncomfortable memory of Jimmy somehow getting the chair up the steps last night. He's fuzzy on the details, but it likely would have been easier to just pick him up and carry him into the house.

He's finally on the chair, and Abby wheels him to the bathroom. "You do your thing, and I'll make some eggs?"

He nods, that sounds good. Though ,as he's staring at the toilet and sink, it's hitting him that with how long it's going to take him to 'do his thing' Abby could probably go and buy some chickens, let them run around the back yard until they lay eggs, then gather them, then cook them, and she'd probably still have his breakfast done before he's in need of a return trip to the kitchen.

Sigh.

_Get to it. Not going to get any easier or faster just sitting on your ass not doing it._

And so he does.

* * *

Gibbs is in the kitchen when he finally gets rolled in.

"Morning."

"Hi." Abby rolls him to the table, and at least he can feed himself easily. That's a start. Though as he's chewing his eggs, it hits that he can feed himself _this_ easily. Right now he can't cut anything. Hell, for the next six weeks he can't cut anything.

Actually, no. For the next six weeks he's in this cast. Then comes the wrist and finger braces. He probably can't cut anything for months, because his hand won't be up for anything until after he's been doing PT with it, and that's not happening until whenever the hell he finally gets out of all of this gear.

Tim flashes to the memory of being sixteen, at home, arm in his cast, The Admiral (who was The Captain then) saying, "You'll cut your own food, or you won't eat!"

His dad had already chewed him out, up and down and inside out for wrecking the car. He'd actually _called_ to chew him out, which was unheard of. Normally Tim wrote once a week (five hundred words, on the dot), and got a letter back once a week, and then they'd see/speak to each other when The Captain was on land. (He figures that's the only thing that kept him sane all those years.)

But then The Captain got home. He'd been in the cast for a week at that point, and no matter how good he was getting with his right hand, his left was in a cast, only the tips of his fingers sticking out, so he couldn't cut his own food.

His mom or sister had been cutting his food for him, but when The Captain got home that was the end of that. If he wanted to eat, he had to do it for himself. _You are sixteen years old, more than old enough to fend for yourself. You got yourself into this, and you will deal with the consequences on your own. You'll cut your own food, or you won't eat!_

Three weeks of sandwiches, soup, eggs, mashed potatoes, pasta, and veggies. Only time he got to eat meat was when his mom did stir-fries, which was only once a week. And, of course, since the crash was his birthday, and The Captain got home Christmas Eve, it meant he missed out on Christmas and New Year's dinners.

Finally The Captain went back to sea, and his mom started putting plates with the full meal on them, cut up, in front of him at dinner time again.

* * *

Abby can see something is going wrong. Tim was eating eggs. Cutting them with the edge of his fork, picking them up, chewing, eating, starting a conversation with Gibbs, and then it stopped.

He's just sitting there, staring at the eggs.

"Tim?" she asks gently.

He looks up at her, very fragile air about him, eyes wet again, and says, "He's dead? Really?"

It takes Abby a second to guess what Tim's thinking about, but she catches it and says, "Yeah, he's dead."

"Good." And then he burst into tears.

* * *

The eggs are stone cold by the time he's done crying, and Tim's exhausted, all he wants to do is crash and not wake up again until it's time to get out of his casts. Abby's told him about feeling crazy, like she had no emotional control when she was on the painkillers after Kelly was born, and obviously, it's not precisely the same, but right now he feels the same.

Like he's got no emotional reserves at all. Anything that hits the top of his brain is going to come out.

And he hates that.

So, sleep. Sleeping is good. Sleeping means not feeling, so bring on the sleep!

Abby and Gibbs help him get settled onto the sofa again, and he sacks out.

* * *

Neither of them are strangers to dealing gently with traumatized people, but the fact that it's _their_ person makes it harder.

It's fairly nice outside, so Abby scoops up Kelly, and a blanket, and heads them outside. Kelly gets a prime bit of sun-shade dappled grass to hang out on, and she and Gibbs sit on the porch, where she can hear if Tim makes any noise, but they're far enough away they shouldn't disturb him.

Abby sighs, "On the upside, he's so drugged he literally can't just keep it in and let it fester."

Gibbs nods is agreement, and shakes his head, too. "Probably doesn't want this all out in front of everyone."

"I know. So prepare for an extra big helping of prickly, annoyed, irritable Tim to go along with sad, angry, hurting Tim. Not going to be a fun couple weeks at all."

Gibbs shrugs. Not like he's any fun to be around when he's in a bad mood, either. And he's hit them with pissed off, prickly, annoyed Gibbs for much less good reasons in the past. "At least he's too hurt to really lay down on anyone."

Abby knows he's thinking of what Tim did to Tony the last time he was really dealing with angry. Her turn to shake her head. "His tongue still works just fine, Gibbs, and right now, the thing that keeps it in check is barely attached to him."

Gibbs winces.

* * *

It's about an hour later when Abby's cell buzzes. For a second she thought she'd lost time, and Tim needed more meds, but then it hit that she had a text.

 _Up for visitors?_ From Penny.

 _Think so._ She types back. _Really low key, and quiet, and he may be asleep, but yeah, I think he'd like to see you for a bit._

_Be there soon._

* * *

"Hi!" Abby manages to sound fairly perky and excited when Penny and Ducky pull up. She smiles at them, and then pulls Penny into a warm hug.

She's not sure how to convey, _I'm really sorry you're hurting, and I don't want you to be hurting, but your son was evil, and if I could I'd raise him from the dead, give him to Jimmy, who'd work him over for months, until every single cell of his body screams for relief, then he'd give him back to me, and I'd make him realize that Jimmy doesn't even know how to find pain on a map, let alone really inflict it._ And really, it's probably better not to convey that, so she just hugs Penny.

"How are you doing?" Gibbs asks Penny, rubbing her back gently, as Ducky picks up Kelly.

She pulls back from Abby, and it's clear she's been doing a lot of crying lately. Abby sees a look passing between Penny and Gibbs, a sort of deep, scalding pain that she doesn't know and hopes never to, but he does, and he gets it, and he wraps her in a hug, a very quiet hug, and just holds onto her for several long moments.

"I take it you're getting some sun and letting Timothy rest?" Ducky says as Gibbs holds Penny.

Abby nods at that. "Yeah. Felt like I was inside that hospital room for months."

"Sunshine will help with that."

Gibbs quietly says, "Hoping to get him out here, some, too. Fresh air never hurt anyone."

For a moment, they're all standing there, and then Ducky clears his throat. "There's an extra cloud upon the horizon."

Abby gives him her, _Oh Lord what now_ look.

"Sarah told her mother about what happened."

Abby winces, and Gibbs isn't looking enthusiastic.

"She'd like to visit, or at least talk to him."

Abby's immediate response to that is that Tori can enter her home shortly after Hell freezes, and that she's going to have to step over her dead body to do it. Tim has absolutely everything he can deal with and then some right now, anything else on top of that… No. N to the O no! Not going to happen.

Both Penny and Ducky can see that reaction. "I'll tell her it's no," Penny says.

Ducky nods along to that. "May we see Timothy?"

"He's probably sleeping, but yeah. He's going to need some more pain meds soon, so when you hear the alarm go off—"

"I know what to do." He smiles gently and hands Kelly over to Abby.

* * *

They're about to step into the house, when Ducky gently squeezes Penny's hand. He saw the photos that went with Tim's medical records, but he deleted them before the others could, mostly to make sure that Tony and Ziva didn't immediately run to San Francisco and kill John.

But, because he'd done that, Penny knows intellectually, but not viscerally, what they're about to walk in on.

"He's going to look terrible."

She nods. He knows she thinks she's ready to see this. Thinks she has an idea of what is waiting for them, but… he knows she doesn't.

And unfortunately, 'terrible' is pretty much all he can offer. He can list swelling and bruises, and cuts and all the rest of it, but until you actually see it, and _feel_ seeing it, it's at best… academic.

Sarah and Glenn had come to visit when they got back, and Glenn had mentioned, privately, that when Sarah saw Tim for the first time, her knees went out from under her, and he lucked out and was close enough to catch her, because otherwise she would have hit the floor.

Ducky knows that Penny's had a much less sheltered life than Sarah, but he's still apprehensive as to how she's going to react to this.

* * *

He's sleeping, on the sofa, both legs propped up on a pillow, right arm bound by his cast and sling across his stomach.

And for a second there, before anything else really hits, he could just be grabbing a nap.

But it's only a second because between that first glance, the one that sent the 'reclining grandson' message to Penny's brain, and the next, the part of her brain that registers details like color begins to scream. From what she can see almost none of his skin is… skin colored, _his skin_ colored.

She steels herself to look more closely, see the bruises, see the bandages, the casts, the swelling, the fact that he's asleep and on a pile of pain medication and his face is still pinched and tight, and as all of that filters through a small, involuntary cry escapes the lips she's biting, hard.

"Oh, God, Ducky," she whispers it. It's horrifying, and more horrifying than how damaged he is, is the fact that it's a week after the attack. This... This is healing, this is _better_.

He's holding her hand, other arm wrapped around her back. "I know, dear. I know." He's stroking gently over her back. "He will heal."

She nods, still biting her lip.

* * *

Tim wakes up and finds Penny sitting next to him.

"Hey, how you feeling?" she says, managing a really fake looking smile.

He snorts and winces, because that hurts, and says, "Probably about the physical equivalent of where you are."

Penny nods. "Yeah. It's been a shit week for both of us."

"I'm sorry," his eyes are tearing up at that.

And once again, she shakes her head. "None of that. You've got nothing to be sorry for."

He reaches out his hand and she takes it. "I'm allowed to feel sympathy for you, right?"

"Yeah," she manages a real, but very sad, smile.

"I'm sorry."

"I know. I am, too." She wipes her own eyes. "I'm so sorry."

Tim swallows, hard. "I know." He breathes as deeply as he can without hurting himself. Not all that deep. "Not your fault. Not mine. It just was." He's said that before, and he's got a feeling he'll be telling himself, and her, that, a lot, in the months to come.

"Abby says you'll be out of this stuff soon."

He tilts his head, looking annoyed. "Sooner than if it was a collection of old-fashioned casts, but not 'soon' on any real scale. Probably be winter before my right hand really works again."

She nods at that and then takes a deep breath, exhaling slow and steady. Tim starts to feel apprehensive, he knows that's a bad news coming up sign.

"Sarah told your mother about what happened."

A small, pained sound escapes his lips, more tears flooding his eyes in an instant visceral reaction of NO! "Penny, I can't deal with that—"

"No… No baby," she's shaking her head, voice soft, "no dealing. Just, we're never quite sure how asleep you are, so, if you overheard anything, didn't want you worrying."

"Oh."

He notices Ducky is sitting just a hair out of his range of vision when he leans forward and says, "Would you like to sit up?"

Tim nods a little and Ducky carefully helps him up.

"How is your pain?"

"Not too bad right now. Head's swimming every time I move, but I only ache all over."

Ducky nods. "Do you want more medicine now, or would you like to hold off for an hour or so?"

"More now."

"I'll get it."

He sits still for a few seconds, taking up most of the sofa. "If you'd put the wheel chair in front of me…"

Penny does, and he slowly gets himself around so that he can rest the one leg on the seat. Then he holds out his left arm.

She sits next to him, accepting his arm around her, very carefully settling in against him.

"This okay?"

"Yeah. Just, no sudden moves, and don't lean in. Got a lot of broken ribs. Right's worse than left, though."

"Oh, baby."

"I know. So… Sarah told Mom?"

Penny nods. "She would have gotten a notification anyway. Part of the divorce settlement was a half share of his death benefits."

"Oh. She okay?"

"No. She's not. Not about him. Not about you. She's not okay at all."

"Sarah?"

"She'll be over as soon as you feel up to seeing her."

He shakes his head a little. "I want to know how they are, but I don't want a lot of people around right now."

"Completely understandable." Ducky says, holding out a cup of water. It takes Tim several seconds but he gets his arm free, and then is able to take the pill. "Do you want us to go?"

"Not yet. Got to stay up some, and do the vibration thing on the casts. Might as well have some company." He looks over to the tray which has the electronics for the cast. "Anyone explain how this works?"

Ducky nods. "Jimmy called to ask what I knew about them when it was clear you were a candidate for one. I've never seen one before, but have heard many good things. Would you like a hand setting it up?"

"Yeah. Thanks." Ducky takes the vibration head, and slips it into the first of the slots, then flips the device on. It makes a quiet hum.

"How's it feel?" Penny asks.

"Right now, fine. Little buzz. By the time I've done it for twenty minutes on ten breaks, and that's just my arm, I may have a different opinion."

"They gave you one vibrational head?" Ducky sounds appalled at that.

"Yeah."

"For…" Ducky's counting the slots that are designed to have the head in them. "For fifteen breaks? They expect you to have this going three hundred minutes a day?"

"I guess."

Ducky stands up, pulling his phone out. "I have calls to make."

* * *

Tim's asleep again when Ducky's off the phone, three hours later. Abby's sitting next to him, gently moving the vibrational head from slot to slot as time elapses, talking quietly with Penny and Gibbs.

"News?" she asks, voice low.

"Some days I am sure the FDA is more trouble than it's worth. There are only fifty of these devices allowed in the United States for testing purposes. And, for all my contacts and colleagues, I could not pry one free. Approval in the US is dependent on positive testing data, Timothy can only be one data point for the testing, no matter how many of the units he's using, so no one is willing to limit the amount of testing data they can get by letting me have one."

Penny can see the anger in his eyes. "They're approved in Europe and Israel, right?"

"Precisely. Japan as well, and Canada, and Australia. Hence more trouble than it's worth. Even though there are extensive studies abroad, those studies aren't 'good enough' for our FDA, so we have re-do the same tests, over and over until someone at FDA gets the correct pay off and allows these devices to be produced and used in the US."

"You've got some good news, too, right, Duck?" Gibbs asks.

Ducky smiles, dryly. "A friend of a friend is sending us one from Bern. Should be here the day after tomorrow, so, as of Monday, we can cut Timothy's time attached to this device down from five hours to two and a half. Another friend in Kyoto is hunting around to see if she can lay hands on one more, but that may be a forlorn hope."

Tim doesn't open his eyes, but he does say, "Thanks, Ducky. Any idea if they're supposed to hurt?"

"Minor pain is listed as a possible side effect. The tiny vibrations are supposed to encourage quicker bone growth by making your body think it needs to build a stronger bond. Not enough motion to move anything out of place, but enough to make your body think that it's under assault and respond accordingly."

"Okay."

"Does it hurt, Timothy?"

"First two weren't bad, but everything aches now."

* * *

Tony hates visiting sick people. He feels completely useless and helpless and just, wrong, so goddamned wrong. All the jokes in the world don't make any fucking difference at all, ( _Shut it, Patch Adams, if jokes could save lives, Mom would still be here._ Okay, yeah, that's a touchy subject for him.) and in a sick room all he's got are jokes.

Jokes that are mostly to just keep him going.

So, he'll admit that he'd much rather go off and kill John (oh, wait, too fucking late for that) or maybe Mane (He's checked; Mane's still at the detention center at Alameda. Wouldn't be too hard to get over there and take a shot. Not like he doesn't have his own sniper handy. Sure, Gibbs gets all the glory for being a sniper, but Ziva's got better eyes and can hit anything within 750 meters.) but in the end, they've been told to leave it alone, and if Mane ends up dead ten hours after they hop a flight to California…

He sighs. They aren't above the law. They can get around it, but they still have to be subtle and clever.

However, he does have the sense that since his MCRT has been handling more terror cases, and since they travel for terror cases, that, should one of them provide him with an opportunity to get in range of Mane, he'll take it.

Another sigh. Fantasizing different ways to kill Mane isn't dealing with what's about to happen.

Work is over, and he and Ziva are in the car, with food, heading toward Tim's house, to go see him, and… And he doesn't know what. Not like showing up is going to make Tim feel better.

A kill shot on Mane might have made him feel better, but this…

"Fuck."

Ziva squeezes his hand. She knows exactly how useless he feels because she feels it herself. She'd rather be doing almost anything than trying to comfort a hurting person.

"Think I can slap him upside the head?"

Ziva looks at him curiously.

"I told him if that test went FUBAR and he got hurt, I'd slap him for being stupid. And right now, I don't care if Gibbs fines me for it."

"I don't think that's a good plan, Tony."

"Gotta do something, or…" Or he's going to have to deal with how hurt Tim is and how angry and sad and afraid it makes him feel.

"It's enough to just be there."

"No it's not."

"It is. That's all he and Abby really want or need right now."

He rolls his eyes.

"That's all your mother or mine ever wanted or needed, too."

"Do you believe that?"

"I know it."

"Does it help?"

"No."

* * *

It's worse than Tony thought it'd be. He didn't think that was possible, but it is.

He can't even pull off a half-hearted joke. He looks at Tim and just… "Oh, God, Tim."

Tim looks back at him, face battered, and says, "Don't look at me like that, Tony, I'm not dying."

Tony can see that if he doesn't muster up some sort of cynicism on this, both he and Tim are going to start crying, so he steps closer to Tim, helps him get sitting up just a bit more, and very, very, very lightly (wincing while he does it) taps Tim on the back of the head.

"Ow." It's a token protest. Even as badly hurt as he is, barely having his hair brushed by Tony's hand doesn't result in actual pain. (At least, not right now, with lots of pain medication flowing through his system, this morning would have been a different story, but this morning air molecules bouncing against his skin hurt.)

"Don't you ever do something that stupid again. Everyone tells you not to do something-"

Tim nods. "I won't do it."

"And when you heal up, you're getting the full ass kicking for making everyone worry like this."

Tim nods at that, too. He's having a much easier time dealing with angry Tony than concerned, sad Tony.

Then Tony very carefully hugs him, for a long time. Tim can feel him shaking a little, and he's shaking a little, too. Tony pulls back biting his lip. "Okay, gonna help Ducky get dinner ready," he says, pretty much sprinting out of the living room.

Ziva switches over from sitting on Tim's right side to his left, and also hugs him, gently. He gets a light kiss on the forehead, too.

"I thought dinner was take out," Tim finally says.

"It is."

He nods again. "Can I ask you a favor?"

"Sure, McGee."

"When I'm healed up, and have my strength back, and can fight again… I had a knife, pocket knife, small thing, but it still had a blade, but I didn't know how to use it. Ended up throwing it, and that…" He pauses, fighting back the swamping sensations of anger and fear. He reaches up to wipe his eyes, and stops because his face still hurts to bad for that. "It worked…" He takes as deep and calming a breath as he can. "When I can fight, again, I want you to teach me how to fight with a knife. Probably be in better shape if I had known what to do with it."

Ziva nods. "Certainly."

* * *

A/N So I was watching this: http://kerylraist.tumblr.com/post/98819385798/mark-harmon-30-9-2014-on-live-with-kelly-and Apparently, Mark Harmon actually does Pilates to keep in shape. Thought you guys would find that somewhat amusing.


	112. Minute At A Time

If you had asked Tim what he would have thought of a month long vacation where all he had to do was lay around, eat, and sleep, he would have told you…

He would have told you that sounded boring.

A week. Sure, a week of laying around sucking up time with Abby and Kelly, maybe playing in the pool, great. Lots of time to read and game, wonderful. Hours to write, excellent.

But after a week, he'd want to get back to work, check in at least. Because he loves his job, and he's great at it.

So the fact that he's looking at a month maybe six weeks, at home, doing basically nothing, is the first of the thousand cuts that are killing him.

Down three quarters of his limbs, he can't do much of anything. He's "healing" which is apparently a full time job and code for both boring to the point of dementia and utterly dehumanizing torture.

He can't move. Not really. Okay, yes by day three at home (Monday) he's gotten to the point where he can sort of scoot himself from the sofa to the chair and the chair to the toilet, but that's basically it. He did try to see if maybe he was slow, or careful, or really worked it that he could wheel the chair himself, but all he succeeded in doing was turning a circle and knocking over the table with his pills and water with his foot. Which he then couldn't pick back up again.

The worst part of that is that he's still doped to the eyes on painkillers, so he's got no filters, so the loud and very profane tirade that went with knocking the table over caused Heather to go white and then blush, which made him feel even worse because it's not her fault that he's a mess right now, but she's having to be near a lot of it. (And he doesn't even want to begin to get into how his year-old-baby-girl knows words, fortunately so badly pronounced as to be unrecognizable, such as bastard, fuck, shit, asshole, and on and on. It was an epic meltdown.)

He finally asked Heather to wheel him into his office so he could sulk in private, and she agreed.

He's useless (or as Abby says, "resting" and "healing") in his office, too. He can't work. He can check in, log on, and keep an eye on things, but the amount of time it takes for him to type his password in with one bruised up left hand is also killing him.

He never much thought about what all his right hand does to keep him working until he had to re-write the same 70 character line of code six times to make it work because he can't fucking type one-handed with any level of accuracy. (There's a fleeting sense that just possibly the boatload of Percocet he's on has _something_ to do with this. There was a much more definite sense that he shouldn't get anywhere near anything that involves doing anything beyond making sure the office doesn't catch fire. He's "supervising" right now, which is code for logging in very slowly, seeing who's on shift, nodding at his screen, and logging out.)

Not being able to type also means he can't really write. (Because if his keyboard on his computer is giving him trouble, the manual action on his typewriter is going to destroy the only limb he has that still works, sort of.)

He's at the wrong desk for gaming, but even if he wasn't, he can't do that one-handed.

He'd be okay with watching TV, except right now there's only three things he's really watching, and he wants to see them with Abby, who did not just suddenly get a month-long paid vacation. And who is, in fact, back at work, doing useful things with people she likes, instead of sitting around like a wart on the ass of a frog.

He's stuck in his office, alone, cursing quietly and crying, feeling absolutely defeated.

Eventually he pulls himself together again, eventually Heather knocks, it's time for more meds, he takes them, and she wheels him back to the sofa so he can get a nap.

* * *

"Healing" means he's basically on a twenty-four hour cycle. He sleeps about two and a half out of every four hours, but he's doing them in four hour cycles. Wake up, eat, mess around, vibrate his bones, (Thank you for tracking down another vibrational head, Ducky! Yes, it does ache, but now he's only got two and a half hours of even more intense aching instead of five.) be bored, get meds, go back to sleep.

The bored, especially at night, is killing him, too.

Abby tried to sleep with him, but that's not really working. Sure, they can both get a decent nap on the sofa together, but all night? Especially with him bursting into tears as he thinks about too damn much… Not a good plan. Yes, he'd love to be cuddled while he's crying, but she needs her sleep, so after the second night he ordered her to go sleep back in their bed.

Hours of nothing to do but think. Thinking about the attack. Thinking about his dad. Thinking about life and about what happened to him, and his mom and this absolute fucking mess of a birth family.

Too many hours thinking. Way more crying than he'd like. Way more _everything_ emotional and messy and painful, than he'd like.

* * *

On Tuesday, Wolf came to visit. Tim's been seeing him, about everything, for a bit over a year now. He thinks it's good. At least, he's been less angry, bit clearer about his life and his parents, and everything, or he had been, until he got on that damn ship and The Admiral tried to kill him.

They talk for about an hour, which leaves Tim exhausted and feeling crushed. No defenses, no filters, means everything comes pouring out in a great, uncontrolled, profane, angry, spiteful torrent of pissed-off invective.

Wolf seems to think that's a good thing, but all Tim wants to do is hide for the next ten years.

* * *

By Tuesday, most of the bruises have melted into dull yellow-green or faded away. Which is good, he supposes. He can stand to be touched again, which is nice (on a theoretical level, at least) but in that he can't really shower, (what with every shower they have is attached to a bathtub, so he can get himself sitting on the edge and kind of sponge himself… actually have Abby sponge him off some) he's convinced he's grimy enough that he doesn't want anyone getting close enough to him to touch him.

Plus, between bursting into tears at the slightest provocation, and biting the heads off of everyone near him, he's not exactly engendering much in the way of 'Oh, gosh, let's pamper and snuggle and take care of you' vibes.

(Actually, he is. He just can't see it. Seeing him this lost and hurt is killing Abby, but he's also so annoyed with everyone right now, she's trying to give him space. So, he's crabby when people are around and moping when he's on his own. Never let it be said that Tim, especially with the help of powerful pharmaceuticals, can't pull off a properly pouty hissy fit.)

* * *

He's not exactly enjoying being around people right now. Mostly because he's got the emotional control of an overtired toddler. An overtired toddler on drugs.

He's crying, a lot. Which is, _supposedly_ , normal and, _supposedly_ , good and, _supposedly_ , something he should be doing because that was a horrendously traumatic experience and just burying it isn't a good thing, and _supposedly_ actually feeling the pain and dealing with it is useful, but, really, right now, he'd MUCH rather stuff it back into his subconscious and leave it the fuck alone.

He got many good years, decades even, of not dealing with this shit, and he'd really like to get back to that.

Wolf says this is normal and part of healing, and that he will flash back to memories of the Admiral, but it'll get better, happen less often, and he'll develop better coping mechanisms for it.

But, for the first time, he's really grasping the desire to drink yourself stupid.

He's not going to, first because he can't take his pain meds and drink, and secondly, because from everything he can see that'll just mean he has to deal with even more of this shit.

Plus, he can't reach any of the fucking alcohol, and he'll be damned before he ever admits out loud that he wants to drink like that.

* * *

Gibbs has been over a lot. Partially as a buffer between Tim and Heather. She didn't hire on to be his nanny. And she does know that this is not usual Tim, that he's drugged to the eyes, and that he's horribly embarrassed by the guy he is right now, but that doesn't means she's enjoying it. Partially because Tim is hurting, and Abby's working, and he might as well have someone nearby who knows something about hurting and healing. Partially because, even though Tim isn't exactly a boatload of fun to be around right now, he's still Jethro's, and he takes care of his own.

Though it's true that the look Tim is giving Jethro is… skeptical, (that's the polite version, the more accurate one is probably _are you out of your ever-loving fucking mind?)_ as he's driving them to the house.

"You do realize there's literally nothing, at all, I can do, that's even remotely useful out there?"

"Keep Duck, Penny, and I company."

"Oh God." That involved an epic adolescent-know-it-all eye-roll.

"Hush it. You're getting out of that house and out of Heather's hair, and into the sunshine. And if I have to drag your ass out of this car and plop you in the middle of the grass to do that, that's what I'm going to do."

"As opposed to?" Tim bites out. "If you don't do that, all I can do is just sit in this goddamned truck and get slobbered on by your bitch."

Mona looks hurt by that. Yes, she has been licking his face, and he's been trying to push her away, but she can tell he's not in a good mood and she's trying to help.

"As opposed to me tossing your ass in the river and letting you swim."

"I'll drown," Tim says with a glare.

"Not in two feet of water, you won't." That gave Gibbs an idea. He looks Tim over, thinking about the casts and everything. "Call Jimmy, ask him if you can swim."

"I _hate_ swimming." That's not precisely true. He doesn't particularly like swimming, that's true. But he doesn't mind playing in the pool or the ocean some. It's just not anything he'd ever do on his own for fun.

"You hate being motionless, too. Give him a call. Ask if you can swim."

"I can't fucking swim, Jethro! You need two fucking arms to fucking swim!"

Gibbs' turn to roll his eyes. He mutters something about Tim having been a bastard as a teenager and then says, "Call him, _ask_. You can swim with no arms, and you can definitely _float_ without them, so get on the damn phone, call Jimmy, and find out if I can drop you in the pool and get you doing something again so you stop sulking twenty-four seven."

Tim glares, but calls.

"Gibbs wants to know if I can swim," he says as soon as he hears Jimmy pick up.

"Hello to you, too, Tim."

"Hi." Tim takes a breath, trying to be less of a pain in the ass. "He thinks dropping me in the pool might make me feel better."

"I don't think it would hurt. Not like you'll feel worse, and you do need to build up muscle strength and lung capacity again, should be good for that."

"Great."

"Yes, it is. The more things you can do, the better you're going to feel. But, skip the pool at NCIS and go to the one at our gym. They've got saltwater pools, and right now soaking in chlorine isn't good for your lungs. Plus, they have handicap accessible showers there, which means after you get out of the pool you can get a real shower."

That actually does brighten up Tim's day, and then crushes it because once upon a time the promise of a shower wasn't the highlight of his week.

"What's he got you doing today?" Jimmy asks.

"Dragging me to the house."

"Good."

Tim rolls his eyes again. "For what? I've got one hand, and it doesn't want to do anything even remotely like work. I can't even weed flowerbeds right now."

"But you can still go over electrical schematics and start working on the new wiring layout." Jethro says.

Jimmy hears that and agrees.

"Uh, yeah, if you want the house to burn down. You do not want me planning electrical systems right now. It takes me six tries to log into my computer, and you want me to lay out the wiring for the house? Are you completely insane?"

"Okay, I'm going to leave you two to that," Jimmy says, getting ready to hang up. "Go swimming tomorrow, though."

As Tim tucks his phone into his pocket, Gibbs stops the car and turns to look at Tim. "Do you want to be sitting at home?"

"No." And he doesn't. He's sick of the same four walls, same bit of sofa.

He gives him the _Well… we're not at home_ look.

"There's _nothing_ I want to do that I can do right now. I can't write, I can't read, I can't work, there's no TV show I want to watch, I can't game, I hurt too bad to fuck, I can't drink, I can't fight, there is NOTHING I enjoy available at this point in time, and everything and everyone is pissing me off, and I hate that, too."

Gibbs sighs. "I know. Been there, done that, I know."

"I just want to be done with this," he's crying again.

Gibbs rubs the back of Tim's head. "One minute at a time, Tim. We get through now, and then a little more now, and some now on top of that, and next thing you know, it's tomorrow and you're one day closer to normal again."

"What if I can't ever find normal again? What if this anger and pain…" he wipes his eyes again, "What if this doesn't go away? I used to be able to go months without thinking about this, and now… Now I can't do an hour without it popping up."

"You're going to heal, all of you, and it's going to take time, but it will happen, and you'll find yourself again."

* * *

Turns out one thing he could do at the house is sit with Penny, and between the two of them start sketching out ideas for how they're going to rearrange the interior of the house.

They start with a sketch of the outside walls, none of which are moving, and the load-bearing walls, which likely aren't moving. From there they break the house into nine sections.

The main room, entry/living room/dining room/kitchen area. It's big and open, fireplace in the center. Kitchen, entry, stairs to the second floor are on one side, living/dining area is on the other, and both open up onto the patio/grill area.

Five "family suites" that are, for the time being, just exterior walls, are scattered throughout the house. Figuring out how to configure what'll go in those sections will be up to each branch of the family. Penny sketches out the space that'll be his and Abby's suite, and he makes notes on that for what he's thinking. Talking it over with Abby tonight will be a good thing.

The basement is being turned into a kids play zone/dorm. He's fairly sure that, for the time being, having babies in their own little nurseries near mom and dad is be a good thing, but eventually, these kids will get older, and the potential for say, six? (More? Likely there'll be buddies coming to visit, too, so a whole lot more?) teenage kids all sharing a space with them doesn't sound great.

So, eventually, they'll wall the little boogers off in their own space, where they'll have some privacy and won't be entirely underfoot.

Eighth section is the entertainment/game area. Fairly small. Tim's writing up what should go in there, so Tony can watch movies the way he thinks movies are supposed to be watched, and he and Jimmy and Abby can do full sensory Call of Duty or Warcraft or whatever.

Last section, on the fourth floor, is the library/computer/reading zone. Some place comfortable and quiet to curl up with a good book/study/work.

Penny finishes up the last line of the last zone, while Tim finishes up his notes for what goes where, and they both look at each other, noticing that for the last two hours, focused on building their futures, the present didn't hurt so bad.

She smiles a little at him, and he squeezes her hand, kissing her forehead.

* * *

There are certain conversations that Gibbs would rather gouge his eyeballs out than have. And while it's true that he's not a stranger to talking about sex, or for that matter, particularly easily shocked, or innocent, he'd still rather not have a chat with any of his girls when it comes to what, precisely, it is they're getting up (or down) to with their husbands.

But, given Tim's 'too hurt to fuck' line, he's thinking he may have diagnosed one of the issues at play, and this one may have a fairly easy solution.

Assuming he can get himself to actually talk to Abby about it.

See, one of the things he's noticed is that, having messed up Tim's pain meds, she's been treating him like he's made of spun glass and even the slightest wrong touch will shatter him.

And to some extent Gibbs approves of that level of caution, because Abby can get way too enthusiastic and hurt people, but the bruises are fading (the worst of the lot are light green now, and many have actually healed up), the cuts have all either faded to healed, or have settled into the bright pink of new scars, and Tim's probably not needing quite that level of handle with care.

Plus, having seen Tim go a few days sans sex in the past, he's certainly noticed that it does make him significantly less easy-going or fun to be around, and that, well, yeah, he's probably not going to be much fun to cozy up to tonight, but maybe he'll be in a much better mood after.

* * *

Tim's napping when Abby gets home. That makes talking to her a bit easier. Sort of. Talking about conversations he'd rather gouge his eyes out than have, talking to Abby about this on her own will be hard enough, trying it with Tim listening in… Just… No. His vocal cords will go on strike and refuse to let the words out.

Jethro's on the back porch, grill fired-up, burgers cooking away. Kelly playing on a blanket near him. She's doing that baby thing where she rolls onto all fours and rocks back and forth, so he's pretty sure they're going to see some crawling in the not too distant future.

Abby parks her car, heads to the back porch, giving both Gibbs and Kelly hello hugs and kisses, Mona gets a pat on the head, and then goes in to check on Tim.

Gibbs watches her, and yes, she does go in, and she kneels near the sofa, very lightly brushing his hair, but not really touching him. He doesn't appear to wake up from that.

It hits Gibbs that sex is one level of this, but, it's likely that Tim's short on all sorts of touch right now. He gets a pretty steady diet of hugs and baby snuggles and cuddling and just having people lay hands (heads, arms, etc…) on him, and actually… from what Gibbs can see only Ducky and Jimmy will touch him without flinching.

And they're not here a whole lot.

He watches Abby head upstairs, out of the view of the sliding glass door, and a few minutes later she's down again, comfy jammie pants and t-shirt on, scooping up Kelly, so she can ride her Mama's hip while she talks with Gibbs.

"I swear Gibbs, as soon as the pregnancy test turned positive I gained five pounds. I'm barely a month pregnant and my pants are already tight."

Gibbs shrugs, this is not something he's got any experience in, though he does sort of remember Breena complaining about how on baby number two your stomach goes from flat(ish) to five months pregnant in about ten days.

"You look fine."

She smiles and rolls her eyes. "Conversation for Breena and Ziva?"

He nods. Then opens his mouth, licks his lips, and looks really uncomfortable for a second before saying, "Uh…" He closes his eyes and winces a bit… "Tim needs to get laid," comes out very fast while he's very much not looking at her (or near her, or in her general direction, right now those burgers are the most visually fascinating thing, EVER.)

For a moment, Abby just stares at Gibbs looking really amused, and then she starts to laugh.

"Gibbs! You're blushing!"

He glares at her.

She sticks her tongue out, back.

"I'm serious. He's not going to break if you touch him, most of the bruises are healed up, and it'll help perk him up some."

Abby gets a bit more serious, too. "I know, but… I can't stand seeing him hurt, and… And even if I'm careful… I mean, come on, you know how sex works, it involves moving, muscles tense and clench, you breathe, _deeply,_ and… I'm so afraid of hurting him, or putting him in a situation where he hurts himself."

And those are all good points. But… God he wishes he could just stop right here. "He's talking about how there's nothing he likes doing that he can still do. I know he likes it. I know you do, too. I've stayed in this house when you two think you're being 'quiet,' so I know for a fact that both of you have more than enough brains and experience to figure something out. So, figure it out!"

"Is that an order?" Abby asks, sassy.

Gibbs rolls his eyes.

"He actually mention missing sex?"

"Just that he's missing everything he likes." Yes, he's lying, but he's thinking 'too hurt to fuck' will reinforce Abby's fear of touching Tim.

Abby narrows her eyes, because if Tim didn't specifically mention it, it's an odd thing for Jethro to jump to.

"I'm a man, too, you know?"

Abby nods; she has in fact, noticed that. Though she's still a bit skeptical on how precisely Gibb's has come to this particular conclusion.

"He's giving Afghanistan a run for its money right now, and I know what was going on in Afghanistan."

He sees Abby's eyes un-narrow. She believes that. Good. Then she laughs again. "Bet that was a conversation you never wanted to have."

"Ya think?"

* * *

Tim thinks that he and Jimmy were able to have their 'don't poke the porcupine' conversations about how prickly and crazy she and Breena can be when very pregnant without either of the girls noticing.

They are, in fact, wrong about this.

And right now, as Abby's trying to figure out how to get close to Tim, he's got her out-porcupined by at least a factor of fifty.

He's, unfortunately, pretty much stuck on the sofa. She could probably get him onto the floor, maybe, ish… No, he'd have to put weight on one of his legs, or she'd have to lower him by holding around his chest, so no, can't get him down.

The love seat's got reclining seats, so… That's a decent possible new spot, and both of them will fit on there pretty easily… And it's somewhere new, so that's something.

"Come on."

His eyes narrow.

"We're moving."

They narrow further. "Where do you think we could possibly go that'll be any different or better than here?"

She's carefully helping him from lying down to sitting up. "Love seat. Recline the seats, we'll both fit."

He looks uncomfortable with that. "Do you really want to be next to me right now?" That sounds a bit whinier than he'd like, but whiny's how he's feeling about the whole thing. Just like he can't get on the floor, he can't get into the bathtub, so, he's making do with sponge baths, and, okay, intellectually he knows he's clean… enough. (The condition of his hair is something better left unmentioned.) He still feels pretty gross.

"Yes." She sits right next to him. "Having you right here, next to me, matters. Bruises are faded, no need for you to be sleeping alone. But I'd like enough room so we can both get as close to comfortable as possible. Or do you really want to just lie there alone all night?"

He shakes his head. "Don't want to wake you up."

"I'll cope. The only reason I wasn't sleeping next to you was because it wasn't comfortable for you." Yes, he did tell her to go sleep upstairs. And she was willing to humor him on that. She's not anymore, as Jethro had pointed out the bruises are fading, and he's right, she probably is going a bit overkill on being gentle with Tim right now. "I'm happier here, next to you, so let's get you moving."

It takes a minute, but only a minute. He really is getting faster and better at scooting himself around using his hips and left arm. Then they're both on the love seat and she's got the seats reclined so she can cuddle up against him.

But she isn't, not yet. He's sitting down, reclined, pretty much the same position he's been in for days. She's kneeling on the seat next to him, facing him. "So, if you could be doing anything right now, what would it be?"

He shakes his head. "Don't go there, it'll just depress me."

Abby forces a smile, soldiering on. "You know what I want to do?"

"Sleep?" he asks dryly.

"Eventually." (After all, she is a month pregnant and sleep does sound awfully good right now. And he wouldn't be staring at her like she's annoying him if she were to suggest just turning off the light and going to sleep.) She smiles at him, warm, flirty. He's aiming his bitch face at her. "Oh come on, I'm not Tony badgering you."

He closes his eyes and sighs, trying to rein it in some. "I'm sorry."

"I know. I know you aren't happy. I know you're hurting. And I know that your control is shot to hell and gone right now, and I know you hate that, too. I know, Tim."

He takes another breath and she sees him begin to tear up at that.

"Okay, no. We're not crying right now. Crying was not where I was hoping to take this."

He wipes his eyes, and says, voice rough, "Only so much sympathy I can take without falling back into it."

Abby leans in and kisses him, very gently. He lets her, tensing a little, expecting a small burst of pain to go with it, but nothing hits. Of course, his lip is healed up now, and the bruises along his jaw are down to green and yellow. He kisses back, little deeper, still tentative, hoping that pain isn't about to jump out at him, but nothing does.

Abby pulls back after a second. "That good?"

He nods. "Yeah, it really was."

"Good." She grins again. "Let's get your clothing off."

His lips purse, and his eyes narrow. "Wasn't _that_ good. At least a little foreplay'd be nice."

"You're so getting a slap for that when you heal up," she says, mostly joking. "Sit up." He does, and she gently starts to get his shirt off. "You've been on your back and butt for days now, just moving around enough to avoid bedsores, so I was thinking maybe, you might like a nice, soft, gentle, massage."

That does sound good. Sort of. He's afraid it will hurt. Apparently that shows on his face. "You've been sitting and laying on your back for days, I'm not going to put any more pressure than that on your skin."

"Okay." He rocks to his side, to start the slow process of getting his pants down over his hips.

Abby looks at him naked and smiles, real smile this time. "Hi there, husband."

He smiles back, little forced, but he's trying to play along, make his mood shift. "Wife." He smiles again, bit more genuine. "Mrs. McGee."

She gently trails her fingers across his hip and leg, from the bottom of the wraps around his chest to the top of the cast. "On your side."

"Yes, Ma'am." He gets himself onto his side, and she drapes a light blanket over him, heading off. A moment later she's got her massage oil, and a few candles.

"Mood lighting?"

"Nothing but the best for you, love."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome." She turns on their TV goes searching through the options, finds their playlists and queues one up. Soft, relaxing jazz flows through their living room.

He's lying on his left side, back to her, and for the first moment, she just cuddles in close carefully wrapping her arm around his hips (doesn't want to risk bumping his right arm) and just lets her heat sink into him, and enjoying the feel of skin (mostly, the wraps around his ribs are a bit rough) against skin.

Not much she can do with his back. There's about an inch of space between the wraps and his cast on the right side, but his neck and left shoulder are available, so she starts there, little oil on her hands, very gently rubbing his skin.

No real pressure. She's sure he's got more than enough kinks that need to be worked out right now, but she's also sure that he doesn't need any extra pain, even hurts-so good-pain, right now.

So, soft, gentle, but not exactly flowing because of his position and the amount of him she can work with strokes, light squeezes and slippery thumb pressure stroking over and over his neck and scalp and the bits of his shoulder she can get.

He sighs, sounding, maybe not happy, but pleased.

"Good?"

"Yeah. Doesn't hurt."

Abby was looking for something a little better than 'doesn't hurt.' "Does it feel good?"

"The fact you're doing it does."

She shifts down a little, rubbing below the wraps, getting his low back, and hips, and butt. Same light pressure, same gentle touch, though she is fond of his butt, so it does get a bit of a squeeze. He groans, and she stops dead. "Too hard?"

"No. Felt good. Really good."

"How about this?" Firmer pressure, nice good hold on his hips, pressing her thumbs into the meaty parts of his butt.

"Ahhhh… Yes. Keep doing that. I'd roll onto my stomach and let you have at it if I could."

She kisses his right cheek, "I know," and gets to work.

There were lots of bruises, but, aside from that, Tim's ass didn't take too much damage, same for his low back and the part of his leg where it attaches to his butt. The most trouble they've had is spending day after day, hour after hour, in one position. So, Abby's less nervous about accidentally hurting him here, and as he's adding comments along the lines of 'God yes," "Feels so good" and "Harder" she's feeling more and more confident about touching him.

The cast on his right leg goes from three inches above his knee to his ankle, so she can't get too much of that leg, but the upper part is right under her hands, so she strokes and gently kneads there. He's a bit less enthusiastic about that, no more verbal encouragement, so she goes back to his butt, which results in more purring, happy Tim.

He's rocking against her hands in a deliberate way that she certainly understands.

"Roll over."

He does, smiling at her, real smile, no forcing it this time. She looks down at his erection, proud, tall, and wanting some touch.

She smiles back at him, still sitting next to him, taking firm hold of his dick and stroking her still slippery hand up and down his cock. A long, breathy, "Uh" slips out of him as she does that.

He watches her, eyes heavily lidded, mouth slightly open, hips rocking into her touch as much as he can. She leans in, kissing him again, and he melts into her, lips open, stroking, wet slide that he's missed, so much.

She pulls back, leaning down, holding his gaze as she lowers her mouth toward his dick.

"Abigail! No." He grabs her shoulder to stop her progress.

"No?" She's looking utterly perplexed.

"That's not getting nearly enough washing these days to put your mouth on it."

She sits back on her heels. "Not being able to shower is killing you, isn't it?"

He nods.

She stands up and heads off. And yeah, he did say 'no', meaning, 'no, don't blow me,' not 'no, let's stop this whole sex thing all together.' But he hears her moving around their kitchen and the sound of running water and two minutes later she's back, with a bunch of towels, and a bowl of what is probably warm water.

Warm water that smells good. Smells clean, fresh, citrus, and maybe a little sexy. He can tell she put a few drops of one of the colognes in it.

She leaves again, and comes back with more towels, and washcloths, and soap. He knows what she has in mind right now, and really approves.

"Don't come," she says, lips an inch from him, before sinking into another wet kiss.

He nods when she pulls back. "I'll try. Been a while, you know?"

"Since you got off?"

"Since I got off, since you've touched me, since anything."

"Anything? You haven't done yourself?" She hadn't realized he hadn't been touching himself.

"Not feeling well, not a lot of privacy, have to practically have the tissues in my lap to be able to reach them, and" he flexes his left hand, "my hand won't make a tight fist for more than a few strokes without aching."

"Oh, Tim…" She nods. "Okay, just relax and enjoy, then."

He smiles at her. "Thanks."

"But if you can hold off, I'll make it well worth your while." She's got a diabolically wicked grin on her face as she says that. And he enjoys the promise of that look.

She helps him lift his hips up, so as to get a few of the towels under him, and then settles herself between his legs. Then she soaks the first of the hand towels and just lays it over him, getting everything wet, but, unlike the first sponge bath, when they were playing, by not taking it away, everything is staying nice and warm, too.

He sighs, pleased, really enjoying this.

She dips her hands in the water, then rubs the soap between them, getting them all foamy with lather.

Another sigh from Tim, he knows where this is going and is looking forward to it. And yes, wet, warm, soapy hands very thoroughly washing every inch of his privates feels amazing. He's rocking his hips into her touch, trying to coax her to go a little faster and a little harder, but she's keeping up a slow, steady, firm touch.

He gasps, (and winces, very freshly reminded why his lungs don't like that) not in surprise, he'd been hoping she'd do it, but because he'd forgotten how good it felt, when she slips her hand under his balls and starts to wash his ass. He spreads his legs further, and if either of them would have cooperated, he would have set his feet flat on the footrest and lifted up to give her better access. Unfortunately, neither foot wants to do that right now. So, he makes do with canting his hips up as far as he can get them, while her hands squirm between his cheeks, slippery and wet, and stroking everything.

When she pulls away, he groans and pouts, but she says, "Good job, trust me, you'll like the next part."

She wets the towel again, and rinses him off, then pats everything dry(ish). "Okay, maybe that wasn't so hot," Abby says, because, yeah that was okay, but not rocking his world.

The next bit though, where she reaches behind the bowl, and grabs the massage oil, that looks like a good time.

And it is. She uncaps it and slicks up a finger, slowly smearing the oil on him before beginning a gentle steady pressure into his body. He sighs, relaxes, pushes to help her slip in, and between one breath and the next, her other (also slick) hand is holding his dick, as her mouth envelopes him in tight, wet heat.

His head falls back, and he closes his eyes. Feels so good. Feels amazing. This is probably the first time he's been awake and not hurting, at all, in ages, and if he watches, he's going to come, and right now he wants to stay right here for as long as he can.

She either senses that, or just intuitively gets it, or can read what he's doing by not watching, but she keeps up a slow, steady pace, finger gently circling over his prostate, mouth sliding up and down, just a hint of suction, her hand just holding him steady.

But she can't keep him there forever, even with a holding pace, he's ramping up. It has been a long time since she's touched him like this, and his body is more than eager to get off. It's building in his balls and the pit of his stomach, thighs growing tense and tight, left hand fisting, hips rocking against her mouth.

She shifts her touch, pulsing her finger over his prostate, adding that cumming surge sensation to the mix, while she sucks a bit harder and moves faster, her hand sliding up and down with her mouth.

That does it, hands and mouth and suction and wet and thrust and his whole body feels like it's coming apart in the best possible way, tingling from toes to head and everywhere in between while happy wet pulses and muscle spasms rock his body.

For about a minute, he's really, really good. Happy, comfortable, feeling excellent. And then the aches and everything else comes back. And if he's being honest, he hurts worse now than than he did before, he did tense up enough that his body isn't happy with him, but he doesn't much care, because what got him in this situation was worth it.

Abby's laying against him, face resting on his hip. He'd like it if she could spoon up and snuggle against him, rest her head on his shoulder, drape her legs over his, but his ribs and legs are still pretty sore. So, she's in a good place, and he pets her hair.

After another minute he says, "So, I'm going to need you to take a leave of absence and do that about… every fifteen minutes for the next three weeks or so."

She looks up at him, chuckling, kissing his hip. "Uh huh. And is Jimmy writing you the script for Viagra?"

"He'll understand. It's a pressing need." She slips up, face to face, but careful with him, and he kisses her. "First time in way too long that nothing hurt."

"Good." She smiles.

"So. If you're careful, I bet I can return the favor."

"You want to?"

"Oh yeah. Come on up here." Getting a working position is a bit awkward. Her usual straddle his face routine involves her feet resting on his shoulders or chest, and that isn't going to work. They finally settle for his head resting on the armrest, and her standing over his face. Not anything they've ever done before, but it works, and reconnecting to her with touch that feels good makes a lot of difference.

And then, once everything is cleaned up, having Abby warm and naked and pressed up against his back is exquisite, too.


	113. Inching Forward

"Looks like something put a spring in your step," Jethro says as he picks Tim up for swimming, giving him a hand up into the truck.

Tim rolls his eyes. Yes, he's in a better mood, but 'spring' let alone 'step' are vast overstatements. (For that matter, better and good are not synonyms, either. He's not feeling quite so angry right now, and the entire universe isn't annoying to him, but that's not exactly a 'good' mood.)

Gibbs closes the door, and gets in on his side, turning the engine on. They're out of the driveway, heading toward Jimmy's gym when Tim asks, "How the hell is this supposed to even work? I can understand how to get me into the water, just tip the chair far enough, and I'll fall in. How am I supposed to get back _out_ after?"

Gibbs hadn't actually thought that far ahead. He could probably lift Tim, he certainly helped with the few inches up from the chair to the seat in his truck, and especially in the water, lifting Tim would be an issue, so, maybe from the water to the side of the pool wouldn't be so bad, but… from the side of the pool into the chair… Tim's not huge, but 170 pound dead lift from the ground sounds like a recipe for Gibbs' back in traction for the next week.

And there's still the rib issue. Getting into the truck Tim's sort of pulling up with his left arm, and Jethro's giving him a boost from under his hips. Can't do that from the side of the pool. Not wet and slippery onto a wheel chair. If he didn't have so many broken ribs, let alone his right arm, getting Tim moved around wouldn't be nearly so much of an issue. But he does, so the easiest way to get him up or down, wrapping an arm around his chest, under his arms, is out.

"You don't know, do you?" Tim says with an annoyed sigh.

"No. We'll figure it out. Worst comes to worst, we skip the pool and you at least get a real shower."

"Great." Lots of sarcasm in that great, but he does want the shower, so… Off to the gym they go.

* * *

It's a nice pool. Salt water, so there's no chlorine to mess with his lungs. (One of the reasons Tim generally isn't a huge fan of swimming, chlorine pools make his asthma act up. And right now he really doesn't want to be coughing or wheezing.)

The Lifeguard watches both of them as Gibbs wheels him closer to the water.

Tim's not seeing anything, immediately, that looks like a way to get back out of the pool. There are steps on the one end, but it's not like the outdoor pool (which has a ramp, but only gets to three feet deep) so there's no really obvious way to get him from into the water to back into the chair. Yes, he wasn't looking forward to swimming. No, he doesn't much like pools, but they are here, and doing something is starting to sound good, and now it looks like something's going to get whittled down to just a shower. The black clouds are gathering around him again.

"Do you need help?" she asks as the two of them stand there, near the water, but not going in.

"Just trying to figure out how to get him out," Gibbs says.

She smiles brightly at them. "No problem. We're accredited as a medical rehabilitation facility," she points toward the far end of the pool where there is a ten foot tall metal contraption that looks vaguely like a crane with a chair attached, "and that's specifically designed to allow people with limited mobility to access the water." She looks at both Tim and Gibbs, but neither of them are wearing anything that screams, _these are swim trunks_. "Do you two want to get changed, and then I can show you how to use it."

"That sounds great." Gibbs says, with a smile.

"We've also got assisted change rooms. They've got more room than the locker room, hand rails, adjustable shower heads, the sinks are lower. Do you know where they are?"

Tim nods. They went by them on the way in.

"Great!" She smiles at them. "See you in a bit."

As Gibbs's wheeling them away, Tim says, "Were you just _nice_ to someone?"

"We can't both be absolute bastards."

Tim laughs, wryly, at that.

* * *

Being in the pool feels vastly better than he could have imagined. He can move, awkwardly, his knee doesn't bend on the one side and his ankle doesn't on the other, but still, MOVE, on his own. The compression of the water against his chest actually feels pretty nice. And, yes, it's cold, and wet, which aren't his favorite things ever, but he can MOVE!

Gibbs is whipping through his laps, which has Tim thinking, because he didn't know Gibbs was much of a swimmer. And for that matter, those look like new swim trunks, too. New… kind of tight… colorful… swim trunks. Like the sort of clothing a woman may pick out for you. Tim makes a note to ask about that when they get out.

So, anyway, Gibbs is doing his best shark impression, while Tim sort hobbles/bounces/you could even possibly, if you were feeling really charitable, call it walking his own laps.

They stay for an hour, before Gibbs gets out and lowers the… It has to have a name, but Tim's thinking of it as a _people crane_ into the water. Tim gets on, and Gibbs hits the button that lifts him out and to the side of the water, and from there he can scoot himself off the plastic seat into his wheelchair.

Gibbs wheels him to one of the assisted change rooms. "You need help?"

"If you get me next to the shower seat, I can handle the rest on my own."

"Okay. I'll be back when I get done."

Yes, he's a bit nervous about getting a shower in here with the door unlocked, but he can't get to the door on his own (okay, he could, if he absolutely had to) so it's unlocked, so Gibbs can get back in when he's done with his own post-swim clean up.

Still, bit nervous versus actual, real, hair-washed, soap all over, rinsed all the way off, whole-body-gets-clean shower, and shower wins.

And if cold water felt good, hot water is way the hell better. Yes, it takes three quarters of forever to get clean. Part of it is just sitting there enjoying the water. Part of it is that he's doing as thorough a job as he possibly can. For example, he can't actually get to his right foot. Yes, before the attack he could actually reach his foot with his leg extended. (Which is something he was proud of, if you'd asked Day Before the Wedding Tim McGee if he'd ever be flexible enough to do that, he'd have thought you were insane. Yoga For A Year And A Half Tim can handle that, though. At least, he could, two weeks ago.) But with his chest still feeling like it's full of knives, even when he isn't bending, and it's worse when he does, he doesn't have enough extension to do that right now. But everything he can reach is getting scrubbed. Twice. (Three times for his hair.)

He takes the time to really look at his body, and it is healing. The bruises are fading. The bite marks are scarring up. He's not sure if he wants to do skin grafts or not. More pain and losing sensation on his butt or inner thigh aren't anything he's interested in, but they do look awful. (Though, if he does do it, he'll end up with some square patches that obviously don't match the rest of his skin, so it's not like the scars will suddenly become invisible.) The doctor told him he was lucky, that in both cases they're just skin wounds, and the muscle underneath wasn't damaged. He supposes he's lucky in that it's not his right leg. Kelly's dragon doesn't have a bite taken out of it.

His arm cast is getting too big, the swelling is going down, another good sign.

And, without a mirror he's not sure, but he can't feel a gap in his eyebrow.

So, at least he's looking less like fresh roadkill.

If he'd thought ahead, he'd have brought the trimmers with him. He remembered to ask Abby to pack his razor, but at this point his goatee's a good half inch long, and that's too much to try to take off with just a razor.

Tomorrow, because they are certainly doing this tomorrow, he'll bring the trimmers, and get rid of the goatee. That'll help him feel like he's got his face back again.

Out of the shower, dried off, clean clothing, Tim's feeling a whole lot more human. Tired. Bone tired. But not the wasted, wrecked exhausted he'd been feeling. This is much more of a my body's done everything it can, and now it wants a nap tired.

He's also aching again, but, and this is a sign of things moving in the right direction, it's been almost five hours since his last pill, so… Yeah, healing up.

He takes his meds and falls asleep on the way home.

* * *

So, yes, Wednesday morning was better than any morning he's had since he left for the _Stennis._ But Wednesday afternoon, he's back to the same problem.

BORED.

So bored. All he's got up for his afternoon is vibrating his bones. And with bored comes thinking, and thinking means feeling like shit and crying and wishing he never got anywhere near that ship.

* * *

He's napping again when Abby gets home, which works out well, because she wants to mess with his computer. So, upon getting home, Abby and Kelly head into his office and do a little recon. There's a program Zelaz suggested might be good for Tim, and she wants to look into it further.

It takes her a few minutes, but she does find it, and it does look like exactly the right thing, so while she's making dinner, it's downloading.

Tim wakes up for dinner, and is in a better (at least compared to yesterday) mood.

When food is done, and dishes cleared away, she puts Kelly on his lap, and wheels him into his office.

"I got something for you."

"What?"

"Hopefully the answer to you going out of your mind because you're so bored."

She flips open his lap top, punches in his access code, and then fires up the new icon on his desktop. A second later, a program opens.

"Dragon?" He realizes he knows what it is, but the idea of it never occurred to him. (Yet another hint that the Percocet is taking a toll, because, yeah, that was an obvious fix, and he should have thought of it himself.)

Abby takes his question to mean _what is it?_ "It's a verbal word processor. You talk to it, and it turns your words into a document. You can work on your story, or do your report for SecNav, hell, code even. Anything you want to do, you can, without having to delete every third character."

"Thanks."

Abby smiles at him. "Okay, Kelly and I are going to do tubby time. You play with this some."

Saying his work, out loud, feels ridiculously stupid, especially since he's got to add in the punctuation in, too. (Actually he doesn't, but he won't know that for a few paragraphs. Likewise, it'll take him a day to notice it does much better with him just talking to it, instead of slowly and carefully over enunciating each word.) "Daegan sheathed his sword comma satisfied at the terror he could see radiating off of Malindra period." But at least he's doing something, and it is satisfying to see the words popping up on the screen.

Abby's back down half an hour later, with a fresh, clean baby girl. Tim takes over on story time, which he can still do, though it does help that Kelly's pretty quiet and sleepy, not too squirmy, and she settles in on his lap, quickly.

Usually, he'd hold her against his chest, but that's just not going to happen. So she sits on his leg, head against his tummy, as he quietly reads Goodnight Moon, and then hums a few lullabies.

He gets a drool-y baby kiss and then Abby takes Kelly up for sleeping time.

Abby comes down again and settles onto his desk. He'd rather she settled into his lap, resting against his chest, so he could wrap his arms around her, but they both know that'll just hurt right now. "So, writing, TV, sex? What are we doing tonight?"

"Sex is good." Tim says with a smile. "Feeling kind of meh on TV right now. Bored with the old storylines, and you want to watch the new ones with me."

She smiles. "What if I told you I got a recommendation for a series you'd probably like, that has like, two hundred episodes, and it won't break my heart to miss most of them?"

"I've already seen Dr. Who," he answers, flat.

She rolls her eyes. She knows that. "And it isn't Dr. Who, but you're in the right neighborhood."

"I've seen Torchwood, too," he says deadpan.

She sighs, hoping he's playing but this has too much of a tinge of annoyed, bored Tim to feel like playing. "Not Torchwood. I'd want to watch that with you."

"Yeah, you and Jack Harkness, I know." Eye roll, little smile, bit of playful comes back. "What's your mystery show?"

"Literally. Midsomer Murders. Tidy little mysteries. Sixteen seasons. If you like them, that should keep you occupied for a while. Apparently Ellie and her husband like them, so she suggested them to me when I was asking for TV ideas."

"You were asking for TV ideas?"

She strokes his left hand. "I don't want you home and bored all the time."

"Come here."

She leans in closer, and he kisses her. "Thank you."

"So, sex and TV?"

"Sex first?" he asks with a smile.

She smiles back at him. "Always."

* * *

Thursday means doctors' appointments.

Visiting the dentist isn't fun, but at least it doesn't take long. Open mouth, pop out the temporary crown, put the permanent one in.

And, in half an hour all of his teeth are the same color and more or less match again.

The afternoon means the first of his post-home orthopedic appointments.

New x-rays, more poking and prodding, getting his arm rescanned, which he's trying to ban from his memory because that _hurt_. Not the scanning per se, but the position they had to get him into to do the scan.

"Just hold still, Mr. McGee, this won't take long," the Doc says with that infuriatingly calm voice medical practitioners use when they're going to torture you.

He's about to bite through his lip because it feels like his shoulder's on the verge of being ripped clean out of its socket again and every single bone and muscle in his arm is screaming because it no longer has the cast for support.

"Few more seconds… You're doing really well… And… There we go." He lifts the scanner away from Tim's arm, and refits the cast onto him again. "I know that's uncomfortable. Okay, leg next. On the upside, we don't have to go from your knee to ankle this time. Your knee's had enough time immobile, so before we leave we're going to get you set with a brace that allows it to move a bit, and tomorrow we'll have a shorter cast that just covers your shin."

"Great. Will I be able to get the brace wet?"

"I'd think so. Why?"

"Started spending time in the pool yesterday, I'd like to keep doing it."

"By all means. Anything that gets you up and moving is a good thing."

Getting his leg rescanned doesn't hurt. (Of course, his leg is in the same position it's been in for the last week, so that's not a shock.)

The Doc is checking the foot x-ray. "Foot up next." He shifts around the scanner so that Tim's foot is on it, and that too, hurts. The angle it needs to be at so they can get a good 3d image is not easy to hold. "So, we're going to be changing things on this cast, too. You still shouldn't be walking around, but your ankle no longer needs complete immobility, either. So, we're going to build a cast that goes from your heel to the bridge of your foot down to your toes. You'll be able to move your ankle, just like your knee."

Tim's not having an easy time imagining what that cast will look like, and it seems like the Doc understands. "Have you ever seen an ankle sock?"

Tim nods. Breena's got some of them. "It'll look like that. And on top of it, we're going to add some wrapping for support. You'll be able to move your ankle in every direction, but not too much."

"Dislocated ankle, dislocated knee, you're bracing both of them, but recasting the dislocated shoulder?" Gibbs asks.

"Yes." The Doc says as he begins to cut the wrapping off Tim's chest. "Two weeks, when you're back for the next set of x-rays and scans, we'll see about making the arm cast smaller." He finishes up cutting off the bandages that have been supporting his chest. "And you're done with those."

Tim nods, happy to have them off, wary of how more mobility is going to hurt.

"Okay, why?" Gibbs asks, and the Doc knows he's asking about the dislocations, not the chest bandages.

"The knee and ankle are simple dislocations. The shoulder was ripped so far out of joint that the tendons tore free of the bones. They've been reattached, but you've basically got two little breaks where the bit of bone the tendon was attached to broke free of the rest of the bone. So, everything up there stays immobile until that bone is good and secure."

"Ah," Tim says.

"So, everything is looking good and healing up well. We'll have the casts printed out and ready to go by the time you're back tomorrow. Now, do you have a physical therapist picked out yet, or do you need a recommendation?"

"I've got one," Tim says, definitive.

"Great. Make sure the office has his?" Tim nods. Jimmy's a guy. "…contact information, and we'll get everything sent off to him. I want you to start working on range of motion exercises on both your ankle and knee."

Tim nods.

"How are you doing on your pain medication? Do you need another prescription?"

"Think I'm good on that, too."

"How much are you taking right now?"

He fishes the pill out of his breast pocket, not sure what exactly the dose is, but knowing that he'd be out when he wanted his next one, so he brought it with him. "One of these every five hours, now."

"Okay, good. How's the pain level with that?"

"I ache all the time, all over, pretty much, but it's not excruciating."

"That's where you should be."

"I'd rather be not hurting, at all."

"Give it time." The Doc smiles, he's heard this song before. "Much more than what you're on now and you'll start running into the potential for unpleasant side effects and the risk of dependence goes up."

"Yeah, I know."

"On the upside, probably only another week on the Percocet, then Tylenol 3, and one more week and you should be back down to over-the-counter pain killers."

That actually is good news. Tim's thinking he's going to be a hell of a lot more like himself once he's off the Percocet.

And so they head off with a little more mobility, another inch closer to back to normal.

* * *

They're in Gibbs' truck, heading toward the pool when Tim remembers Gibbs' swim trunks.

"So… you develop a sense of style, or is Abbi actually buying clothing for you?"

Gibbs looks amused.

"She's got you swimming?"

"Some mornings we run for me, or swim for her."

"Hmmm…"

"What?" Gibbs asks, looking at Tim.

"She drops everything to go to California for you. You're wearing clothing she's picking out. Merging your workout routines… Do I need to get my jeweler on speed dial for you?"

Gibbs rolls his eyes.

"I'm only half-joking. He does really good work, you know?"

"I'll let you know if the need arises."

"Talk about dodging the question."

Gibbs smiles at him.

* * *

Today he remembered to bring the trimmer. Only takes a few seconds to get most of the goatee buzzed away. (He's feeling a little bad about doing it at the gym, but none of the mirrors are low enough to do this at home easily, and he's cleaning up as well as he can, not leaving whiskers all over the place.)

Lips are healed. The bruises on his jaw are almost entirely gone, just three, small knuckle-shaped, yellow blobs against his right side. He looks at his teeth as he shaves, carefully, little tricky to do it one-handed, but they all match now. He was wrong about the eyebrow, there's an inch long pink line running diagonally through it from about the halfway mark to just over where his eyelid ends. Tim scrapes the last little bit of stubble off his chin, seeing the face that he thinks of as his (mostly) looking back at him.

He looks at himself in the mirror. He's never growing the goatee back again.

Gibbs is leaning against the wall behind him, looking him over critically, he nods.

One step closer to being himself again.

* * *

Three hours later, once he's home, and asleep, Tim wakes up to his phone ringing. "McGee."

"Old habits die hard, don't they? You know you're not actually at work, right?"

"Jimmy?" He's sure that's his voice, but he can't think of why Jimmy's calling him right now.

"Yeah."

"What's up?"

"Couple things. First of all, I'm really pleased that you've got so much trust in me, but I'm not actually a physical therapist, and I don't all have all the goodies a real physical therapist would have, so… how about you go hire a _real_ physical therapist to actually oversee getting you all up and functional again?"

"Gibbs said you did a better job than the guy he was seeing."

"That's nice of him. He's wrong. I did a more _thorough_ job than the guy he was seeing because he would actually talk to me, and I kept better track of him." Tim knows that's a polite version of 'I kept badgering him to do everything he needed to do and then some.' "And I'll do the same thing for you. But you need someone to do the actual heavy lifting, so, you've got an appointment with the same guy Gibbs saw for Monday morning. I figured you wouldn't be busy."

"Let me check my calendar. Yep, I've got napping and taking a swim whenever Gibbs can get me out there."

"Okay. Swimming working out for you?"

"Yeah it is. Bought a three month membership. Not sure if we'll extend it beyond that." After all, they do have the NCIS gym, but it's not designed for people with mobility issues. He's hoping he'll be moving around well enough to get in and out of the NCIS pool by then. "What else?"

"You guys want us all over for Shabbos tomorrow night? We'll bring the food."

"Yeah. Abby definitely wants some company. I might be crabby, but if I get too obnoxious, just ignore me."

Jimmy laughs at that. "Breena and I'll show up early or stay a bit late. I'll get you started on what to do with your knee and ankle."

"Thanks."

* * *

"Fuck!" Tim's eyes are screwed shut and he's whimpering lightly. "How can this possibly hurt that bad?"

"You haven't moved it, at all, for two weeks," Jimmy replies, holding Tim's ankle. "Again."

"Again? You're fucking kidding me."

"Come on, keep at it. Baby it now and it's just going to hurt that much worse for that much longer."

Tim tenses up, but he does flex his foot, about an inch.

"Good job. Five more times."

Now he's staring at Jimmy like he's been mortally betrayed.

Jimmy wiggles his fingers, indicating _get moving._

Tim flexes his foot again.

"One. Four more."

"You're a sadist."

"And you're a right little ray of sunshine. Four more. Bitching about it isn't going to make your ankle any stronger or more flexible."

Tim flexes his foot again, cursing.

"Three. And now you know why I'm not a physical therapist. None of my usual patients curse at me."

"None of your usual patients," he flexes again, "are hurting this bad," one more flex, "and you aren't sitting there, fucking smiling at them," final flex "while they're hurting."

"Done. Laterals next. Would you prefer I scowled?"

Tim rolls his eyes. "Laterals?"

"Your ankle rotates." Jimmy stands up and demonstrates full range of ankle motion. "We've just done up and down. Got 360 degrees of motion to take care of here."

"I'm going to be dead before we get to my knee, aren't I?"

"That's extremely unlikely. Okay, get to it, five to the left."

* * *

He's working on rotations when Ziva and Tony come in.

"You are moving McGee!" she sounds pleased and excited by that. "We'll get you training again in no time."

Jimmy looks over at her, and Tim catches the flavor of that look. "What was that?"

"One more rotation." Tim does it, still staring at him, waiting for more. Jimmy shakes his head. "Not no time. Not… not anytime in the next year."

Tim winces. "January?"

Jimmy cringes, shaking his head. "Three hundred and sixty-five days, year. You'll be moving around a lot sooner than that, and swimming and yoga or pilates, definitely weights, but… Bones heal stronger than they were before. Break it once, you're unlikely to break it in the same place again. Muscles, tendons, and ligaments are all different. Tear, dislocate, strain… they all heal weaker. They all slip out of joint easier. Pretty much a healed bone is just more bone, a healed muscle or tendon is scar tissue, and that's not as strong or flexible. So, you're not throwing a punch or anything else involving hard, jarring impact with your right arm for at least a year."

Tim deflates. "You're letting Gibbs fight." Then he gets embarrassed because that sounded terribly whiny.

"With one laterally dislocated knee, that's wrapped, and he's not doing any knee strikes with it or kicks. And if it was just your ankle and knee, I'd let you back after six months too, with the same previsions. But we're not screwing with your arm until it's rock solid. What did you want to train, Ziva?"

"Knife fighting."

Jimmy thinks about that for a moment. "Start taking me through it at Bootcamp. It's more slashing and dodging and maybe some grappling, right?"

"Yes."

"Okay, _that_ we might be able to get you doing in less than a year. So, knives?"

Tim shrugs (just his left shoulder). "I had my clasp knife with me, but… Didn't know how to use it as a knife. Not in a fight."

Jimmy taps Tim's foot, reminding him to keep going while he talks, so he does.

That gets Tony's attention. He's read Stan's report on the fight, and it listed that McGee took that one guy's eye out with his knife. He assumed it was a stab wound. "What did you do with it?"

Tim's not sure if he wants to talk about it, not sure if he can without crying, so he sounds tentative as he says, "Threw it. Weighs three or four ounces. Solid steel. Guy was close. Whipped it at him, full force, right in the eye. Dropped him in one hit."

Ziva's also read the report on the attack, seen the sketch of where the fight took place, she nods. "Even if you had known how to fight with it, that was probably the right decision. Multiple attackers, small space, you want to get them out of the fight as fast as possible, so you can concentrate force, and it's very difficult to take someone out with just one strike in a knife fight. Not impossible. But in the same situation, I would have opened the knife and thrown it for his throat. Same result, but you avoided killing your attacker."

Tim sighs. "Suppose that's a good thing."

Jimmy switches sides on him. "Okay, knee time."

The shorter cast means Tim's had a bit more mobility in his knee, but like his ankle, he hasn't really moved it for two solid weeks, and flexing it isn't exactly easy or painless, so he's still keeping it extended in front of him. Jimmy's holding under his ankle, supporting his leg as he folds down the support on the wheelchair.

"What's your comfortable range of motion?"

Tim just stares at him.

"Dumb question, everything hurts all the time, right?"

Tim nods.

"Okay how far can you bend it without it hurting more than the baseline?"

"Let go, and we'll find out."

"You haven't tried to bend it?"

"Not really." Just a little bit right after he got the new cast, and it ached, dull, pulling, tearing ache through the entire top half of his leg.

Jimmy stops supporting Tim's leg. He keeps his hand in place, but lets the leg start to bend.

"There!" Tim says through clenched teeth.

"Okay, three inches. That could be a lot worse. Have at it."

Through gritted teeth Tim says, "How many of these am I doing?"

Gibbs heads into the living room, holding Anna, kisses Ziva, and says, "Until you're sweating, right?"

"Fifteen," Jimmy says to Tim. "'Until you're sweating' is my Crusty-Old-Drill-Sargeant-With-A-Bad-Attitude workout plan. I think for Tim we're aiming at 'until you're swearing.'"

Tim glares a little and says, "Fuck. Are we done, now?"

"Not until you mean it." Jimmy says with another smile.

Tim flexes his knee again, grimacing. "So, what's the scuttlebutt at work?"

Tony hops in on that. "Officially, you were in a car accident. But, apparently Vance told one of the Minions you were war gaming, so there's something about that. And you told them you were 'at a conference' so every form of gossip you can imagine is running wild."

Abby, who had been helping Breena and Penny in setting up the table, heads in. "Food's on. Howard's popped in a few times to check up, ask how you're doing. I'm sticking with the 'car accident' story, too, but none of them believe it."

"Is there an official file?" Tim asks, fairly sure that if they were really curious his Minions would have looked.

Tony nods. "Yeah, but it's been John Doed, so you've got some privacy. Unless you know what to look for, the case is invisible."

"But there's no police report for my 'car accident' is there?"

"No," Ziva shakes her head.

"How'd you find it?" Tim asks Tony.

"Stan cced us."

"On your work email?"

"Yeah."

Tim sighs. He'd have it broken open in about ten seconds. He's not sure if any of the Minions are devious enough to hack his old partners to find out what happened. Might give out some brownie points to any of them that did.

Jimmy lets go of his foot. "Done."

Tim raises his eyebrows.

"See, you get distracted, it doesn't hurt so much, and it's a lot easier."

Abby puts Kelly in Tim's lap, and wheels him to the dining table. Time for their family to have dinner, together.

* * *

Dragon is a godsend. Being able to write again is making his life about ten million times better. Sure, he's still loopy, so he's fairly doubtful that any of this is going to make the final draft, but he's plot dumping away, and, because he can write, he can deal with "dad-stuff" as he's been calling it, with the shield of his character, Gabe, in place.

It's a lot easier, safer, to handle it that way. It's also clear that whatever this story ends up being, father-son relationship stuff is definitely going to be a major theme.

And, as Friday turns into Saturday into Sunday and onto Monday and on… It also becomes clear that whatever else is true about this project, it's also a massive smut-fest.

Smutty, smutty, smutty, smut! All over the place. He's got some suspicions as to why this is true, beyond the whole, he likes sex thing. Pretty much, right now, they've got cowgirl, and reverse cowgirl, soft and gentle and slow, and that's nice and all, but he really wants to fuck.

He wants to pick Abby up and rock her world. Wants the feel of his body moving fast and hard, sweat and lube slick skin, breathing hard, flushed, hot, aching full-on fucking sex.

And that's not happening anytime soon.

So… yeah, any longtime Thom Gemcity reader who picks up the Dragons book is going to get a shock.

(And Abby's getting some emails that are making it difficult to concentrate at work. And he really approves of the minute of video she sent back showing what she did in the ladies' room once she read that first email.)

* * *

Another Wednesday, another day home, but today, he's noticing something. There's only one Percocet left, and he's not feeling any sense of panic from that. He can go the full six hours between doses now, and shifting down to Tylenol 3 seems like a good plan.

Seems like it will work.

He knows Tylenol 3 is also a narcotic, but it's a much less strong one than the Percocet, and he's really, really hoping that he can take this last one, let it meander out of his system, start up on the new stuff, and get some more control back.

He swallows it down, and tosses the bottle toward his trash can. He misses and sighs. Time to move the vibrational head to the next break, then more ankle flexing.

* * *

Thursday. Swimming with Gibbs. That's good. He can actually walk when he's in the pool now. Both his knee and ankle are sore and stiff, but they also both bend, so that's him moving in the right direction.

He's still off his feet out of the water. Given how badly just working on flexing everything is hurting, he's not feeling any need to rush trying to stand up or walk on his own. But, he can bend his knee now, and he can put some weight on both legs, enough so he can lower himself from say the sofa to the floor, or from the edge of the tub into the bath, and supposedly, rumor has it, that if he keeps this up, he may, in the next few days be able to sort of scoot himself up and down the steps so that he can go back upstairs and sleep in his real bed.

Which he is looking forward to with a level of enthusiasm he used to reserve for exquisite deserts and really good sex.

* * *

Friday again. There was the attack, that was a Friday. His first full day home was a Friday. There was the Friday he got the new casts. And now it's Friday again, three weeks on.

He's still not up the steps, yet. But soon. Tomorrow or Sunday.

The Tylenol 3 is mostly getting the job done. He's back down to a five hour pain pill cycle, but he feels a lot more like himself. He hasn't broken down crying for (what he considers) no good reason for two days.

Heather graciously accepted his apology for being such a bear the last few weeks. Told him he didn't need to apologize for it, but he knew he did. Even if only to make himself feel better.

No Percocet means his one-handed typing is getting better, and Dragon means that mostly all he's doing with a keyboard is fixing spelling and formatting.

No Percocet also means that today, he's got a job to do.

It's time to start writing up that report.

It's slow. Partially because he still has to get fairly frequent naps. Partly because he can't work on the report without thinking about what was going on, and if he's thinking about what was going on, then he's got to think about the life before, his father, and everything that's gone between them.

So it's slow, because for every ten minutes of writing, he's probably doing two hours of thinking. (Or an hour of thinking and an hour of mourning. Not necessarily full out crying, but coming to terms with what was, what can never be changed, and the fact that there is no shot of any sort of resolution now. Granted, he wasn't thinking resolution in terms of them developing some sort of functional relationship, but he would have liked one, clear, undimmed win against the man.)

But he keeps working on it.

The great thing about drafts is that the first one can just be miles of crap spewed out on a page. You keep the good stuff, shuffle it around, and delete the embarrassing bits.

And that's what he's doing.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday… he's writing. He's going over the feeds. He starts with the ships he wasn't on, viewing their data feeds, checking their techs, seeing what they did. He knows how things went on _The Stennis,_ but that's not how things went on all the other ships. Some got communications back faster, some slower. One took a full two hours before they got their internal communications back online. One did it in fewer than two minutes. (He wrote up a separate recommendation for that tech, wanting to make sure he got some sort of a pat on the back for a very good job. Then he made a note to see about looking him up in eighteen months when his hitch with the Navy is up.)

Once communications were fully restored among the entire Carrier Group, they began working together on tracing the hack, and did, eventually, figure it out.

But Tim was on land and unconscious by the time they worked it out.

He writes up a review on how the attack worked, and a plan for how to pull a similar trick. He doesn't want whoever does this next to use his style verbatim, it's got to feel real and it won't if the same attack keeps happening, but he can put useful parameters in place. Likewise, he dissects the response, pointing out who did well, who didn't, how standard Navy cyber-attack operating procedure worked well, how it failed.

He finished writing it up Saturday afternoon. He thinks it's good, lucid, complete, but no way it's going to Jarvis until at least Abby's read over it.

* * *

Bed! Oh God, he loves his bed. His bed is brilliant. It's soft the way it's supposed to be soft, and just firm enough, and okay, a little higher than he'd like right now, but not so bad he can't get into it, and god, soft, firm, with sheets, real sheets!, and his blankets and pillows and it's his BED!

Abby's watching him lying on the bed, ecstatic look on his face, all but quivering with joy at being reunited with his real bed.

"I take it this was worth the climb?"

"Holy fuck! Yes!" It took him a good six minutes to get up twelve steps. Between his arm and his left leg, he can sort of plop his ass on a step, and then scoot himself up to the next step, and repeat eleven more times and from there back to the wheel chair, because that's as much weight and exercise as his leg will tolerate right now, but if he keeps this up, maybe by next Friday he'll be able to graduate to actually crutching around a bit. And going from the floor into the chair is not the most comfortable thing he's ever done. The combination of pulling himself up and Abby helping to lift worked, but his lungs/ribs didn't exactly _like_ it.

But this, here, now, on his bed, lying all the way down, with room to spread out. This is bliss.

"I'm never moving again."

Abby gently trails her fingers along his hip, down to the inside of his thigh. "You sure about that?"

"Uh..." Oh yes, there is this other thing he likes to do when he's here. And right now Abby's grinning at him, promise of some things he really, really likes in her eyes.

* * *

Sunday afternoon Abby looks up from his report and says… "So, do you really want this little bit here in the 'Troubleshooting For Future Tests' section where is says, 'For optimal test results, avoid testing ships run by murderous child-abusing psychopaths'?"

He thought he had deleted that bit two drafts ago. "Too much?"

She nods. "I mean, if you want to write that into a version that just Jarvis gets, fine, but for wider distribution, I'd probably just stick with your bit about how using your hack through the Norfolk computer hub allows the tester to avoid setting foot on the actual ship/ships in question, thus providing a completely blind test."

He had come to the conclusion that for optimal testing data and results it was probably much better to hack both the ship and the security feed from land and just keep watch from afar. Pretty much, it's not impossible that should someone get onto a ship and everything go haywire, especially if it's a small ship, that that person might end up having a very bad day, and Tim's thinking that it's a good plan to make sure no other tester has to deal with that issue.

Tim nods.

"You really sure about this?"

"I'll rewrite, but yeah, I'm sure."

"Good. I was actually asking about you wanting to go in tomorrow."

"Oh. Yeah." He'd surprised everyone when, on Friday night, he announced he was going back to work on Monday, for a little while at least. "I want to get back. I'm going crazy, and it looks like I've got enough of my brain back that I can at least read reports and maybe write some. Not sure if I want to try my hand at any coding yet, but I can supervise and problem solve."

Abby smiles at him. "You get sore or tired or start to feel off—"

"I'll have Jethro take me home."

"Okay. Bright and early tomorrow morning, back to NCIS."

* * *

So, on Monday, two full weeks before he was supposed to be doing anything other than taking an hour or so a day to log in and make sure the building didn't catch fire, Tim gets Abby to roll him into work. Very, very many promises that if he gets tired or sore he'll call Gibbs and get an immediate ride home, in addition to the fact that he's only going in for a half day, were required to get her to do this, but finally she agreed and only almost took him home again twice when the car bumped over different pot holes and he winced.

But, eventually, she rolled him into his office, where all seven of the techs who were in the office flooded in to say hello, welcome him back, and gape openly at how beat up he still looks weeks after the fight.

They're milling around, staring, but trying not to. (The bruises have faded, but his right arm's in a cast, his legs are braced, he's got new scars, and, of course, he's in a wheel chair.) He finally smiles at them, says, "Just look all you want and get over it. And then I want you to understand that this is why you will have your gun and martial arts proficiencies. I didn't have my gun. I did have my fists, and I'm alive because of that. You're ever in my place, I want you to come out alive, too. Okay?"

They all nod, really shocked.

"I can't say what I was actually doing. I know you all have theories, and I know you've figured out it wasn't a 'conference,' but that's all I'm saying about what I was actually doing. Though, if any of you _know_ what I was doing, not have a theory, or feel like you figured it out from clues, but if you did the research and _know_ drop by for a private chat, and we'll arrange your paid day off."

"You want us barging into your private life?" Howard asks.

"No. I'd prefer you didn't. But if any of you did track it down, that would have taken some persistence and out-of-the-box thinking, and I reward that. Which is not me saying, go find out. If you don't know by now, leave it alone. If you do know… well you know, don't spread it around, it's private."

He nods at the target with the smiley face shot into it. "What I was doing was _supposed_ to be safe. It was _supposed_ to be routine. It _wasn't_ safe. It _wasn't_ routine. They almost killed me. They didn't. And they didn't because I knew how to fight. I want you to know, too.

"Not saying it's a guarantee of safety or anything, not saying you'll make it out or come back in one piece, but if you can't win, you can at least take as many of the bastards with you as you can. Someone lays hands on you, you make 'em pay for it, right?"

They all nod at him.

"Okay, let's get back to work. I'm still really slow, and at noon they'll drag me out of here and make me rest some more, but it's a start."

* * *

Three hours later, when Gibbs came in to get him, Tim was amazed at how tired he was. He's giving Abby a run for her money on tired right now. Gibbs smiles at him when he dozes off in the car on the way home.

Getting back in up the ramp is easy. Getting up the stairs to his bed, not so much. Gibbs gets him rolled to the bottom of the stairs. Tim gets out of the chair, and onto the bottom step. Gibbs takes the chair up to the top of the steps.

"This would be so much easier if I could use a crutch," Tim says as he carefully raises himself up one step.

"Orthopedic specialist again on Friday. See what he says."

Tim nods, easing up the next step. "Rest, ice, take it easy, let yourself heal up, keep weight off of it. I know what he's going to say. You sticking around?"

"Little while at least. Play with Kelly some. Take her and Mona out for a run or something. Give Heather a break. Go get some rest. I'll still be here when you wake up."

"Okay. Jethro, thanks. For all of this."

He sitting on the step next to Tim. "No problem. We swimming tomorrow, too?"

"Yeah, if you want."


	114. Normalish

The next morning, Tim wakes up to something other than the fierce ache of time for more pain medication. He wakes to the sound of retching, and Abby saying, "Oh god."

What he wants to do is get up, go to the bathroom, pet her hair, and give her a cup of water to rinse her mouth out with. What he actually manages to do is sit up, scoot into his wheelchair, and then sit there feeling world class stupid because he can't exactly go anywhere.

He very carefully wheels the left wheel a few inches forward, and then the right, and then the left, and in only (what feels like) six weeks, he's managed to get to the door of their bathroom. Where, once again, he can't really do anything. Abby is kneeling next to the toilet, skin ashy, hair sweaty, and looking utterly miserable.

"Are you okay?"

"No," Abby looks like she's about to say something about asking stupid questions, but her body has other ideas, and she's retching again. There's not enough room in their bathroom for him to get in there, in the chair, with her at the toilet, and then get to the sink, get a cup of water, turn around, and give it to her.

There is enough for him to slowly get in, a few inches at a time, and lay his hand on the back of her neck.

When the spasms pass, she looks up at him and says, "I'm going to die," and begins to retch again. He gently rubs her back. In all the time they've known each other, he's never seen her get any sort of tummy bug. Then he realizes this isn't a tummy bug, and smiles, but in a way where there's no shot of her seeing him do it.

She slumps back down to sitting on the floor, done for now.

Tim takes her wrist in his hand. "You didn't have that conversation about no morning sickness with Sean, did you?" he asks as he works one of the anti-nausea points on her wrist.

"Didn't think I needed to." She looks at her tummy. "No making Mom puke, you hear?"

A minute later, when she's throwing up again, it becomes fairly clear that Sean appears to be indifferent to said command.

* * *

Tim's been more than annoyed at his current physical limitations, but right now he wants to scream. Abby's throwing up, Kelly's fussing, and he can't really help either of them.

Abby can take care of herself. Literally, all he can do in there is keep her company.

Kelly can't take care of herself, and she's got no context for why she's alone in her room. So, he's going to her.

Slowly.

And his ribs are screaming at him for twisting enough to roll both wheels.

And he is cursing, intensely (but quietly) at the Doc who let him out of the hospital with a hand-powered chair when he only has one functional hand. No matter what, by the end of the day, he is getting some way to move himself around.

He keeps talking to Kelly as he inches toward her room. It's no more than twenty-five feet from his bathroom to her door, and three minutes into it, he's gotten maybe fifteen feet. He's seen spiders, ants, tiny fucking bugs he doesn't know the name of cover ground faster than he is.

The only reason he hasn't ground his teeth to dust is that he's talking to Kelly, telling her good morning and stuff like that, that he's coming, so she doesn't feel completely abandoned. Finally, he gets in there, but he can't pick her up because the top of the crib is currently eye-level on him.

Okay, there has got to be a way to do this. Kelly's melting down, she's hungry and upset, and him just sitting there, shushing her, petting her is not getting the job done. Kelly is not in any way satisfied by the fact that he's there, since, from everything she can see, he's not _doing_ anything.

Now would be the moment, about fifteen minutes too late, when it occurs to him that his phone is sitting on his bedside table, next to his pain medication, and that, if he had been on top of things, he would have texted Jimmy or Gibbs or Heather and gotten an extra set of hands here, and actually done the only _useful_ thing he currently can do _._

* * *

Abby wobbles in a few minutes later, bottle in hand, looking green. Tim knows that look. That's _I'm being forced to deal with something that is making my stomach heave and the only reason I'm not puking all over the place is because I'm a professional with an iron jaw._

"Hand her over to me, and I'll feed her." Abby does, not saying anything, and as soon as Kelly is in his lap, Abby sprints out of the nursery, and he hears more retching.

Kelly's finally not fussing, she's blissfully slurping away on her bottle.

Tim looks at her and says, "Looks like your formula's not doing anything good for Mama right now."

The very full and aromatic diaper on their daughter might not be improving matters, either. Tim starts inching them toward the changing table. Which is too damn high. He can't change her on it sitting in the chair. Okay, he can get the supplies off of it, and… the rocking chair is, fortunately, directly behind him, so all he has to do is circle so he's pointing toward it.

He puts all of the baby-changing gear on the chair, and as Kelly keeps slurping away, he rolls them to her dresser. Also on the fortunately list, it's July, and hot out, so he only has to get Kelly out of a onesie and then back into one.

"Never a dull moment at the McGee household." Kelly's smiling at him, once her tummy's full, she's her usually sunny self. He gently puts her down and gets her lying on the rocking chair.

"Okay, baby, you've got to work with me on this. You try to go wandering off and this isn't going to happen. So, I need you to just stay put."

None of that means anything to her, but she's very interested in what's about to happen, because this is very much not her normal morning routine.

He starts fighting with the snaps on her onesie. Those little bastards are just not opening. At all. If he had a knife he'd be cutting her out of the damn thing, but he doesn't. The snaps are at the crotch of her onesie, and that's an awfully full diaper, so he's not about to try and use his teeth to get it open.

He's muttering about how there is no possible way he's the only father with one functional hand, and that somehow other parents have to have figured out ways to get fucking snaps open (Kelly's being very good about staying still, just chilling on her back, watching her Dad in amazement.) when he realizes that if he worms two fingers between two snaps and then spreads them apart, they'll pop open.

"Now we're getting somewhere. Up you go." He help's Kelly sit up and pulls the onesie off. Into the laundry hamper it goes. "And back down." Time to diaper wrestle.

On the upside, those little paper Velcro-ish straps are a lot easier to get open one-handed than snaps. On the downside, he's now in charge of cleaning up a mess that would have made him mutter if he'd gone after it with two hands. One hand and he's shaking his head wondering why the hell he didn't just wait for Heather to get here.

But, after only seven minutes, roughly 17,000 diaper wipes, and two false starts on the clean diaper, he does indeed have a cleaned up, dressed, and ready for the day baby sitting in his lap.

Kelly's looking up at him, and he's probably reading his own feelings into her, but he feels like she's proud of him for having taken care of it. He know he's feeling more useful than he has in weeks.

"Now what?"

"Snoopy!"

Tim nods, begins slowly rolling toward his phone, eventually gets there, gets Netflix up, finds the Peanuts section, and puts on Snoopy. They both sit there, watching the show until whatever's going to happen next happens.

* * *

Next is Abby heading in from the bathroom, still looking green, and completely worn out, like she's feeling beyond awful.

Tim thinks for a few seconds. "What happened to my go bag after I got back?"

Abby's laying on the bed looking like she just wants to die. She's not thrilled by his seemingly random question.

"I don't know. Probably tossed it in the foyer closet when we got back. Why?" That 'why' sounds really pissy, and Tim doesn't blame her for that. He's not fun to be around when he's nauseous, either.

"There's a bottle of anti-nausea meds in there, with maybe six pills still in it."

That perks Abby up. She musters some speed and heads down the stairs. He can hear a certain amount of rummaging around followed by a yelp of "Yes!" Another minute later, she's back upstairs, sitting next to them and saying, "Kind of odd flavor."

Tim half shrugs. He's getting fairly used to just having his left arm move when he does that. "What do they taste like to you?"

"Sweet."

"That's how they taste to me. Generic 'fruit' flavor."

"Yeah. How long?"

"Took about ten minutes to fully kick in for me."

Abby nods, weary. "Okay, come on." Kelly's on his lap, and she stands up, behind him, grabs the chair and wheels him into the bathroom. "You want to go in this morning, right?"

Tim nods, reaching for the hot water tap. "Yeah. Brand starts today. Need to show up and say 'Hi.' Get her set." He tests the water with his hand. "Can you pull the shower head down?" Their showerhead is on a hose, which makes the whole getting cleaned up sitting on the floor of the tub thing a lot easier.

"Sure."

She's got it dangling, and shifts the water flow so it's coming out the top when it hits Tim that maybe she should get her shower and he can baby watch.

"You get in; I'll watch Kelly."

Abby kisses him on the forehead and he's got the sense he's not going to love what comes next. "I'll get in when Heather gets here. She's only five minutes off, and it'll take you longer than that to get some pants on so you're decent to greet her."

He glares at that, but she's right, and thus, the long process of getting himself out of the chair and into the bath begins.

* * *

Abby's looking a lot better when she hops into the shower with him.

"I take it they work for you?" Tim asks with a smile, looking up at her.

She smiles back. "Yeah. You almost done?"

"Almost, still have to shave."

Abby kneels down next to him. "Let me. I can see what I'm doing."

"Okay." He sits there quietly while she quickly goes over his face with the razor. Once she's done, he says, "Wish I could have been more help."

"You did what you could with what you had. That's all I've ever wanted from you."

He rolls his eyes at that. "Yeah, but you _needed_ more than me just sitting here."

"We did fine. You got Kelly changed and remembered those pills. We're good."

"I still hate that you're basically on your own as long as I'm in this chair. You didn't sign up to be a single parent."

"And I'm _not_ one, thank you, God!"

Tim rapidly gets the idea that this isn't a subject to go further on, because that was way too close to true for her. "Okay. How many pills do you have?"

"One more."

"One?" He knows Jimmy gave him more than that. Sure he doesn't have a precise count, but…

"Bottle was crushed, only two of the pills were intact."

Tim nods at that, feeling… Hell, he's not sure what that is, too tired for rage, but it's just another layer of shit on top of all the other shit. He pushes that aside. "So, first order of business, script for more pills, get Jethro to pick them up, that way when he comes to take me home, he can drop them off."

"Yeah." Abby's washing herself off, and Tim's starting the slow process of getting out of the tub. Lot easier now that he can put a little weight on that one leg for a few seconds at a time, but not fast. She's rubbing shampoo through her hair when she stops and looks a little startled. "Forgot all about it. I should probably get an appointment with our OB."

"Good point. I'd like to go, so…"

"I know, all of your appointments are in the calendar. I'll find us something."

"Thanks."

* * *

Tim's eyeballing his closet. Second day back, Brand's first day, today is probably not the day to wear pjs to work. (He had a button down on over his least pj-looking pair of jammie pants yesterday. He makes a mental note to invest in some more non-plaid, non-ratty, non-skeleton bedecked pj pants. He's got the sense he'll be wearing them for a while.)

Jeans just aren't happening until he can stand up for more than two seconds at a time.

He's eyeballing dress slacks when the fact that they'll be a wrinkled mess by the time he manages to get them over his hips hits home.

Tim thinks through the mechanics of his kilts and wants to slap himself for not thinking of that sooner. "Black kilt, any button down you like, and my loafers," he says to Abby, who grins at this. She grabs his clothing, and he goes to work on getting into it.

The shirt's not a big deal. Mostly it's just a matter of threading his arm into it, and then buttoning it one-handed. Takes a while, but he can do it. Of course, he's also got _practice_ doing that.

Getting anything onto your bottom-half when your bottom wants to stay firmly planted on whatever it's sitting on is a bigger, and more annoying, deal. But, he can get himself up for a few seconds now, which is long enough to get the kilt in place, and at least he doesn't have to try to get it off if he has to use the restroom.

Technically, his knee bends now. It hasn't really gotten that message, yet. He still can't get his own sock and shoe on. And having to ask Abby to help him is annoying but, well, if someone is going to be putting clothing on him, at least she can be a gorgeous woman who loves him and kisses the top of his big toe very gently before easing the sock on.

He pulls the wheelchair closer to himself, and sets the leg rest slightly lower than is comfortable. His goddamn knee is going to start bending sooner rather than later, and that means stretching everything out. Lots of yoga's taught him that gravity does that better than anything else, so he's going to let it. Every day from now until he's got full range of motion, that thing is going down half an inch.

Next up, into the chair again, wheeled down the hall, out of the chair. Abby takes it down the stairs, and he takes three quarters of forever to slowly lower himself (over and over and over) down each step. Back into the chair, into the kitchen, say hello to Heather, while waiting for breakfast to be brought to him. (He is definitely getting a chair that wheels itself!)

Eventually, breakfast is done, he's in the car, and they're heading back to NCIS for another exciting half-day of not doing much beyond paperwork.

He's awfully depressed by how happy that makes him.

* * *

"You text Jimmy, let him know you need more pills?" Tim asks as they idle at a stop light.

"Forgot all about that."

Tim's eyes narrow slightly as he gets his phone out. He's not sure if Abby would really forget that, or if she's letting him be useful by making sure there's something he can do. Either way, he does it, firing off a text to Jimmy, asking him to call in a scrip for her. When he gets confirmation on that, he asks Gibbs to pick it up for them, and gets confirmation on that, too.

They're a few seconds out of the parking lot when Tim says to Abby. "And by lunch you'll have your very own pile of Zofran."

"Amen! I don't know what's in that stuff, tears of angels and raw gold or something, but it's amazing."

It didn't make Tim feel _that_ much better, and he knows it doesn't do that for Breena, either, but, if it makes Abby feel good, he's happy for it.

"Want me to buy stock in the company, support their efforts?"

"Just about. I felt like I was dying, and then… better. I mean, I don't want to run a marathon or sit down with a big, greasy pizza, but this is so much better than this morning. God, poor Breena. It's hitting me how bad she's got to feel when she's sick. I know how much better I'm feeling, and I know she looks like how I felt before I took the meds when she's on them."

Tim nods along with that.

"Next time she's pregnant, we are doing a better job of taking care of her."

"I'm good with that."

* * *

"McGee." He's sitting at his desk, looking at wheel chair options, when his phone rings and he answers it.

"There's a kid here, says you're expecting her," says the familiar voice of Burt at the front desk.

"Assuming she's Kristin Brand, she's right. Newest Cybercrime hire. Send her down."

"Her ID checks out, but you still need someone to escort her until she's got her badge."

"I'll send someone up for her." Tim puts his phone down, eyes scanning the dungeon. Normally he'd grab Howard for this, but she's not working this shift today.

Manner's at his desk. He did a good job of making sure Cybercrime didn't imploded while he was out. Actually… That's a combo that could work really well. Brand has talent coming out her ears. New ideas, new theories, lots of enthusiasm. Manner has a lot of skill, lots of experience. He knows how and why things work. Assuming they don't end up killing each other, they could learn a lot from each other.

He sends Manner an IM. _"Got a new hire at the front desk. Take a minute and bring her down?"_ The question mark lets him know it's a request and not a command.

_Sure._

* * *

Kristin Brand feels overwhelmed. She's in her most 'adult' outfit, (a very conservative navy blue suit, cream blouse, pearl necklace, hair pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck) trying her best to not look twelve, but everyone else around her is eyeballing her like she's some sort of interloper who accidently got lost from the career day fieldtrip and needs to get back to her class before the bus leaves without her.

Manner heading up, scanning the room, looking over her twice, asking Burt where she was, looking over her again, before finally seeing her and jerking at the surprise of it, is not helping.

The almost silent ride down the elevator makes everything worse.

"Will I be seeing Mr. McGee?" she asks, hoping to break the silence and see a familiar face.

"McGee, sure. You'll see him as soon as you get down. He doesn't like Mr. though. Call him McGee or Boss," Manner's voice is cool as he says that, and Brand can tell he doesn't like something, but she can't tell if that's aimed at Mr… at McGee or her.

As the doors to the elevator are opening, she's kicking herself for doing this. Her friends are still at home, getting ready for college. They're playing or messing around with summer jobs, enjoying the last rush of freedom before school starts for real.

She's alone, in a new city where she knows literally no one, with a driver's license so new that it still smells like hot plastic, a brand new car, and a tiny, furnished apartment her parents had to co-sign for. Everything she owns is in six boxes, four of which are still packed, and right now she's wishing she had stayed home.

Manner points out McGee's office, and heads back to his cubicle.

Brand goes over, watching McGee, he looks like he's working intently on something, staring at the screen like it's got all the answers in the world. As she gets closer, she sees the scar on his eyebrow, and the one on his arm, they're new. She gets a few steps closer, can see around the computer, and notices the arm in a sling.

Tim looks up, sees her, and waves her in. "Sorry about not getting up." He gestures a bit, and she sees he's in a wheelchair, knee braced, leg extended in front of him, his other foot in a cast. For a second, she just sees the injuries, then it hits her that if she can see braces and casts and scars and (Good Lord, tattoo! Big tattoo!) that she can see his legs which means, (Oh, God!) he's wearing a skirt.

Tim pats the chair. "This one's manual, and I am done not being able to move."

Brand stands there, staring, unblinking, wondering what on earth she could have possibly just gotten herself into.

* * *

Tim smiles to himself as he hears the elevator bong. He quickly glances up and can see Manner's annoyed and Brand is shell-shocked. _Gonna be fun._

He's sort of happily anticipating sticking Manner with Brand in a sick sort of way. He's got the sense that this is how Gibbs probably felt about sending him and Tony out together for the first time.

Then his eye hits something perfect.

As soon as he got in, he started looking up wheelchairs that move on their own, because this is just stupid. He's going to be using one for at least three more weeks, probably more as he builds up strength again in his legs, and he needs to be able to move on his own.

The model in front of him isn't an actual chair, it's a converter system. Does exactly what he wants, you move one wheel and the other moves with it. He's happily clicking the order button when he feels Brand staring at him. She's in his office, just looking at him.

"Sorry about not getting up."

She staring at him like he's a train wreck. He can read the _what the hell did I get myself into_ look on her face. So he lets her stare, lets her get her bearings. He tries a gentle explanation for what he was doing, but she's still too shocked to really engage with him.

Finally he says, a little louder than the first two gambits, "Do you want to know what happened?"

She jerks a little at that, his voice having finally gotten through, and blushes, embarrassed at having been caught staring. "Uh, yes, sir."

"McGee or Boss, not sir. I intentionally did not become, sir. Shut the door, sit down, get comfy." He eyes her outfit. "It's in the employee handbook, which you'll eventually have to read and initial, but the dress code down here is casual. If you're dressed like this because it makes you comfortable, that's fine. Be as formal as you like. If this is what your parents picked out thinking it'd make a good impression/make you look like an adult, wear what you like. Down here, you don't have to pretend to be anyone you aren't."

"Uh, yes." She shuts the door, still looking very fish out of water.

"Official story for this," Tim gestures to himself, "is that I went to a conference and got in a car accident on the way home. The official story is bull. The real story is classified. But suffice it to say, there is a reason why you and everyone else on this floor will have and maintain FLETC martial arts and firearms proficiencies."

"This happened to you at work?" Brand looks horrified by that.

Tim's realizing that she probably did not sign up with the idea that people would beat the shit out of her in this job. So he quickly fills in, "Not here. I was a field agent for fourteen years, so I get sent on some interesting jobs. You are not a field agent, nor are most of the people around you. You'll likely never run into a situation where you'll need to do anything more violent than staple paperwork. _But_ if you ever need them, you will have the skills to defend yourself."

"Okay, so…"

"It's in the handbook. We offer classes here. They won't issue you a gun because you're not a field agent, so you'll have to buy your own."

"I don't like guns."

Common enough. "That's fine. You don't have to like them. You still have to be able to use one, and that'll be a lot easier if you own one to practice with. I try to get everyone to the range at least once a month, you can come with us or not as you see fit, but you do have to learn how to use a gun."

"How long do I have to learn this?"

"By the end of your probie year, you've got to have your certifications, and re-cert every year after. Trust me, you'll get it. And it's a really good way to blow off steam and clear your head after too many hours online."

That gets a tiny smile as Brand seems to remember that Tim actually does know his way around a computer.

"If you feel like giving me a push, I can show you around."

It's a pretty quick tour, partially because she's seen all of Cybercrime before, partially because Tim's not taking her anywhere out of the way. He directs them to her desk. "This is yours. Set it up however you like. If you want or need something you don't have, shoot me an email and I'll see if we can get it for your or figure out how to jigger something up to make do with. That pile of paperwork," he points to the three inches of forms next to her computer, "all need to be filled out, in black or blue ink, perfectly, or else Delores the HR Troll comes up and yells at us. I'll probably be gone before you get that done. I'm only allowed in a few hours a day right now. But, get that done and have Manner show you the system. He can run you through how we work cases. That'll probably be all of today for you.

"Hours are flexible. You need to be logged in and working forty a week. Since we work world-wide now, it doesn't matter which forty you're here. You need to have at least ten off for every sixteen on, though. And if we end up with shifts that need more coverage, I ask the computer to start picking ID numbers at random until we've got those hours covered." It hits Tim that last month this girl was a Senior in high school and someone else set her whole schedule. So he makes how it works in the Dungeon even more plain. "You come in when you like, you leave when you like. You get lunch when you're hungry. You work the jobs as they come in, and you work until you hit a stopping point. If you've got a week where you do sixteen hours the first day, crash ten on the sofa, sixteen up again, crash again, and then do sixteen again until you are done with the case, that's fine. Overtime is in the handbook. If we've got a light week and you decide you want to do five hours a day each day, that's fine. You want to do four ten hour shifts, that's also fine. Be here when you need to be here, do the jobs that need to be done, and beyond that, you set your schedule however works best for you."

Tim can see a gleam in her eyes at that. Brand nods, looking at her desk. Right now there's a monitor, a keyboard, a stack of paperwork, and four black pens. The rest of it is up to her.

"The girls I was talking to last time?"

"Ngyn and Howard."

"Yeah. When are they usually here?"

"Howard's usually in around two in the afternoon. Ngyn usually gets in after midnight. For the next month, you'll be mostly shadowing people, so if you want to shadow them, that's fine." And for the next month, until she's on her feet, that is fine. But he's going to be getting her working with Manner more. He's sure her style needs some discipline, and he knows Manner's needs some fresh air. "Both of them will be happy to help with whatever you may need. So am I." Tim flips open the handbook, and since he's taken over, page one is McGee's rules. "Never be unavailable. You need something, call or text. Someone on the team will always respond. If you feel like wheeling me back to my office, I'll get out of your hair and let you fill out forms."

She smiles and gets to pushing.

* * *

Manner heads into his office about twenty minutes after Brand's headed out. He shuts the door, pulls up a chair, and sits down across from Tim.

"You hired a nine-year-old."

Tim flashes his amused look at Manner. It's not that there's been a radical change in their relationship. Mostly Manner's been doing his job, keeping his head down, and doing his best not to have to interact directly with Tim. He might like the challenge of actually being a real law enforcement officer, but he's also still wary of Tim's fast and loose with the rules style. But, especially after having more or less run the place while Tim was out, he's feeling like he's earned the right to speak his mind freely.

Which Tim doesn't mind. He may not like what Manner has to say, but he'd rather Manner just outright says it rather than hiding and being a pain in Tim's ass about it.

So, it's with a somewhat relaxed and sassy attitude that Tim says, "You were young once, too."

Manner's not annoyed, yet, but Tim can tell annoyed in on the horizon. "The difference is, when I was young, I wasn't pretending to be a Federal Agent."

"She's not pretending. Her ID, once they print it up, will be just as real as yours."

"That's worse."

Tim doesn't like the edge in Manner's voice as he says that. "You going to give her crap on it?"

Manner rolls his eyes. "What crap could I give her? I figured you'd know this by now, what with all the pictures of Kelly you've got up. The thing about babies _they_ give _you_ crap. Not the other way around. We're going to be cleaning up her messes day in and day out."

Tim shrugs. "Maybe. But that's a possibility when any new hire."

"No, it's not. Any other new hire would have at least proven they could get through _college._ You don't know if she can hack nine to five well enough to graduate from… Where'd she get in?"

"MIT."

Manner's not impressed by MIT. "Let alone actually do this job without cracking."

"Let her do her job. Treat her like any other Probie, like Howard."

"Howard belongs here. She proved she's up for it."

"Brand's proven she belongs here. These days the ticket to Cybercrime is skill. She's got it. We'll work on the rest of it as we go along."

Manner is very determinedly not rolling his eyes.

"Remember, we're not bookkeepers anymore. We go out and take down bad-guys. She took out Anonymous. That's more bad-guy-taking-down than you've done in the last five years, and it's more than I've done with a computer, ever. And part of why she could do that is she, unlike you, unlike me, doesn't code like a middle-aged white guy who's been doing this for decades. The bad guys know our style, so we're getting people with new styles so we can take them down."

"Took 'em down. Yeah, she took down Anonymous. No convictions. Nothing she's got can stick because what she did was illegal, in that she's not a cop and just want traipsing all over the place. All she did was scatter them to the winds. That's where you want us going?"

Tim thinks about that for a second. "Sometimes. We'll get convictions as much and often as we can, but I'm sure there'll be times where fast and done will matter more than by the books. When that has to happen, that's what's going to happen."

Manner's giving him that _I hate dealing with unruly cowboys_ look.

"Yeah, I know. You're happier by the book. I'll keep that in mind the next time we've got a few hours until an ISIS cell goes hot and kills thousands of people."

That gets another quiet glare.

Tim shifts topic. "You did a good job keeping on top of everything when I was out. Thank you."

Manner inclines his head. "Yeah, well, that's why it's a good idea to put administrators in charge of departments instead of Agents. I know what you did. It was important. Navy's happy. But you weren't running the ship while you were doing that. Vance doesn't investigate crimes anymore for a reason, you know?"

Tim sighs, and nods. Yeah, there is something to that. "Anyway, thanks."

"You're welcome." Manner stares at Tim for a second and then his eyes go wide and his shoulders slump. "Oh, God, you're going to make me babysit her."

Tim smirks. "Not anytime soon. I want her settled in and feeling a bit more confident before that happens, but yeah. She'll need more discipline, and you haven't learned a new trick since Hannibal was eyeing Carthage."

"Hannibal was from Carthage," Manner doesn't say 'you twit' out loud, but Tim knows it's there. "He didn't sack it."

"That just means it was even longer ago than I was thinking. It'll be good for both of you."

That time Manner does roll his eyes, and he heads out.

Tim smiles as he does, finding that whole experience perversely satisfying.

Dealing with Manner gets Tim thinking. While he was out, Manner took over the administrative stuff. Is got dotted, ts got crossed, and while he does have a huge stack of papers to be signed, emails to go through, and stuff to do, his department did not stop doing its job.

But Cybercrime doing its job isn't just about getting all the forms filled out. (And yes, there are still forms. Just because he got the casework tamed doesn't mean there isn't other paperwork to do.) They still had cases to work, two big ones in fact, and Howard stepped up and took over coordinating the efforts for that, making sure that the right people did the right things at the right time all over the world.

She won't be in today until after he goes home, but he does think it's important that, like Manner, she gets some petting for doing a good job while he was away. He writes up an email thanking her for stepping up and doing the job well.

That done, he gets onto that stack of paperwork. After all, someone has to sign the requisitions for staples.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got a comment asking if I was abandoning Shards (because of the long pause). No, I'm not. But there are going to be longer pauses between updates because this is a pretty quiet summer in the Shardsverse, and a very active one in the STAWverse. 
> 
> However, we will get to the end on both of these. Just might take a while. :)


	115. Must Be Friday

More doctors' appointments, must be Friday.

First check up with the pulmonologist. That was… cold (Literally, the AC was blasting and between that, no shirt, and a kilt, Tim was on the verge of shivering the whole time.) and annoying. On the upside, everything is (according to the x-rays and ultrasound) healing. Downside, best they can tell (after all, not like he's got a baseline for comparison, at least, not anything like a recent one) having two ribs punch through his lung, getting them fished back out again, and everything sewed back up has left scar tissue, and he's at, maybe, assuming he had average lung capacity for a guy his size in pretty good shape, seventy percent of what he was.

Taking a deep breath still sends knives through his chest, and that's not going to be changing anytime soon.

So, like with the rest of him, he's looking at a long, slow, and painful period of exercising and rehabbing. But, and doctors keep smiling when they say this to him, and he wishes they'd stop, 'If you really work at it, in six months or a year, you'll be good as new!'

On the way out, once he's in the sun and sucking up the July heat, Tim says to Gibbs, "I know this guy sees people who are dying, and have lungs falling apart, lungs that will never heal, and I get, for him, the fact that this will get better is cool, but… I swear, I'm going to hit the next person who tells me my life will be on hold for a year like it's a good thing!"

Gibbs squeezes his good shoulder, pushing him toward the truck. "You'll get it back faster."

Tim rolls his eyes. Yesterday isn't fast enough, and yesterday didn't involve any sort of miraculous cure. "Orthopedist next?"

Gibbs nods, checking his watch. "Make good time on the way out of here, we can grab some coffee before the next one."

Tim nods back at him. Coffee sounds fine.

* * *

"It's looking good, Tim. Your tarsals are coming along nicely. The vibrational heads have gotten them healed up a lot faster than expected. You're going home cast-free on your foot, which means you can start, gingerly, putting some weight on that foot."

"I can move onto a crutch?" Tim asks.

Dr. Kent, the Ortho, nods, but not enthusiastically. "For about two steps at a time. You're going to be in the chair for a while, but you can start working on putting some weight on your foot. Same with your other leg. The cracks in your tibia and patella are healed up. We're going to stay with the braces for now, bones heal a lot faster than the ligaments and tendons that ripped when your knee and ankle dislocated, but no more casts. Time to work on just getting everything moving again."

Tim exhales, happy to hear it. "How about?" He touches his right arm.

Kent shakes his head. "Nothing new for that today. Next Friday we'll move you down to a cast for your humerus and another one for your wrist and hand. So, another week and you get to start working on shoulder and elbow range of motion again." Kent checks his notes. "Actually, from the looks of things, the one we're going to make for your hand won't cover your pinky and ring finger."

Tim supposes that's good news, but it's not like he can type with seven fingers, not when the three missing ones are the ones he does the most with. But still, that's a little bit more of himself he's getting back. Another inch closer to getting his body back.

He'd be happier about that inch if the finish line wasn't ten miles off.

* * *

Friday also meant, after the doctors appointments and a nap, settling in with Gibbs in his office, engaging in some work.

Tim figures that between the two of them it shouldn't be too difficult to get his wheelchair adjusted so that the device he ordered can make it into a… semi-manual for lack of a better word.

The downside is, he's the wiring guy. Gibbs is a wood guy. Tim can supervise, but he can't actually do the wiring. He can't solder one-handed. And, as he's sitting next to Gibbs, in his office, near his workbench, he's trying not to wince too visibly as Gibbs is mucking about with his tools.

"So, how's it work?" Gibbs asks as he gets the first bit, which is fairly easy, taken care of. (Clipping the first half of the device to the spokes of the left wheel.)

"You really want to know?"

Gibbs shrugs.

Tim touches the device Gibbs just clipped onto the wheel. "Okay, this thing here has a little sensor that knows when, how much, and how fast it moves. Then there's a little radio transmitter that sends a signal to the next bit." Tim touches the motor that'll go under the chair. "That signal tells the motor to move. It hooks into the other wheel, and if this all works properly, I move the left wheel and the right moves at the same speed and distance."

Gibbs nods, picking up the drill that he'll use to make some holes in the skeleton of the chair so he can get the motor in rigidly. Downside of this modification, after he's done, this chair won't fold up for easy storage anymore. "So, you actually can explain things in English on the first try when you want to?"

Tim smiles dryly. "Apparently. That whole best selling author thing might be a tip off to that. Of course, this also exists in the real world and does something tangible. Makes explaining it easier."

Gibbs nods, fitting a bit into the drill. Then he stops, looking at it. "This was Jack's."

"Yeah. So are the socket wrenches, the calipers, and one voltage meter."

Gibbs smiles at that.

* * *

Two hours, some cursing, a few minor solder burns, (For all the delicacy that Gibbs can muster when wielding a chisel and carving knives, a soldering iron is a very different story. Abby would say that the reason why he was having such a hard time with soldering iron is because he's a wood guy and metal just isn't his element. Tim would say it's because he doesn't have years of practice. Either way, after a few huge globs of solder in the wrong place, like, for example, Gibbs' thumb, and Tim took over, using Gibbs like a surgical nurse, having him hold the solder, and handling the iron himself.) and one run to Target for batteries, and it's testing time. Tim's in the chair, and tentatively gives the left wheel a roll, and with a very slight lag and a quiet buzz, the right kicks into gear and he's moving forward!

"Yes!" He slaps the armrest in celebration.

"Feel good?" Gibbs asks.

Tim gives it a real push, forward, back, and it does exactly what it's supposed to do. He uses the little clicker that's attached to the armrest now, turning the transmitter off, so he can turn just the left wheel, and it does perfectly. He clicks it back on, and both wheels turn.

"I can MOVE!" He's so happy his eyes are blazing with it. "Sure, I can't do a right turn, but go far enough left and you'll get there sooner or later! This feels amazing!"

Gibbs is smiling. "Good. Go get us some beer."

"With pleasure!"

* * *

It's not that Tim hates chores or anything, and especially when he's got people he enjoys around to help do them, they can verge on pleasant, but it'd be a stretch to say that Tim has ever been enthusiastic about clearing off the table post-Shabbos.

Tonight, though.

Tonight he's whizzing around between the kitchen and the dining room, zipping about, taking forks and knives and plates between the two rooms. As he's moving through the kitchen, he's looking forward to being able to do dishes, because if he's doing dishes, that means he's STANDING UP, on his own two feet.

And right now, he will happily spend hours washing dishes if it means he's standing up, on his own.

* * *

Gibbs is heading to his truck post-dinner when Penny falls into step beside him.

She's still being very quiet these days, which he supposes is a good way to cope. Compared to how he handled the death of his daughter, she's earning gold medals for coping.

But they haven't heard her laugh in weeks.

He's not sure if she just wants some quiet time with someone who's been there. If she's having a bad night and needs the presence of another wounded soul, he's available. Abbi's working tonight. So he's got all the time in the world. For that matter, even if Abbi wasn't working, he'd still have time for Penny, and Abbi wouldn't begrudge either of them that time. That makes Gibbs smile (on the inside).

But that's not why Penny's standing next to him, leaning against his truck, waiting for Ziva and Tony to pull out of the driveway while Ducky ambles to the Morgan to get it purring and in gear.

"On Friday, I've been invited to join a meeting of people who feel that current immigration laws are problematic."

Gibbs nods. He'd almost forgotten that was in the works.

"Specifically, they want to talk about people in need of asylum and how to get it for them."

"Interesting?" Gibbs isn't sure if she's being vague to be vague, or if that's all she's got on this.

Penny inclines her head a bit, indicating that she also doesn't know if they're going to be talking about a specific person in need of help, or if this is a political meeting about lobbying for change on the rules for asylum seekers. "No promises or anything, but… Maybe it's time to get that boat ready to hit the water."

"Just got to stick a name on her, and she's ready to go."

"Then pick a name, Jethro. If there's something for us to do, I want us to be ready."

He smiles at her, but she doesn't smile back. "Whenever you need to go, I'll be ready."

* * *

Jimmy and Breena and the girls stay late after dinner.

"Well…" Jimmy says, staring at Tim. They're downstairs right now, while Abby and Breena handle tubby time.

"Uh, yeah?" Tim says back.

"According to Jethro, you can start trying to put some weight on your legs. Let's have at it."

"For like two seconds at a time, and I've already done it."

Jimmy wiggles his finger, a gesture that means _up._ "Get your ass up. You decided you wanted me as a physical therapist, well, guess what? PT time!"

Tim sighs. "Great. Be prepared to be completely underwhelmed by how remarkably un-amazing this is."

"Quit yapping and get to it."

Tim scoots himself over to the sofa, and then shifts on to it. Jimmy's watching him with one eyebrow high. "I can get up easier like this. Don't have to worry about the thing I'm balancing against sliding away from me." Even with the wheels locked and the new motor and gears on it, the chair only weighs thirty-ish pounds. Tim's 170-ish. If he leans against it, the chair is going to slide.

Jimmy nods. "You think I'm getting you up and won't be ready to catch you if you fall?"

Tim smiles, shifts around a little more, looks at Jimmy, and says, "Works better if you're already up. Unless you're planning on fetching my crutch." And he is, as of today, the owner of a shiny new crutch. He supposes that's good, but right now he can't really go anywhere with it, so it's a somewhat moot point.

"I got ya."

"Good. Can't put my full weight on either leg, yet."

Jimmy stands in front of him and holds out his arms. Tim grabs his forearms and slowly rises. It's hard and it really fucking hurts. He's biting his lip and has his eyes closed. He can feel each break in his foot, the cracks in his tibia and patella, and there is way more play than he likes in his knee and ankle, but he is standing on his own feet.

And then Jimmy shifts a bit, gets a hand behind him, and he's on the sofa again, cursing with relief.

"Okay, that's good. How bad does it hurt?"

"Bad enough I'm considering the exercises you're making me do for my ankle and knee mild discomfort."

Jimmy smirks at that. "I'll call that a five on the one to ten scale."

Tim nods a bit. "Only because it's fast. I can feel everything when I do that. Breaks, dislocations, even the skin around the scar is pulling."

Jimmy nods, sitting in front of Tim, carefully palpating his foot.

Tim jerks his foot away. "That hurts!"

"Yeah, I know. Trying to see how messed up the soft tissue is. Thing about broken bones is they're not broken or healing in a vacuum. There's all these muscles and tendons and ligaments and nerves and blood vessels around them, and if you're going to have functional limbs you need to make sure they haven't just turned into one big knot of scar tissue."

"Great. How's it feel?"

"Like a foot."

Tim flashes him a _quit dicking with me_ look. "Like a foot's supposed to feel?"

"Yeah, more or less. Everything is going to hurt for a while because you haven't been moving it much, but the more you do, the better it'll get." Jimmy moves his hands up to the bite mark on Tim's calf. "Don't like this much." He takes a small pinch of Tim's calf and rolls the skin up his leg to almost the scar, and then has to stop, and not just because Tim's gone white and is cursing at him.

"God damn Jimmy, what the fuck!" Tim had thought he was familiar with every flavor of pain his body could experience. He was wrong about that. This is… shit… it's like his skin is on fire from the inside and if Jimmy doesn't stop whatever the fuck it is he's doing soon, Tim's going to hit him.

"Dr. Asshole didn't take care of this right in the first place and it's a mess." Jimmy starts again, about a quarter inch to the left, and heads up Tim's leg again.

"Nrghm!" Tim whimpers.

Jimmy looks up at that sound and pulls his hands away. "All the layers of skin, the fat, the connective tissue, fascia, and the chunk of muscle he bit out of you are all sort of mashed together in this nasty mess of scars. They should all be nice, smooth layers that sort of glide over each other." Jimmy touches the scar, which in and of itself doesn't feel anything. "This is like a massive traffic jam that stops everything from moving and snarls up everything around it."

"And ripping the skin off my leg is how you get things moving again?"

"If you want to walk without pain, yeah. Gotta unstick all those layers, or every time you step, flex, or stretch, you'll feel that pull."

"The pulling isn't that bad!"

"Now. On pain meds. When you're sitting or lying down 99 percent of the time. It's going to pull everything else out of place, eventually. Long term, it'll mess with your knee and ankle. We're going to have to do this for the one on your arm, too."

Tim's got that punched in the gut look. He does feel the scars on his left arm whenever he moves his hand too far or rotates his wrist, but the idea of having anyone do what Jimmy just did to his leg to his arm as well makes him want to blanche.

Jimmy can see this is too much in one go, so he shifts focus. "Let me check the rest of you." Nothing hurts as badly as what he was doing before, but Tim also only has a few other cracked bones and a dislocated knee that doesn't complain too much if he keeps his weight off of it and doesn't try to bend it too far.

"Doc said something about skin grafts for the bites," Tim says when Jimmy wraps up checking him over.

Jimmy nods. "Pain now, pain later, take your pick. The scars aren't going away. If someone who really knows what he's doing gets a hold of your skin it'll look better, but you'll still have these square patches of skin that doesn't quite match, with nice, thin lines of scars around them. And you'll have scars on your back or butt or thighs from where they took the skin. They can cut you up, and put you back together, and assuming they're even marginally competent they'll do a better job than The Asshole did. But one way or another you're going to end up with patches of scar tissue mucking things up." Jimmy realizes that sounds awfully grim. "Okay, realistically, you get the skin grafts and the scars will be better, straight lines, done carefully. They'll take a lot less rehab to get really functional. But…" Jimmy eyes the scars on Tim's arm and leg. "You're probably talking about saying goodbye to six or seven square inches of your thigh or butt. More surgery. You want to do that so you can skip fascia release?"

Tim closes his eyes. He doesn't want to spend another minute in a hospital, and he's rather attached to his butt and thighs. He doesn't want… "Fascia release?" he realized he didn't know what that means.

"You know that thin, shiny, silvery stuff on a chicken breast, keeps the skin attached to the meat?"

Tim nods.

"That's fascia. Goes all through your body, keeps all your stuff together, keeps it in place, but lets it move the way it needs to move, too. Sort of like how you can wiggle the skin over the chicken breast." Jimmy gently shifts the skin on Tim's hand. It slips around easily. "How you can wiggle your skin over the muscle under."

"Okay."

"A scar is like having a toothpick to hold the skin in place. It does the job, but it's not flexible and it doesn't move well." Jimmy moves from Tim's hand, where the skin does slide around, to the scar on his arm, and gently pushes the skin, at the scar everything stops. No more wiggling.

"I'm following you."

"So, you get cut up, broken, hurt, and the fascia does everything it can to keep you stable. Your body likes to be nice and still for healing up. But, eventually you want to move again, but by then it's all dried out and stuck together, with these toothpicks through it making it even harder to get everything moving again properly. That's why your OB wanted Abby up and moving around as soon as she could after the C-section. The best way to get functional scars is to keep moving. Broken bones though… Means no moving. Everything gets hard and solid and stuck."

"All right, and…"

"And when I do things like roll the skin on your leg, or move those bones around, I'm loosening up the fascia, getting it back to what it's supposed to be. I'm working on your scar tissue. Scars can get stronger, more flexible, but they're still scars, only so much you can do with them. Fascia, if we get that back the way it's supposed to be, your long-term pain prospects and mobility are going to be a whole lot better." Jimmy gently touches the scars on Tim's arm. "Unlike the one on your leg, the doctors noticed this one. They cleaned it up and dressed it properly fairly quickly. Whoever bit you went full through the skin, but didn't get the muscle. Once we get this one right, it'll slide over the layer of muscle under it, not be stuck to it. And you'll have full use of your left hand without any tugging or pain. The one on your leg they didn't notice right away, didn't take care of properly, and you lucked out because the boatload of antibiotics they had you on to prevent infection in your lungs also meant your leg didn't go putrid. By the time I got there and reamed out Dr. Asshole, it'd been more than twelve hours, and by that point you don't reopen wounds if you don't have to, because the risk of infection shoots through the roof. So, now they can cut it out and start over with a skin graft, or you can rehab it."

Tim nods. Then he thinks. "Don't suppose you could shoot me up with Novocain or something like that before working on it?"

That makes Jimmy pause. He's never heard of anyone doing that, but, off the top of his head, he can't see why you couldn't. Sure there's the obvious reason of you need feedback to make sure you're not doing it too hard, (after all, you aren't trying to literally rip the skin off) but it's not like he's doing this for just anyone. He knows Tim pretty well, and he's really paying attention to what he's doing. "Let me research. So, let's see your range of motion on your ankle and knee."

"Yippiee," Tim deadpans, but gets to it.

* * *

By Sunday, Abby's got a new morning routine. Wake up, feel like crap, grab Zofran, take Zofran, stay very, very, VERY still for about ten minutes, tentatively sit up, nibble a few saltines, sip some lukewarm ginger ale, and, by then, she's not exactly feeling spiffy, but she's good enough to face the day.

Usually, by noon, her hormones figure out what they're doing and she's feeling better.

Thus, she is, according to a not very scientific survey of Breena and Penny, the only woman in existence to ever have morning sickness only in the morning.

By Sunday, Tim also has a new morning routine. He wakes up, grumbles a bit, grabs his pain medication, dry swallows it, sits himself up and starts on his range of motion exercises. He pretty much has to start with them, because apparently his body is under the impression that all of his injured areas should fuse tight while he sleeps, and if he doesn't start out stretching, he's pretty much not going to be moving anytime soon.

Abby's still mid-stay very still when he says, "Remember how we used to wake up? All snuggled together, maybe a little sex, warm and comfy?"

"Yeah."

"Then we did some yoga, grabbed Kelly, and got on with the morning." Yoga in the sense of quiet, meditative time together more or less died when Kelly was born. However, they did usually manage to get ten or so minutes of stretching out, and then one of them would grab her and take care of her morning routine and breakfast for them while the other one finished working out and got a shower. Next day, they'd swap. Little hectic and crowded, but it was getting the job done.

And now it's not. Abby's sleeping every second she can, and Tim's just getting to the point where he can do the breathing part of yoga again.

"Yep." Abby reaches for a saltine, and sits up.

"That's my anniversary goal. October 23, 2016, four years after our second first date, we're starting the day wrapped in each other, feeling good, making love."

Abby smiles at that. "End the day that way, too."

"I really hope so!"

* * *

"Oh, good Lord, look at you. Let's get you settled first, then hugs!" Elaine says as they slowly make their way into the diner.

It's their first week back. Elaine, like everyone else who doesn't need to know, has the official story: that Tim was in a car accident after a conference. And, also like everyone else who is not part of the immediate family/Leon, she doesn't know that Abby's pregnant, yet.

They do get seated. Sort of, rather than try to scoot out of the chair that no longer folds up, Tim's at the end of the table, in what is usually Kelly's high chair spot. Elaine does provide hugs, and as she pulls back from Abby, she looks her up and down carefully and snatches the cup of coffee Tim's about to take a sip of, saying, "You'll be wanting decaf, right?"

He nods at that, and she's back a few seconds later with a cup of decaf coffee for him and a tall glass of cool (not cold, there's no ice in it), flat ginger ale.

"When are you due?" she asks Abby.

Abby smiles. "Beginning of February." She sips the ginger ale. "Thanks. This helps." Then she looks at Jimmy and Breena. "And those pills _really_ help. And Breena, next time you get pregnant, I'm filling your freezer with food Jimmy's just got to heat up. I didn't get how bad you're hurting when you're sick. I've got a hint now, and we're doing what we can to keep you out of the kitchen next time."

Breena smiles at that, kissing Abby's cheek. She and Abby and Elaine talk about the joys of morning sickness for a few minutes, then Elaine's son shows up with two more plates, very lightly buttered rye toast for Abby which she looks at curiously, but takes a nibble of and it seems to do the trick, and an omelet and turkey sausage for Tim.

Once the food's down, Elaine looks them both over and says, "Gotta build you two back up if you're going to be ready to get chasing this little girl of yours around. She's gonna be walking any day now."

Abby nods at that, and Tim smiles, then goes back to his omelette, listening to the story Tony and Ziva are in the middle of, about a mystery man at Ducky and Penny's door. A few seconds later, Tim sees Penny, Ducky and… "Uncle Mike?" apparently he knows the 'Mystery Man.' Not well, but they've certainly met.

He gets a hello hug from Penny, and a handshake from his uncle. "Was on the East Coast, thought I'd drop by, see Mom, meet my step-father and the rest of his crew." In a somewhat perverse sort of way, Tim actually prefers being part of Ducky's 'crew' than, say Mike's nephew.

He's trying to remember the last time they saw each other. "God… How long…"

Mike smiles. "Long time. You weren't shaving yet the last time we saw each other."

"Wow. Okay. Hi." There's a huge elephant in the room, because Tim has no idea if Mike knows why he's in a wheelchair, but… okay, no way Penny just let that slide. He's got to know and… in proper McGee fashion, is likely glossing over it so they don't have to deal with it.

Tim's appreciating that while Penny introduces everyone at the table to her third son.

Tim thinks back, trying to remember everything he could about his Uncle Mike. "You're stationed out of Australia, right?"

Mike nods. "Security for the Canberra consulate. And… you're not a cop. They are." He nods to Tony and Ziva, who hadn't yet gotten to the part of the story where they reveal of who was waiting at Ducky and Penny's door. "And you were, but aren't anymore, and Ducky told me about the rest of you, and I know, sort of what you all do, but I'm fuzzy on the details."

Which is a good invitation to go over who's who, and how this family of theirs works together.

As that wraps up, Breena's cutting up bites of waffle for Molly and says, "Got an email from Amy, my sister," she fills Mike in, "last night. She and Dad and Collin have…" She looks for a term for it.

"Hit detente?" Ducky offers.

She nods in agreement. "Bit of drama with my family recently that's hopefully coming to an end. Dad's unhappy about the lack of engagement ring, but he's stewing quietly about it, now. However, the reason for bringing it up is, everyone's going to church today and supper after, you're all invited, as well."

Jimmy nods at that, and looks out the window at the rain that's sluicing down. "Bootcamp this afternoon? Have a feeling Collin's going to be looking to blow off some steam by the end of the first course."

"Bootcamp?" Mike asks.

"Semi-weekly training session." Tony says. "You're welcome to come if you're free this afternoon. These days we work on the house sunny weekends and train the rainy ones."

Gibbs nods. They're obviously not working on the house today.

"So, church?" Breena asks.

Gibbs nods again. He's hit the point where he likes the rhythm of their Sunday routine. He likes being part of a larger family that's getting along. And he likes Collin and Amy, so putting on a show of support for them is fine with him, but he hasn't seen Jeannie in a while and would like to. So, yeah, he's in for this.

Abby's looking at Tim who's looking at her. They both shrug. "See how we're doing closer to time." Abby says.

Ducky and Penny decline. "Lecture at American," Penny replies.

"Are you attending or lecturing?" Abby asks.

"This time, attending."

"A few hours on the history of American ballet." Ducky supplies them with the topic.

Tim smiles at that. "It's hitting me, that you could have said anything: Norwegian fly fishing knots, effects of volcanic eruptions on climate change, nanotechnology on virology, and I would have just nodded along, completely unsurprised that you're interested."

"The joy of being a polymath," Ducky says, sipping his tea. "Michael? You're welcome with any of us, or heading home and catching a nap. I know you're internal time sense is off."

Michael nods. "Off's a good way of putting it. I think I'll get the nap. Bootcamp sounds interesting, though." Michael's looking at Gibbs, and Tim has the sense he's the one Mike wants to get to know better.

"If you need a ride, we'll pick you up." Ziva says.

"Thanks."

* * *

"Church?" Abby asks as she, Tim, and Kelly head home after breakfast. They've put off deciding about as long as they can.

"If you want to, sure. I'm good with skipping it though."

Abby thinks about that. She is good with going. She's been doing a lot of praying lately, and the idea of spending some time in a church feels good to her. "I'd like to go."

"Then we'll go. Probably not going to want to do Slater-family supper after."

Abby nods, she can easily see that being a bridge too far.

* * *

He's staring at his closet as Abby meanders around the bedroom, getting dressed and made up, and Kelly plays on the floor.

He's staring at his suit, and thinking about how getting his legs into it will go. It's not like the legs are that tightly tailored, and it's not like he can't flex his foot into the right position to get the damn thing on, and he can, at this point, bend his knee enough that he can probably get his other leg into a pair of trousers, mostly it's just that he doesn't want to.

He rolls forward, grabs his plaid kilt and tosses it onto their bed, along with a white button down, the green tie, and the black vest. For a second, he eyeballs his black suit jacket, and yes, right now he prefers button downs, only has to drag his arm through one sleeve that way, but threading his arm through a jacket in addition to the shirt… No.

It's very much not what he wears to church normally, but it's dressier than usual, and it's July outside. It's hot, and an excuse to not wear a full suit strikes him as a good plan.

After all, what's the worst thing Ed's going to do, stare and make a snide remark about the dragon tattoo and the skirt? Fuck that, Tim's done with it.

* * *

The correct answer is Ed will do precisely nothing beyond shrug slightly at his brothers while Jeannie fusses over him. Which is when Tim remembers that Ed's seen him in this before and that it's not new and shocking on any level, for him.

Said brothers will give him the big hairy eyeball, looking over the tattoo and kilt, but when you're 'walking (rolling) wounded' from an unnamed, top secret 'war gaming activity' the hairy eyeballs tend to skitter off to the side pretty quickly. Especially since the Slater family is a crew of people who have never served but are very pro-military. So, 'classified mission aboard the _USS Stennis_ ' (with Breena adding, 'That's a nuclear aircraft carrier.') were the magic words that ended any uncomfortable scrutiny of his wardrobe choices.

And there was something deliciously satisfying about having the Pastor's husband come over to greet him as they were leaving, mention how they've all been praying for his quickly returned health, and then ask about the kilt, if it was comfortable, and suggest that it seemed like a very reasonable way to deal with the summertime heat.

All in all, he was ready for a nap by the end of church, but it had been a very successful outing.


	116. Uncle Mike

They're driving home from Shabbos when Ducky sees… whoever it is. Someone. Big someone. Standing on their front step. It's full dark, and their porch light is above and behind the man, so all he can see is the shadow of someone tall, leaning against their front door.

But, whoever it is, sends all of Ducky's red alert sensors into overdrive. "You know, my dear, I was just thinking that we could use a treat."

Penny's not really paying attention to that. She's looking at her phone, sending a text to the people they're meeting with on Friday. She says something like, "Mmmm…" while Ducky whips them through their parking lot, looking for a car that's out of place, but not seeing one.

There's a small café a few blocks from their home, which is where they usually go if they're hunting for a "treat." They make excellent coffee, wonderful pastries, and an absolutely to die for chai latte. They probably have a late night snack there at least twice a week.

Which is why he's driving right past it, into the parking lot of the "garish" and "vulgar" TGIMcFunsters two streets over, where they have not only never eaten, but Ducky wouldn't ever voluntarily enter unless it was to pick up a body.

Penny notices that they are in the wrong place when they've stopped, and Ducky is dialing, very quickly, on his cell phone.

She's looking at him with a lot of curiosity in her eyes.

"I saw a man standing on our front step who I didn't recognize. I've had too many ghosts pop up to just walk into a situation like that."

Penny nods at that. "Why didn't you say anything?"

The real reason was that Ducky didn't want any shot of Penny deciding she needed to charge on in and take care of matters herself. The answer he comes up with is, "If they had a directional microphone on our car, I didn't want there to be any chance of them deciding to follow us, or to have whoever it is run away."

She doesn't look like she completely believes that, but it's not completely implausible, so she doesn't argue.

"Anthony!" Ducky's eyes light up as Tony picks up the phone. "We have something of a situation at our home…" Ducky rapidly fills Tony in on what's going on.

* * *

"We've got it Ducky," Tony says, rapidly swinging their car through a fast u-turn as soon as he can. Ziva's giving him the _what's going on_ look. "Big guy loitering on Ducky and Penny's doorstep."

"Does he know who it is?"

"No. Didn't see an unknown car, either. They're heading towards Gibbs' place, now."

"And we are stopping by to see who is waiting?" Ziva says with a smile, unlocking the glove compartment and grabbing her knife and gun.

"Precisely."

"So, how do you want to do this?" Tony asks. They're less than a mile from Penny and Ducky's place. Their home is a condo, in a block of condos. Ten total, in a rectangle five long, two wide. Parking lots on the east and west sides, roads to more parking and other blocks north and south. Their home is in the middle of their block. Ducky would have preferred a corner lot, but none of them were open, and he did like the amenities and neighborhood, so he was willing to accept neighbors on three sides. After all, it wasn't (when he bought) like he was home much.

"I am thinking that you'll stop at the corner, and I'll take a stroll, see if I can ID the man, get a better sense of what we're up against. You'll drive around back, meet me at the next corner, and we'll plan from there?"

"Sounds good."

Ziva hops out of the car, checks her knife and gun, and then starts a nonchalant stroll from one end of the parking lot to the next. She can't see the target, yet, but right now she is wishing that the condo development that Ducky and Penny live in isn't just a large rectangle. Right now she'd love some cover, and a back entrance to use.

Alas, neither are available. She quickly slips off her wedding ring, pulls out her phone, calling Tony, waits for him to confirm the link is live, and starts her act up.

"You see him?"

"No, Shannon. Look, if I wanted to get set up with some strange guy, I'd be looking for dates online. Trust me, there's no one you know in your collection of single geek buddies I'm interested in."

"Got that." Describing her dream guy is a good way to relay information about who's standing on that step.

She's walking quickly and in a second gets within visual range of the guy on Ducky's doorstep. "What do I want? Come on, you know my type. Single, older, I like 'em with some gray in their hair, taller than I am." Ziva sighs, describing as much as she can of the man standing against Penny's door. "Even better if he's a vet. No! I've met Bob. Bob is not who I'm describing."

"Older guy, veteran, only one of them?" Tony makes sure he's got what she's saying.

"Yes. He's taller than I am, but I don't want some gray in his hair to mean he's got six strands of hair and two of them are gray. And no, a taxidermist isn't a vet. It's not even close. I love live animals, dead ones staring at me from a shelf, NO!

"Uh huh… No!... I don't care how 'nice' he is, Bob's just creepy. You remember when we met, he spent ten minutes talking to me about different kinds of plastic eyes. Look, I'm fine, I'm heading home, going to curl up with a good book and a pint of ice cream. I'll call you in the morning, okay?"

"Okay. I've got visual on you again," Tony says as she gets to his line of sight.

"Great. Talk to you then." And Ziva put her phone, not hanging up, into her pocket, continuing to walk down the sidewalk in front of Ducky and Penny's development.

Once she gets into the car, Tony pulls them a bit further down the road. They, unfortunately, cannot see the condo, but the guy at the condo has no shot of seeing them.

"Is he trouble?"

Ziva shakes her head. "No. He's some sort of military, was very relaxed as I walked past, he's just standing there, waiting for something."

"Then let's go introduce ourselves. You take the south side, and I'll go north?"

"Certainly."

It doesn't take long to close in on the mystery man on Penny's door. He seems mildly surprised to see the lonely girl closing in on him, staring at him intently, and the big guy coming from the right has him standing up straight, reaching for the gun that he likely normally wears, but isn't today.

"Special Agents DiNozzo," Tony identifies them, showing his badge. "What are you doing lurking here?"

The man realizes he's not wearing his usual piece, and that both of the people in front of him are carrying. He makes sure his hands are visible and that he's projecting nothing threatening.

He's probably in his mid-fifties, posture's too straight and still for a civilian, hair's too long for a Marine. He's wearing jeans, a Hawaiian shirt, and sandals. He's rumpled and has a go bag at his feet. Ziva knows from that he's been traveling.

He smiles at them, tilts his head, looking slightly irked as one eyebrow raises and he sighs a bit, pulling his ID out, shaking his head slightly. The resemblance is… not uncanny, but it's very strong. Ziva and Tony know, roughly, who this has to be. He's one of two guys, but they don't know which one.

"Captain Michael McGee." He says with an Australian accent as he shows them his ID. "I was hoping to pay a visit to my mom. Now, why are two Special Agents about to shoot me for trying to do that?" Mike stares at them for a moment, and then who they are clicks. "You're Ducky's family, right?"

"Yeah." Tony says as Ziva's calling Ducky. "He saw you loitering, drove on, and called us to check you out."

Mike nods, approving.

"Wanna tell us why you didn't call first? Duck's old, but his instincts are still sharp, and there's no way he's ever bringing Penny home if there's someone he doesn't recognize sitting on the front stoop."

Michael sighs again, licking his lip. "Got some bad news last night, and this was the first place I wanted to go. Just got in about an hour ago. No one was home, and… my news is out of date, few more hours won't matter. Whatever she's doing now is more fun than what we're going to be doing, so no need to rush Mom home. Still wanted to talk to her, though." Left unspoken is the need for some quiet time to just think.

Ziva and Tony look at each other, and Mike knows that look means something, but he doesn't know what.

They hear the purr of Ducky's Morgan, and Tony looks to Ziva, and they both nod, not moving away, but not really engaging Mike, either. They wait for Penny to come over, look up at him, and fall into a hug before pulling back.

As Mike's saying, "Mom, why didn't you call me?" Ziva quietly says to Ducky, "Captain Michael McGee… One of your… stepsons?"

Ducky nods, realizing that the wider family may not have gotten the news. "Thank you for checking it out for me."

"No problem, Duck," Tony says. "A lot of our cases wouldn't be cases if more people had the good sense not to walk into strangers waiting around for them."

Ducky nods, and sees his wife and her son, hugging each other, and then gently gets them heading inside.

* * *

Michael McGee, once in the light, looks exhausted. And he's got the story to go with it. "John was supposed to get into Pearl yesterday… day before yesterday… been on a plane too long, and we were going to meet up. Except he didn't make it." They have… had a usual bar in Pearl. Mike spent three hours there, waiting. He's been in the Navy his whole life, he knows all about waiting, but three hours was too long to go without some sort of update from John. After another hour and no response to his texts, he headed to the base to find out where his brother was, and rapidly found out that the _Stennis_ was three days behind schedule, and the death of John McGee was why. "They told me he had a heart attack a month ago. Mom, what happened? I tried to get Tom," the youngest of the McGee boys, "but he's out, and Hailey," Tom's wife, "didn't know what was up."

Ducky's busying himself making tea, mostly staying out of the way, once he's got water on and tea in cups, he'll come out and sit next to Penny, but for right this second he's letting her have some time with her son on her own, and just watching.

He's never met Michael or Thomas, Penny's two younger boys. He's talked to them on the phone and exchanged emails, but no face to face time. He is, however, feeling a bit silly that he didn't recognize Michael from the pictures he's seen. He and Penny had talked about doing some traveling, getting down to Canberra to visit Michael and his family, but recent events had derailed any plans in that direction. They've talked about heading to Kyoto to visit Thomas' family, but that didn't happen, either. Ducky is hoping that one day it will, and depending on how this visit goes, he may be buying some plane tickets and presenting the situation as a done deal.

Ducky looks at Michael as he's pouring water into his tea pot to let the tea steep. He's well aware of the fact that it is unlikely that he will be alive to see what Timothy looks like in his fifties. It's not impossible, but it is rather unlikely. However, he's guessing that Michael McGee is a pretty good preview of things to come.

Not a carbon copy, of course, but they share the same long face. Michael has Penny's eyes, blue, and Timothy has his mother's green eyes, but the shape is similar, apparently the slight droop to his right eye will become more pronounced as time goes by, as will the smile lines around his eyes and lips. Michael's hair is mostly gray now, but it was probably the same sort of brown that goes dark blond with the addition of enough time in the sun. He definitely has the same hair shape, the high forehead and retracted hairline at the temples, though these days Timothy wears his hair longer than Michael is, but when he was wearing it shorter, it was almost identical to the look Michael has.

All in all, assuming he takes after his Uncle, the years will settle lightly on Timothy McGee.

The tea has steeped, and it's time to head out there.

* * *

Ducky hands over cups of tea, and gets settled next to Penny, holding her hand. So far she hasn't said much, and Michael's still looking pretty confused. He can feel that Penny's holding onto her composure by the barest edge of her nails, and he doesn't want to make it any worse, but he's also hurting and confused. He's been in the Navy his whole life, and he knows stonewalling when he hears it, and he heard a boatload, and aircraft carrier load, of it when he started trying to find out what happened to John. When even the man's XO is slinging crap right and left, something's gone beyond FUBAR, so Mike hopped a transport and headed to the person he hoped would know what had happened.

But he's here now, and still not getting answers.

Ducky looks at Penny, and at Michael, and starts at the beginning. "This is classified. Our family knows, but… It's a long story." Michael nods, he knows all about classified ops that don't go quite the way you expect, and he's not at all surprised that Penny got the real dirt.

Ducky sighs, taking a sip of his tea. He's not sure how deep into this Penny wants to go, how much she wants her boys knowing about each other, so, if she wants to, he'll let her fill in details, but he'll give the basics. "In early May, The Third Carrier group was selected for a Cybertest. A 'cyber attack' would cripple its communications and make it look like it was attacking itself. It didn't actually happen, but anyone sitting at a computer would think that's what was going on."

Michael's nodding at that. He's in charge of security for the US Embassy in Canberra. He's been tested with "attacks," some of which were damn realistic. He knows how that works.

"The Third Carrier Group as a whole, and the _Stennis_ in specific failed the test."

Michael winces. It happens. He shakes his head. "John always was a son-of-a-bitch when things didn't go his way. What'd he do? Stroke out screaming at the guy who didn't realize it was a test?"

Ducky and Penny look at each other, and then Penny closes her eyes, slowly, opens them, and bites her lip in a move that looks so much like Timothy it makes Ducky's heart ache.

"No, Michael, he didn't. Penny, do you want me to tell all of it?"

She hasn't said the words, not to him, not to herself, but saying it is part of accepting it's real, and sitting in front of her is one of the few people who has a high enough clearance to even hear the real story.

Penny shakes her head, and Mike can see she's tortured by this. "Mom, you don't… I can read the report."

"It won't be in the report. It's not in any report." She swallows hard. "I'll tell it. Tim was the one who ran the test."

"Tim?" Mike takes a few seconds to think about that. Obviously, she expects him to know who Tim is, but he's drawing a blank. Then he knows. "John's son?"

"Yes."

"Timmy?" Ducky can see that Michael probably has an image of Tim from… likely Nelson's funeral, that was the last time they all got together, in his head. Michael's thinking, trying to figure this out. "He's a writer, right? How would…"

Ducky looks to Penny, getting a sense that John obviously never said much of anything about Timothy to his brother.

"Timothy is a writer. A very good one. He is also the Director of Cybercrime for NCIS."

Michael blinks, looking confused. "John mentioned he was a cop, few years later he's writing books. Thought he stopped being a cop."

Penny continues to fill Mike in. "He took over Cybercrime in January, and until then he was a field agent for the DC branch of NCIS. Part of being the Director of Cybercrime for NCIS was him running a series of blind tests on his own division. SecNav liked what he was doing enough to ask him to do it to the Navy at large. Carrier Group Three was the target SecNav's people selected."

Michael's nodding along. Timmy's high enough up to have personal conversations with SecNav. That's… a shock really. Mike knows SecNav exists, but he's never seen, let alone _met_ the man, and he's way too far down in the ranks to have SecNav asking him for favors. Obviously, John left a few details out in his conversations about Timmy.

He sees… saw John about once a year. Usually whenever John got to anywhere in the South Pacific and both of them had some downtime, they'd find a bar, get a drink, catch up. John used to mention Tim. Mostly in an absent, pissed off, disappointed sort of way. Then he stopped talking about him. Last he heard about Tim from John, he was wasting his time as tech support for a tiny little team of third rate Navy cops. Michael's sensitive enough to know that John didn't like talking about Tim, so he didn't ask.

A few years later, when Sarah was on a book signing tour that brought her to Perth, he had dinner with her, and she mentioned Tim was writing. He just assumed that meant being a cop didn't work out all that well. Sarah hooked him up with Tim's books (three at the time) and he figured that writing was going well for him. He's occasionally mentions to people that his niece and nephew are famous writers, but that's as far as that goes.

And that is, apparently, wrong.

"So, Tim runs the test, John fails it, goes into one of his screaming fits and has a heart attack?" That's plausible to him, but doesn't feel quite right. That doesn't match the level of pain radiating off of his Mom.

Penny licks her lips, rolling them against each other, steeling herself to tell the story. And Michael can see that whatever is happening here, it's a million times worse than anything he's imagining.

"Tim ran the test. It was a great test. He was very proud of it because it did exactly what it was supposed to do."

"And he got to tweak his old man's nose?" Mike understands that. He certainly enjoyed the few times he got to poke Nelson with a good idea the old man didn't love. Nothing feels better than winning a little competition with the old man.

Penny nods at that, tears in her eyes. "Yeah. That was part of it." She wipes her eyes and takes a quick drink of her tea. Then she stands up, heads into the kitchen, both Michael and Ducky watching. She comes back with a bottle of whiskey and three tumblers. "This isn't a tea story."

Michael goes pale. _Ten million times worse._ It's not that Penny can't put it away with the best of them; it's that she prefers to drink for celebrations and happy things. If she's drinking to numb herself, then whatever she's about to say is worse than anything he's seen since… actually no, she wasn't drinking when Nelson died. Last time he saw her get news and have to drink to take the edge off, they'd just heard that James had already been buried at sea, and they didn't get any say in it or get to say goodbye.

She pours for all three of them, and socks hers back, fast. Ducky and Michael take decent swallows, but don't try to down an entire two shots worth in one go.

" _The Stennis_ failed, badly." Penny says as soon as the burn in her throat clears. "It didn't almost pass or get close or anything along those lines. Tim tipped the whole group into complete chaos. If it had been a real attack the entire group would have been crippled and destroyed itself."

"So, Tim's good with a computer?"

Ducky nods. "Good is an understatement."

"Oh. I… didn't know."

Penny nods at that. If all you knew about Tim came from John, you wouldn't know that. "It was a classified OP. The only people on board who knew what was going on were Tim, SecNav, his secretary, and John. Tim had skyped home, talking to us, happy, really pleased with how the test was going."

"Sounds like he should have been." Michael says. "SecNav was happy?"

Penny and Ducky nod. "Yeah. The test did everything it was supposed to. They've identified a collection of weaknesses that need to be strengthened. They know about holes they didn't used to. They're going to be getting new communications protocols in effect. It was a goldmine of good information, and because it didn't look like a Navy run test, John's men didn't act like it was a Navy run test, so they got a much better idea of how the Group would have responded to a real attack."

"Great." And if there wasn't this horrible foreboding that's getting worse and worse with each word where Penny's not telling him why his brother is dead, Mike would be genuinely pleased. Sounds like whatever it is Tim's been up to, he's got some real computer skills under his belt. "So…"

"So, Tim's in his stateroom… And it's a classified OP. The only person on board who knows why he's on the ship and that he had anything to do with the attack is John, and then…" Penny takes a deep breath and finishes the sentence in a fast whisper, "three men come to his room and almost beat him to death for 'sabotaging the ship.'"

"What?" Mike's stunned by that. That's just… He can't believe he heard that.

Penny's nodding. "John sent men in to kill Tim for the test." She's full on crying now. Words that tore her heart to pieces finally said for the first time. Ducky's holding her and gently rubbing her back.

He takes over the story from there. Filling in more details, because he's fairly sure there's one more sentence of this she needs to say, but the bits he's adding aren't that sentence.

"Timothy was able to hold his own against three sailors until Secretary Jarvis got the fight stopped. He was severely injured, and likely would have died if that fight had gone on any longer. He was supposed to die. They expected him to just go along with them, to follow them below decks, and then they were going to beat him to death. There are… hints… that John was planning on joining in on it. And we are certain he ordered it."

Michael feels sick to his stomach at that. He can't believe that. He knew John didn't get along with Tim, but annoyed and disappointed and kill him with your bare hands are not even in the same hemisphere.

"Come on… you can't… No! Okay, sure, he didn't like Tim. That's not a secret. He thought he was wasting his life, but… killing him? No."

Ducky nods solemnly, and Penny's skin is the color of ash as she cries.

"No one but John could have put that plan into play. His secretary handled all of the details and has pleaded guilty for attempted murder, conspiracy to murder, and handful of other crimes, all on John's say so," says Ducky.

Michael winces. "Oh, shit."

Ducky nods again. "Exactly. I take it you've met Lt. Mane?"

"Yes. He wouldn't hit the head without express permission, let alone try to kill someone. Is Tim…" Michael doesn't know what the polite question is here. Obviously 'okay' is out. Almost killed doesn't get better that fast, but… Tim could be anywhere from mending to comatose.

"He's healing. He will eventually regain all of his facilities, but he is in a wheelchair right now, and the most optimistic version of when his right hand will be working again is Christmastime."

"God." Michael looks like he's smelling something fetid, and he takes a deep drink.

"While Timothy was in the hospital, the investigation into what had happened began. Shortly after it began, all the arrows were pointing to John."

"How could he be that stupid?"

"Apparently Timothy was supposed to just vanish. The cameras were off on the hallway. His body would have never been found. The idea was that no one would be able to _prove_ what happened or who did it. I do not think John or Mane had any idea of exactly how thoroughly the _Stennis_ would have been disassembled if Timothy had vanished on it. They probably never ran into what NCIS looks like when we investigate one of our own. But, I can assure you, _stupid_ does not begin to cover attacking an NCIS Director on a Navy ship, let alone while he is there as the personal guest of the Secretary of the Navy."

Michael closes his eyes at that, swallows hard, and opens them again. "So, you guys go and investigate, and it gets pointing to John..."

Penny nods again. Her voice shaking she finishes the story, "SecNav went to visit him, explain what his options were. Rather than take them, John shot himself." She swallows hard, wiping her eyes, voice ravaged by the words she's just said.

"Oh, God, Mom." Michael switches seats, so he's on Penny's other side. He's hugging her, and she's sobbing.

Ducky's hand is also on her back, and after a second he takes Michael's in his and gives it a quick squeeze. "It has been a hard month here, and… I'm sorry, I know I just forgot to inform you. Sarah's the official next of kin, and she's not been taking it well, either. John's official cause of death is cardiac arrest. He was buried at sea less than twenty-four hours after his death. The official reports on what happened were buried. Timothy was in a 'car accident' after attending a Cybercrime conference. The whole thing has been covered up. His death was not announced beyond the ship. There has been no wake. No one here wants to do anything to 'honor' his memory."

Michael nods at that, and is giving Ducky the _we're going to have a longer talk about this later when my mom's not here, right_ look.

Ducky nods at that, too.

After another moment of holding his mother, Michael stands up, grabs his bag, and shuffles through it to find his cell. They hear half of a call, most of which boils down to "I'm Captain Michael McGee and I want to talk to my brother, NOW, so unless he's in the middle of a fire fight, get a hold of him for me!"

After ten more minutes on hold, they hear, "Tom… No, of course I don't know where the fuck you are. When do I ever know?... Shut up! It's important… John's dead… No, I'm not joking!... Look, it's a complete shit storm of a story. When the hell can you get somewhere you and mom and I can sit down and talk? Uh huh. Yeah. I think we can do that... Okay. I'll get it set. Good... See you then." Michael hangs up and looks at Ducky and Penny. "You two have passports, right?"

They both nod.

"Good. Monday, we're going to Rio, and the four of us are going to get some time together. We don't… I don't know… Okay, honor's wrong, not with what happened, but he was my brother and your son and… And we don't just pretend it didn't happen, okay?"

Penny's biting her lip hard. "Okay."

* * *

It's fairly early when Ducky wakes. Nothing new about that. He never needed a whole lot of sleep, and ever since he hit fifty not a whole lot has meant about four and a half hours a night.

Michael McGee, who camped out in their library, appears to also be an early riser, or his body is acclimated to a different time zone and this is just when he's up. Either way, when Ducky heads into the kitchen to get himself a glass of juice and start the morning tea, he sees Michael standing in front of their fireplace, looking at the photos.

"Morning," Michael says.

"Good morning. I was going to make some tea, would you like that, or coffee or…"

"Whatever is fine."

Ducky nods at that, getting the water going. "We usually have breakfast out."

Michael, nods, staring at the family crest that's over the fireplace, along with the pictures. "Feel like telling me who's who?"

Ducky comes over. "I assume you know about half of these?"

Michael nods. He knows, roughly, who most of the characters, at least their parents, are on one side the mantle. Namely the pictures of Penny, her brothers and sisters, her children, their wives and kids, and grandkids. Sans one, there's no shot of John on the mantle. Ducky's side has shots of places he loves and old friends, and one of his mother.

In the middle is the Gibbs clan, candid shots, wedding shots.

The group shot from Tony and Ziva's wedding is out of date, but it's the most recent one with all of them in it, so Ducky picks that one up and explains who is who.

Michael shakes his head when he Ducky gets to pointing out Tim and Abby. "Even after last night… Still have the image of a fourteen-year-old in my head."

"Is that the last time you saw Timothy?"

"Something like that. I don't know how old he actually was. Old enough that he was tall and gangly with bad skin, young enough he wasn't shaving yet. I only saw Tim… God, five times? My home base is Perth, or was until we moved to Canberra. My wife's family is back in Perth, and John and Tori and Tim were stationed there for six months when Tim was a baby, so I saw them then. But all he was doing at that point was drooling and chewing on things. I was still single, and hanging out with my brother, his wife, and a baby wasn't exactly my idea of fun."

Ducky nods along with that. Michael would have been in his early twenties when Timothy was a baby. He knows that when he was a young man, family obligations involving infants wasn't his idea of fun, either.

"Can you tell me about John? I, obviously, know your mother quite well, and I've known Timothy for most of his adult life. I've seen John once, but never truly met him."

"You want to know more about John?" Michael's surprised by that. "I'd imagine you'd have him firmly categorized as a monster and not want to touch it beyond that."

"Indeed. John deeply damaged two people I care very much for, and those wounds have sent ripples across all the other people I love and will continue to do so for a very long time." Michael sees a flash of anger and steel in Ducky's eyes. "However, I spent more than thirty years as a medical examiner. In addition to my MD, I have a degree in forensic psychology. Perhaps it is perverse, but I have and always had an interest in monsters and their acts. And though I spent half of my career among the dead, half was among the living, offering what healing I could. These days Jimmy handles the care of our physical bodies, but I would seek to aid in the healing of minds and hearts, so, any insights you can offer into John can help me with the trauma he's wrought on my loves."

Michael nods at that. They hear the tea kettle whistle, and Ducky leads them to the kitchen. A small, tidy space of light greens and rich browns. He gestures to the table, and Michael sits and Ducky gets the tea ready.

Once seated, Michael says, "I don't want to be that guy who says, 'Bob was never the same after 'Nam,' but, John went, and he really was never the same after 'Nam. He wasn't in James' unit. Hell, he wasn't within a hundred miles of him, but when James died something about John cracked. After, he could be fun, but there was a very sharp, very brittle, very… reserved aspect to him." Mike licks his lips, and Ducky wonders briefly if this is a learned stress response or something coded into the Langston DNA. He doesn't know which, but he's now seen three generations of the same family do it, and wonders if he'll ever see it from Kelly. "He was a high achiever before, but after, everything always had to be perfect or better than perfect. I was a Plebe when it happened, so it's not like I was on the grapevine or got any scuttlebutt, but John was there, and years later John hinted that James fucked up, and it got him, and everyone else on his boat, killed. I don't know if that's true or not, but when John went he was smart and bright but, you know, _human_. People were allowed to make mistakes around him. He could forgive that. And when he got back, that was gone.

"We'd see each other every year or two, swap letters now and again. But we didn't spend a lot of time with each other, and even less time with each other's kids." Michael looks Ducky over, tea cup between his hands, trying to peel away fifty years with his eyes. "You served, right? Not a soldier, but…"

"I was a soldier in Korea, Medical Corpsman, then back to Scotland for University. Royal Medical Corps after that, tours in Vietnam, Africa, Afghanistan, and my last active duty assignment as a combat surgeon was in the Falklands. So, yes, I have served, and I am well aware of men who went to Vietnam and were, indeed, never the same." Ducky smiles gently and takes a sip of his tea. "None of us were, not really. Though some of us stayed closer to the original version, and some of us did a better job of reattaching ourselves to life outside the jungles when we got home."

Michael nods at that. "Okay. You know how the basics work. You don't have much downtime, and the downtime you have your buddies get first dibs on. Then your wife and kids, unless they're actually around, then that switches. After that comes everyone else. John was part of everyone else. Couple letters a year and a standing date for a drink anytime we were both in the South Pacific and had some free time.

"We'd get that drink, bullshit about the job and what we were doing, talk about our families some. With Tim, I was hearing about how he was so smart and talented and good at math, then I was hearing about Tim giving him trouble, not really applying himself, then he was wrapping up high school and getting ready for Annapolis, and then I didn't hear anything else about him for… I don't know, six years, and he's suddenly a cop. For a few years, I'd ask, but John would just glare. So I stopped asking. Things blew up with Tori, and I knew not to ask about that. Eventually the only talking about family was me telling him about mine and updates on Sarah."

"And you and Penny didn't talk about John's family?"

"Not much. You know Mom, she's never in the same place for more than ten minutes at a time. Hard to get on the phone, especially before cells were common. So, if I was talking to her, I wanted to talk about _her._ I'd get her up to date on my kids, and we'd talk about her latest adventures and what she was up to. I'd ask about John sometimes, but… I mean, his kids were people I didn't know and honestly couldn't have picked out of a lineup. That's the same kind of relationship he has… Shit… had with my kids." Michael shakes his head. "I'll tell them their Uncle John is dead and they'll nod and tell me they're sorry, but just like I didn't know his kids, he didn't know mine."

Michael's tapping his finger on the rim of his tea cup. He swallows, and looks up at Ducky. "John and Tim not getting along isn't new, is it?"

Ducky shakes his head. "No. It's not. And hiding what was going on isn't new, either."

Mike snorts quietly and shakes his head. "John did lots of hiding."

Ducky looks at him curiously.

Mike shrugs. "That's part of what you're asking about, right? He made it to Admiral, so obviously Timmy wasn't walking around with black eyes as a kid. He had to have a public persona, right?"

Ducky nods at him. "Exactly. For a long time all any of us, besides Timothy and his mother, knew was that he and his father didn't get along."

Michael swallows a gulp of tea. "I never got the sense that you ever saw who was really there. Not after 'Nam, at least. He was guarded before, always careful, hiding something, but the walls went up and the image of 'John' was all you could get after."

"What do you think he was hiding?"

Mike shakes his head. "Lot of things. How he really felt about people. That was pretty common, especially when he was younger and lower ranks or a plebe. Can't be letting the higher ups know you think they're assholes." Mike gives Ducky a meaningful look. "And, you know, how he _felt_ about people."

"Male people?"

Mike shrugs. "He always had a girlfriend or two, got married, _still_ had a girlfriend or two, and has two kids."

Ducky's look keeps asking if John was gay or bisexual.

Mike shrugs. "I didn't even know it was a thing until after I'd been at Annapolis for a while. But, you go out drinking with a guy enough times, and you pick up who he's looking at, and for John it usually wasn't the pretty girls. Of course, you basically had to get a pitcher of beer into him before he started looking at anyone, and especially as he got older, it got harder and harder to get a pitcher of beer into him. I don't know if he ever got past looking."

"Careful, precise, meticulous."

"Yeah. Always. Ramped up a million notches after the war. When Dad hit Admiral, John decided he had to, too. And he had to do it younger than Dad did."

"Did John and your father get along?"

"Well enough. Dad was strict, but he was _fun._ He always had great stories to tell about whatever he'd been up to." Michael smiles at that memory. "Not around enough, and we all wanted lots of attention when he'd get on land. Whoever had the most interesting, highest awards, stuff like that, got the most petting from Dad. And John made sure to get a lot of petting. Kids and parents fight, that's just how it is, but I only remember one or two real fights between them. Most of the time they got on fine. But there was always a _I'm going to prove I'm better_ vibe from John."

"And he was?"

"Ye…" Ducky can see Michael slotting the new information he has about John into his picture of him, so he doesn't finish saying 'yes.' "Dad never tried to kill any of us. Better's not the right word. John was probably smarter. He was definitely more dedicated to the Navy." Michael thinks about that. "Mom and Dad are/were brilliant. I think John was more like Mom. You know how hard she had to work to get where she did. You know it wasn't enough to be a genius, she had to be three times as good as everyone around, and everyone around was already Mensa-level smart. Mom doesn't take shit from anyone on anything, and John was just like that.

"I remember one time we met up, and there were a few other guys from his command, and they were ragging on him for what he put the sailors through, and he slugged back his drink and said, 'If I can do it, they can, too.' And that was the thing with John, he never asked you to do anything he couldn't, but he never ran into anything, on a ship, he couldn't do. And if he could do it, and you couldn't, obviously you were a blithering incompetent."

"Did you like him?" Ducky's curious as to how people who aren't Timothy or Sarah or Penny saw John.

"Yeah. I mean, I didn't want to spend every minute of the day with him, but spend a night every year or so, down some beer and BS, sure? He was smart and funny. Oh man, _wicked_ sense of humor, and he could really dance, so especially when we were younger, before I was married, he was a ton of fun to go out with." Mike shrugs at that. "Bad husband material. Good for a drinking buddy.

"He got stuff done when it needed to be done, no matter what. He's the guy who'd roll up his sleeves and get into the engine of the ship when it wasn't working and no one knew what was wrong, even after he had his stripes, and his stars. And you couldn't pick a better guy to have at your back if you were in a sticky situation. We were in Manilla and got into a fight with six jarheads. All of 'em were the size of tanks and just as stupid and John just put them _down_." Michael slices his hand across the air like a blade scything through grass. "They didn't know what the fuck they'd run into." Mike has tears in his eyes, and is smiling, but his lip is trembling. "He was my big brother. And… um… Shit." Mike wipes his eyes.

Ducky nods, solemnly.

Mike sniffs. "And he wasn't a good man." He shakes his head slowly.

"No. He was not a good man. He was an appalling father."

"When Tim was a kid, John used to talk about him, so excited about how smart he was and all the great things he was going to do. Then he was a teenager and turned into a little snot, but a little snot on track for Annapolis, so I'd hear about that. John was worried, but I talked to Tori occasionally, and the kid had straight As, so John was just on one of his everything has to be better than perfect kicks. I poked him once about how Tom and I managed to make it into Annapolis without perfect 4.0s and Tim would do it, too, but that didn't help much. And then he stopped talking about them. Tim, Torri, those were things John couldn't do, so he wouldn't say much about them. Just glare and change the subject if you asked.

"I saw Tim at Dad's funeral, and he was just this quiet little guy. I didn't pay a lot of attention to him, because..." Michael doesn't need to finish that sentence. Ducky understands how a ten-year-old you haven't seen in a decade would be a very minor aspect of your father's funeral.

"Saw him again at fourteenish. We were up for Christmas with Mom and so were Tori and Tim and Sarah, and he was a little snot! I know little snots, helped raise three of them. They're _supposed_ to be snots at fourteen. That's how you know you've got a fourteen-year-old, they go from cute and fun into little snots. Beth, my oldest daughter, has her own fourteen-year-old and we've been talking about how they all turn into snots. Beth's convinced she was never a little snot, and Darla and I laughed so hard at that we almost broke something." Mike can see this isn't a diversion Ducky needs. He waves it away.

"Back to Tim. John was telling me about trying to get Tim straightened out, might not get into Annapolis, and what a waste that'd be, but… He didn't look like he needed much straightening out to me. Sure, he was a sarcastic little bastard, never quite over the line, but there was always that edge. You could tell he was smarter than you were and laughing at you behind his polite exterior. We were only together for three days, but he'd say things, and you'd nod along thinking it was okay, and then an hour later you'd really think about what he said and kick yourself in the ass for going along with it. He was just a sarcastic little snot with an innocent delivery that let him say a lot of things that he couldn't have gotten away with if he hadn't been so cute."

Ducky nods; he can well imagine fourteen-year-old Tim being a handful, especially if he was feeling safe, which with his father away and in his grandmother's home he likely was. Ducky thinks for a moment about what Michael just said. "You never actually saw John and Timothy together, did you?"

"Not after Tim was walking. How bad did it get?"

"He tried to murder Timothy." But Ducky knows that isn't what Michael is asking. "As long as it didn't leave marks or happen in public, anything was fair game."

"Fuck." Michael's looking down at his tea. "Still can't believe it. I mean… He could be cruel, and had a reputation for being an absolute bastard. If you couldn't do the job perfect, you did not want to be under his command because he'd tear you down, but… murder?"

"You think he wasn't capable of killing?"

"No. I know he could kill. Just, he was always so controlled. He'd be screaming his head off, chewing some sailor to dust, but you could see it in his eyes, the fire never got that high. Part of not seeing the real John. The screaming… I always thought it was an act. Done because it made an impression and if you were on the receiving side of it, you never wanted to be there again."

"Timothy's said something like that, too. However, at least some of the screaming aimed at him, was, in fact, real. And, as you said, real or not, you never wanted to be there again, and Timothy was there, quiet a lot."

"John always said he was so smart."

Ducky understands that to mean _if Tim was the only thing John valued, why was John yelling_? "He is. Best-selling novelist. Running the NCIS Cybercrime Division, meaning he's the number four man at a federal agency, before forty. He's a wizard with a computer. The one thing he isn't, _is a sailor_."

Michael sighs.

"He got into Annapolis and turned them down."

Michael sucks in a quick breath at that. John never mentioned it, and that would piss him off enough he'd want to kill. He assumed Tim, somehow, even with a great-grandfather, grandfather, father, and three uncles who were all grads, fucked up his application so badly that Annapolis wouldn't take him. Having seen Tim at fourteen, Tom figured that most likely he'd failed the physical. "That's when John stopped talking about him, beyond the one quick, he's a cop now, update I managed to get out of him, years later."

"I'd imagine so."

They hear Penny heading in at that point. She grabs herself a glass of orange juice, before heading over to the table that Michael and Ducky are sitting at. She ruffles Michael's hair as she sits down. "I was thinking, there's one other person who should be going to Rio with us."

"I can swing another ticket. Who do you want to bring? Tim?"

"Oh, Lord no!" Penny shakes her head. "Tim's been traumatized enough by John. Sarah, maybe her fiancée if he wants to come."

"John and Sarah were… okay?" _How did that work?_ is clear on Michael's face.

"As okay as you can be with the man who tries to kill your brother," Penny says, looking grim.

Ducky adds, "In the last few weeks I've been reading up more on this, and apparently a very common pattern with domestic abuse is that the abuser has one target. He's not random and doesn't spread his abuse all over the place. Part of that is that whoever the target is satisfies a need other people do not. Part of it is that it's significantly easier to continue to abuse if no one knows you are doing it. Only one victim allows for that."

Those words settle over them, killing the conversation for a moment.

Then Penny says to Mike, "I was thinking that you're probably right, that we need some place, time, to talk and think about it. He was my son, and your brother, and her father. And… and there was a whole life there and…" Penny's tearing up again. "And it's not a good idea to skim over it or pretend it didn't happen."

"Okay, Mom."

Ducky stands up. "How about I give Sarah a call, and from there we can make plans?"

Penny nods. She takes Michael's hand in hers. "In the meantime, we've got Sunday breakfast with everyone tomorrow, would you like to meet Tim and his wife and daughter, and the rest of our family?"

"Yeah, I would."

* * *

That night, as they're getting ready for bed, Ducky says to Penny, "I'm glad we're going."

She nods at that. He steps closer to her, laying his hand on her shoulder, making sure she's looking at him. "The world is a better place for the lack of him, but that doesn't mean your world is better. It doesn't mean you don't need to grieve the loss, of him and the potential of him. I know you were hoping he'd change, and I know that's gone. And I can hate him, and what he did to Timothy, and the pain you're going through because of him, and still want you to have a place and a time to remember that he was your son and that once he brought you joy and that you loved him and will always love him."

She nods.

"And I don't think you are betraying Timothy by missing him or aching for his loss. And I don't think less of you because you love him and hate him and go to sleep and wake up wishing this never happened. I wish it never happened, too."

Ducky pulls her closer, her head on his shoulder, stroking her back. "None of this is your fault. There is nothing you could have done to change it. And I know you know that too, and I know you don't feel it. But, I hope one day you will."

Penny sighs, and nods against his shoulder. "I…" she hasn't been talking about how she feels about this. Anger at what happened, what John did, yes, but not the loss of him. Apparently Timothy's ability to shove everything deep down and leave it there is not something new to his generation of Langstons.

Ducky's quiet, encouraging her to speak.

"I almost feel like I can't mourn him. That… any recognition of his loss, allowing it to hurt, is a slap to Tim, and Tim's been slapped enough lately. I can't add to that."

"I don't think he'd see it that way, Penny, but even if he did, he is not here right now, and you need to say goodbye and acknowledge the loss."

Ducky feels a small nod against his shoulder, along with fresh tears, and the sound of quiet crying. He thinks, for the first time, this is Penny letting herself grieve the loss of her son and all the dreams for a functional family she had, as opposed to venting her anger at him for putting them into this situation.

Ducky kisses her cheek and murmurs to her, "I love you."


	117. McNozzo

Bootcamp without Tim is just weird. Not that Tony's been doing this all that long, but it just feels odd not to have McGee there. Sure, he wasn't entirely sold on doing this in the first place, but, after the first two months, when he started to wipe the cobwebs of not having really fought in years out of his mind, and got back into it, it became fun.

And not just fun, but useful. He's honing skills that have been rusting for a while. Secondly, this is vastly more interesting than any sort of aerobics or running he's ever done. On par with real sports. Because you have to think, watch, and react. He does kind of wish he could get this crew on the court playing, (they'd go home with a lot fewer bruises if he could get them playing basketball) but he's thinking that's unlikely.

He's in better shape, now. (Not where he's wanting to get, not yet, but better.) In fact, it's possible that mesh shirt/leather trousers combo might come out again for Halloween, which is a bit earlier than he was expecting, but would please Ziva to no end.

He also thinks that it's good for him and McGee. They need a space for competition. He knows he doesn't feel it with Gibbs or Palmer. He can fight with either of them and it's just about going through the moves, the exercise, working/fighting hard. But especially in the last five years, he and McGee have had chain of command issues. Actually, not just the last five years. Part of Probieing the ever living shit out of McGee was making sure he knew his place. Part of it was making sure Tony knew _his_.

For the most part, they're past that now. McGee knows his place. Tony knows his. They each own their own places. But they've got that history of competition, they've got that edge. And that comes out when they fight each other. He can, as much as it's possible, relax when he's fighting Palmer or Gibbs. He can't relax when he fights McGee, because that edge is still there. Which means, of all of his sparring partners, McGee's the only one who really gets him _fighting_ when he fights.

And he misses that.

* * *

Bootcamp with Uncle Mike, who seems to be a nice guy and all, is even weirder yet. Mostly because Tony keeps catching sight of him out of the corner of his eye, like when he's turning into a kick or something, and can't figure out how the hell McGee got so old all of a sudden.

Also, Uncle Mike, (Somehow if he's Tim's Uncle Mike, then he's Tony and Ziva, and Abby, and Jimmy and Breena's Uncle Mike, too. He seems rather pleased and amused to see them _all_ refer to him as Uncle Mike.) is really laid back. He and Tony spent close to ten minutes talking Hawaiian shirts and Magnum episodes, and Tony's wondering if Mike, being the only McGee he's ever seen who's interested in _normal_ things is something of a family black sheep.

Of course, he's also a Captain in the Navy and an Annapolis grad, so maybe he's more of a medium gray sheep. Whatever he may be, Tony's amazed to meet a McGee who surfs, has an Australian accent, and likes to cool down by watching cop shows or soccer.

The American Football v. Soccer argument was heated, but good-natured, with Ziva, Mike, and Ducky (he drove Mike, and decided to hang out and watch the "skirmishes," as he called them) taking the position that soccer/football as a sport where teams of people kick or head butt a round ball down the field is vastly superior to it's American equivalent, and Jimmy, Gibbs, Collin, and Tony took the position that whatever the Hell that is, it isn't football. (This was mostly aimed at Ziva and Ducky who kept calling both sports football.) Football is a sport where very large guys run over other very large guys as they throw a ball down the field, and is thus, naturally, the superior sport.

Tony was honestly surprised how far into that "discussion" Gibbs got. Apparently he quarterbacked in most of the pick-up games his unit got into while he was serving.

It's hitting him, as they're taking a quiet moment between fights, and Gibbs is arguing (out loud, with words!) with Uncle Mike about why soccer is a boring sport, how much they've changed over the years.

* * *

The idea of this extended family strikes Tony as bizarre. Basically Tony's very used to the idea of the four of them. Him, Gibbs, Ziva, and McGee. That's their core four. His family. The people he'd call at 3:30 in the morning if he needed to be bailed out of jail or hide a body.

Jimmy and Abby and Ducky make up the next layer.

He honestly never expected there to be any layers beyond that. Kind of stupid in retrospect, but they all spent so long attached at the hip to the job, the idea that there would ever be more was ridiculous.

And then there were more. Then there was Breena. And McGee and Abby pairing up. Then there were small, drool-y people who he can pick up with one hand. And after that this family thing just kept spreading.

Now he's round-housing on Jimmy's brother-in-law-to-be while Ducky's wife's son/Tim's Uncle is trying to clock him with a left uppercut, but Gibbs has his back and is blocking him, and this family thing is growing like mushrooms after a rain.

* * *

"How's McGee really doing?" Collin asks as they finish up Bootcamp and are unwrapping their hands and feet.

He saw Tim at church and tried not to stare too much. He _knew_ Tim got the shit beaten out of him. Amy had told him about that, but _knowing_ and _seeing_ are not the same thing. Seeing, and then of course, _imagining_ , because you can't see a guy you regularly spar with hurt so bad he's in a wheelchair and not imagine what had to put him there, made Collin want to throw up.

He's fought Tim, one on one, two on one, two on two, three on one, all sorts of combos. He knows Tim can fight. Sure, when they're doing it, they're pulling punches and trying to not actually kill each other, but… The guys who put McGee in a wheelchair had to be the size of trucks.

He's looking at Jimmy for an answer, who notices that everyone else is, as well. "As well as can be expected. He's messed up. He's hurting. He's not going to stop hurting anytime soon. It's only in the movies that someone goes through that and bounces back two days later."

Tony snorts a quick laugh. "Or they're _him._ " He jerks his head at Gibbs.

Gibbs shrugs, unwrapping his fingers. He knows he always did heal up faster than most of the people around him. "Even I don't bounce back _that_ fast."

"I've had hangnails that have taken longer to heal than you with bullet wounds," Tony says. "Still, I know Tim wanted to get started with knives, any ideas on…"

"Knives?" Mike asks, he's ready to go back to his Mom's house, soak in a hot bath, and die. No one was kidding about the Bootcamp thing. Last time he worked out this hard he was twenty-five years younger and was training brand new sailors in hand to hand. "You want to make this even harder?"

"Mc…" Calling McGee, 'McGee,' to yet another McGee feels weird. "Tim doesn't have a knife combat proficiency, and he wants one. Eventually, when Jimmy says he's ready, we will begin training," Ziva says.

Jimmy and Ziva have been practicing with that. Not today. With Mike in the group, they stuck to just hand to hand. But she's showing him what and how she'd teach knife combat, and if you're using a practice blade, like they are, it's not as hard on your body as the MMA stuff they do is, but it's not easy, either. And, supposedly, eventually you start working with real knives.

"He's got to get standing first, without a crutch, and that's at least six weeks, probably two months off, and he's not doing anything until his arm is out of the cast, probably another month for that. So, best case scenario, he's back with us in winter. And just to work out, no one's fighting him then. And that's a really hopeful forecast. And…" Jimmy stops, thinking for a moment, not sure about saying it, but… "Look, he's saying he wants to fight, and that's fine, but… once he actually gets fighting, he may find very quickly that he really doesn't want to fight. I know I didn't want to shoot a gun after I had to do it for real, and even safe, with Tim, in a well-lit shooting range, once again _safe_ , that first shot brought back a lot of the feelings of fear and danger that went with doing it for real." Jimmy shakes his head a little. "Once someone's actually going after him, Tim might flash back to it. Since he's making his guys keep up their martial arts proficiencies, I'm sure he will, too, but… It might be a long time, it might never happen, where this is fun for him again."

Ziva's nodding when Jimmy mentions that. The guys catch that nod, know what it means. Collin and Mike don't, but she doesn't say anything, and they've got the good sense to know this is something they're not supposed to ask about.

* * *

Tony and Ziva are heading home. He's driving. She's looking out the window, watching cars blur by.

"How long?" Tony asks. Seeing her nod, it hit him that his Ninja knew all about going back to it after a long hard fight.

"Until fighting didn't bring Somalia back, or until I enjoyed it again?"

"Both?" They still don't talk a lot about Somalia. They have, but neither of them like dwelling on it.

"A year before I could strike and not feel a second of panic. When I was taken, I knew they were going to win. I knew how to read a fight well enough to know I couldn't get out, and then… Then it was all about making myself as expensive a target as possible. For a year after I got back, every fight, no matter how easy, I felt that second of realizing I couldn't win. I was able to master it, control it, shove it into the back of my mind and not deal with it, but I felt it."

Tony nods at that. "Enjoying it again?"

She smiles, and it's a cold, hard, deadly smile. "Bodnar."

Tony nods at that, too. He'd told her, all those years ago, 'I will hold him down while you kill him.' He didn't need to do that. When he saw what Ziva did, when she went full out, no holds barred, no reserves in her mind, when she was fighting to inflict not just maximum damage, but maximum pain, he realized exactly how stupid that offer was. He'd meant it, and it was sincere. It was just… less necessary than offering to hold down an opponent for Superman.

All he did was occasionally kick Bodnar back toward Ziva when it looked like there was a shot of him running, and then limping, and then crawling away.

"You should talk to him," Tony says.

"I will. When he's a bit more healed, when he's had time to come to terms with the fact that this will always be there. You should talk to him, too."

His eyebrows furrow. "About?"

"He is your friend, he was hurt, you two have not had any time alone with each other since. Tomorrow, if we don't have a hot case, have lunch with him. I will mind the store."

* * *

There isn't a case. And when 11:00 rolls around and there still isn't a case, Tony flashes a text to Tim. _Lunch?_

 _Sure._ Comes back a minute later. _Got a place in mind?_

_We'll figure it out. I've got to take you, right?_

There's a minute long pause, where Tony is sure that Tim's being annoyed about the fact that he can't drive, but then, _True_ pops up on his phone.

* * *

"So it hit me," Tony says, heading into Tim's office, carrying a bag and closing the door, "that you've got an actual office now. Which means," he's putting the bag on Tim's desk, and tugging a chair over, "that I can bring food to you a Hell of a lot easier than I can get you to food."

Tim inclines his head in a somewhat annoyed gesture. It's not that Tony's wrong. He's dead on right, especially since the little Camaro he's driving these days has nowhere to put the wheelchair, he's still annoyed by not moving around much. "What'd you get?"

"Cheese steaks. New place on 35th claims they know how to make them."

This is a conversation they've been having for years. Tony's been on a quest to find a real Philly cheese steak since leaving Philadelphia. Apparently there were passable replicas in Baltimore, but once you got any further south than that, they vanished. Tim's gotten to the point where he no longer believes in the existence of a "real" cheese steak. He's thinking that Tony's built them up so much in his mind that they could go to Philadelphia, get the steaks, eat them there, and they still wouldn't pass muster.

"The unicorn hunt." Tim pushes his keyboard out of the way as Tony hands over a silver foil wrapped sub that smells pretty good, and puts a large container of fries between them.

"Always." Tony snags a fry while opening his. "Fries are good."

Tim munches one. They are. "Yep. Good omen. Maybe there's an actual unicorn in there."

Tony snorts at that. "Kind of horn-shaped." He inhales deeply as the scent of fried beef, onions, and…

"Cheeze whizz?" Tim winces. He can't imagine anyone intentionally putting cheeze-whizz on a sandwich, let alone wanting to eat a sandwich that has cheeze whizz on it.

"That's how they're supposed to be made. Yours has Swiss."

"Thank you." Tim manages to get his unrolled, and it looks pretty good. He's perfectly happy with not getting the 'authentic' experience. He takes a bite and his eyebrows shoot up, that's a _really_ good sandwich. Not barbecue, but fried steak, onions, mushrooms, and swiss on a very nice roll is definitely going onto the go-get-it-again list.

Tony's humming with pleasure. "Hard roll, processed cheeze, just enough grease… It's perfect. And look, no lettuce, no tomatoes. I didn't even have to tell them to skip the mayo."

Tim nods along. "Tasty." They eat quietly for a few bites, just enjoying the food and sitting with each other.

Tony looks out at the Minions, sees Brand, sitting at her station, in sneakers, jeans, and a St. Martha's t-shirt, hair in a long ponytail, swallows, and says, "That your new baby genius?"

"Yeah, that's Brand."

Tony shakes his head. "I didn't think you could do it, but you found someone who looks even younger than you did when you started."

"She should look younger, she's eighteen."

"Yeah, but you looked twelve."

"I did not!"

 _Twelve_ Tony mouths. "How's she doing?"

"Pretty well. Not really working on her own much, yet. I've got her shadowing people, seeing what they do and how. The only stuff she's doing on her own are basic searches, computer records, emails, stuff like that. Getting her started on the fool-proof bits. Then in a month or so, I'm going to get her doing bigger things, and Manner's going to get a partner."

Tony laughs at that idea. "You're evil."

Tim smiles, satisfied. "Thank you. I think they'll be good together, got things they can teach each other. Speaking of partners, how are Draga and Bishop doing?"

Tony shrugs. "It's different. Really different. They squabble like Kate and I, but the work flow is different."

Tim raises an eyebrow, chewing a bite of his sub.

"The cases are different, so the work has to be different, right? Homicides are still about the same, but the big ones… We're getting intel from everyone, coordinating hunts from all over. We'll get a case, and the first week is just working through data from FBI, NSA, CIA, and Homeland. It's my job to track down who has what and make the bastards share it. Bishop slices and dices and give us some sort of projection of who we're looking for and what sort of stuff they're likely to do next. Ziva and Draga spend hours reading through cases, getting the details, putting the picture together.

"Nothing gets taken care of right away. We've always got something cooking, and we just shove it to the side to deal with murders. We don't even have paperwork days anymore. There's always a massive backlog of intel that needs to be gone through to add to whatever picture we're working on. We're adding cases a lot faster than we're clearing them."

"Sounds like you've become the CIA."

"Really. You know how we'd walk into something and some local LEO would give us crap about trampling into a year-long case?"

Tim nods.

"Yeah, well, I've got the year-long cases now."

Tim nods at that, too. "Got a bunch of them cooking. We set up _a lot_ of electronic surveillance for you guys."

"That's what Draga's been doing. Something about 'passive intel gathering.' He's got the computers watching email and chats and texts and Facebook and whatever, searching for key terms Bishop dreams up."

"We do a lot of that. Coming up with anything?"

Tony shrugs. "I'm here eating with you, not in Istanbul busting up an ISIS cell."

"Good point."

Tony puts his sub down. "Okay, I may be messing this up, but Draga and Bishop were talking about it. You know we're on Silk Road 4 now?"

That's an oversimplification of the situation, but it'll work, so Tim says, "Yeah."

"Bishop wants Draga to figure out a way to break into it, and just watch. Not shut it down. She thinks it's a hell of a lot more useful up and working, because then we can see what's going on and who's doing what and where."

"If Draga pulls that off, I'm stealing him. I can pay him more and give him regular hours."

Tony looks at Tim. He doesn't say out-loud that that's beyond Draga's skills, but it's clear in his eyes.

Tim looks back, getting it. "You know how to upload a job into my system as well as anyone else. Put it in, and we'll take a swing at it. Can't promise we'll get it working, let alone anytime soon, but, hell, we do that and we'll have every member of the alphabet soup begging for our data feed." Then Tim stops. He eyes Brand, even if Tony doesn't put that in the job queue, he's thinking they're going to get on that. Then another thought hits. "Of course, there's always been this rumor floating around about Silk Road, that CIA's been running it since version 2. So, you may want to ask them pretty please and save me thousands of man hours."

"I know a guy who might know."

"Check in with him, and…" Tim thinks even more about the logistics of that case. "Okay, if the CIA is running it; they don't want that getting out. So, if you get the sense that you're being stonewalled, we may go poking about in their data feed. Not like they're going to report us for piggy-backing onto their top secret op. They don't want the fact that they're running it getting out, especially since if they're running it they aren't sharing what they're getting out of it. The Congressional hearings alone on that would take years."

Tony smiles at that and takes another bite of his sub. "Is Abby going to need to start up another McGee Defense Lawyer Fund?"

"I'm better at this now than I was then, and I've already done it before, so I know what mistakes I made the first time." Tim smiles at Tony.

"And ever since you got that Director title next to your name, you've been feeling pretty cocky about everything."

Tim smiles, not disagreeing about that.

Tony shakes his head a bit. Tim most certainly has his place now. That gets him thinking about sparring yesterday. "Your Uncle Mike's pretty cool."

Tim shrugs. "I guess. At this point, you've spent more time with him than I have in the last twenty years. He's way more Penny's son than my uncle."

Tony nods at that. That's how his relationship with the various uncles, aunts, and cousins that showed up for Dad and Delphine's wedding works. "Does looking at him feel weird?"

Tim's looking at Tony like he's got no idea why Tony would ask that.

Tony's staring back at Tim like he can't believe Tim's not seeing it. "He's you in twenty years!"

Tim laughs. "No."

"Seriously. We're sparring and I kept catching sight of him, moving fast, and it felt insane. Kept wondering how the hell you got so old!"

"He doesn't look _that_ much like me."

"Ducky, Palmer and I were talking about it. Take a long look at him, that's you in twenty years."

Tim shakes his head a bit, taking a bite of a fry. Then he realizes something. "I suppose it could be worse. He's actually twenty-five years older than I am."

"Wait, he's in his sixties?"

"Think so. Penny had four boys in six years. That's about two years a kid, so… he's probably born about '53. Twenty-four years. Maybe there's some perk to looking like you're twelve when you're in your twenties."

"Maybe." Another quiet minute while they both eat. Since they're kind of on the topic, Tony decides to say something about it. "I got an email from Burley this morning."

Tim's eyebrows rise.

"He's double and triple checking every case Mane or your dad could have been involved with. Apparently, Mane said he took care of some people for John."

Tim nods. "Not shocked."

"And Mane only worked with him for five years. Probably some bad shit going to come out about him, and the secretaries before him."

Tim nods at that, too. He's not sure what he's feeling about that, not sure what he's supposed to feel. There is a sense of curiosity, mostly on an intellectual level, he wants to know if… If the secretaries or whoever they took care of replaced him as John's victim of choice. He's wondering if something very bad happened to someone in January of '95, two weeks after he turned down Annapolis and his father got back to sea.

"How far do you, and I guess Penny and your sister, want that shit to go? From what Burley is saying, right now Mane'll admit to bombing the _Cole_ just to make it all go away quietly, so there's no reason for those cases to get attention, he'll plead guilty to anything, but… if you wanted them to… I don't think anyone would blink if that got leaked."

Tim thinks about that. "Jarvis'll blink. He doesn't want anything bad coming out about a US Admiral."

Tony shrugs at that. "Like I care. I'm as far up as I'm going to go, not like I'm risking my shot at the Director's chair with this, and I'm too damn good at my job to get booted out for leaking what's a public record. This would just be a matter of suggesting that someone in the press take a closer look at some documents being filed out of Pearl. Happens all the time."

Tim nods at that. Having a friendly crime reporter or these days, blogger, is usually a good plan if you're career law enforcement. Tim licks his lips, staring at the far wall of his office. Then he shakes his head. "He ate his gun. Mane's in jail for the rest of his life. If he's got ex-secretaries walking around out there who need to be in jail, fine, otherwise, it's enough. If there's anything I need from this, it's something I can't get."

Tony's looking at him curiously.

"I don't ever get to win." Tim gently taps his cast. "My test worked. Did everything it was supposed to. And for a little while that felt really good. I won. First time ever we played _my game, and_ _I won._ I was in control." Tim's looking at his arm. "And he broke me for it. Literally." He looks back at Tony. "I don't ever get to have that control back. I don't ever get to win again. There's no future rematch. It's just, done. Hollow. Abby and Jimmy are saying I won. He had to kill himself to get out of it, but… I didn't win. I got control for a second, and then he took me out of the game and knocked himself off the board when he didn't like the moves that were left.

"For a moment he played my game, and then we were right back to his game again."

"I'm sorry, Tim."

"Yeah, well, that's life. No tidy wrap ups or answers. So, no, leave it alone. I don't need it, and I don't want a pack of reporters at my house, and Sarah probably doesn't want them at hers, and I know Penny doesn't need any more shit with this. We're done. He's dead, and that's enough. It's got to be."

Tony can see it's not, but he can also see Tim doesn't want to and for the matter, can't, do anything else with it, so he says, "Okay."


	118. Rio

Rio in July is either awesome or chill and rainy. They got in on an awesome day. Mid-seventies, clear blue skies, and, in that it's winter time (and summer in the northern hemisphere) the place isn't filled to the brim with tourists.

It's a good city for a McGee reunion. Cosmopolitan. Port city. On the beach. From their hotel the smell of sea and sky is strong. Their room has a balcony overlooking the beach.

Perfect place for a family defined by its ties to the sea.

* * *

Ducky was here, once, back in… He doesn't remember, it was the '70s and he was between posts. He had some downtime and decided that he'd never been to Carnivale, so why not? A few transport flights, a very rickety bus ride from Brasilia, and he was in Rio, and even though he was a doctor with expansive experience in the sunny parts of the world, he, like flocks of other tourists, managed to sunburn the hell out of himself the first day.

He also managed to find a lovely young lady who was enchanted by his Scotts accented Portuguese and was more than happy to help soothe his poor, burned skin. He's never enjoyed a sunburn more.

Penny was here in the year after Nelson died. They were going to go to Carnivale in Rio. He'd been here before several times, but always for work. She had never been. It was their number one stop for the places they were going to go together once he retired. And then he died, less than three months before he was going to retire. They hadn't bought the tickets yet, but Penny had been researching hotels and making plans for what they were going to do and where they were going to go when he died.

She went without him, saw Rio, danced in the streets, went sunbathing topless on the beach, and missed him very deeply the whole time. From there, she visited Paraguay and Uruguay and they were easier; she didn't have any hopes associated with them.

Sarah and Glenn have never been here before. Sarah, unlike Tim, actually does book signings and speaking tours, but in that her books are in Spanish but not Portuguese, the closest she's gotten to Rio is Buenos Aires. (Which she thinks she would have enjoyed, but she did three signings and two speaking engagements in forty hours. All she saw of Buenos Aires was a hotel room, three bookstores, a conference room in a hotel, and the airport. The food was good.)

Michael McGee has been here before, but he's not allowed to talk about it. Officially, he, his unit, and the several other people who were with them have never been here, and that's all that's going to be said about that.

And Thomas McGee has been everywhere, but he's also not allowed to talk about it. See, the thing about Commander Tom McGee, Seal Team 4, is that he's either in front of you, in which case you know exactly where he is, or he's not in front of you, and in that case, you don't ask. Not even John had a high enough clearance to know where Tom was at any given time.

But right now, he's walking into the lobby of the hotel they're staying at, and hugging his mom.

After a long minute of that embrace, he hugs his brother, and niece, and is introduced to his step-father and soon to be nephew-in-law.

* * *

Ducky, of course, never really met John, just saw him the one time, and he was practically out of view by the time they figured out who he was. So, he wonders, if he had seen him more, if John would have set off his danger sense. Years of dealing with dangerous men have honed that sense to the point where if Ducky makes eye contact with a man, he usually knows if that man is trouble.

It is one thing to be in the presence of soldiers. Mike is a soldier. Tim is (for lack of a better word) a soldier. Ducky is (also for lack of a better word) a soldier. A man who can and will kill when necessary to protect himself and others. It's another to be in the presence of a killer. Ducky's not even sure if he can verbalize the difference, but he can certainly _feel_ it. Ziva and Jethro are killers, on the side of the angels, now, but killers nonetheless. Something about the way they move, the air around them, the way they look at people, their relationship to violence, their own violence and the violence of others. He thinks he would have caught it on John if he'd spent more time with him. He's definitely getting it off of Thomas.

He sees Penny holding Thomas, her arm around him as they talk a little about his wife and kids, and Ducky realizes that Penny is a killer, too. Never hand to hand. She was too smart for that, but… Somehow he never really put together the fact that this woman designed weapons, one of which that could have killed, literally, tens of thousands of people. Penny saw the destruction she was able to wreck and intentionally stopped. But that was only her last project. What else she worked on is still classified, and something he does not know.

He watches her son, sees controlled violence in his moves, sees his eyes scanning the room, looking for trouble, the same way Ziva does, and it hits him viscerally that Penny's sons did not get their ability to wield violence just from Nelson.

* * *

They're all standing around in the room he's sharing with Penny. Tom had tossed his duffle in Mike's room and came back down, still in his fatigues (though he's down to just a gray t-shirt and gray cammo pants) and ready for whatever comes next.

He gets comfortable, sprawling out on the sofa in the little sitting area, and saying, "So, what happened? All I know is what you told me in that two minute long phone call."

Like Penny said, it's not a tea conversation. He and Michael head over to the tumbler on the side table. Ducky lays the glasses out, and Mike pours the scotch.

Sarah sits on the edge of the bed, and Glenn follows, holding her hand. Penny's at one of the chairs by the small table.

Ducky hands out glasses while the five of them that know look at each other for a few seconds. Ducky nods; he's the least effected of those who really know what happened. He'll tell the story. "Back in May…"

Penny and Sarah kick in bits and pieces, and over the course of two hours the full story, starting at the end with the test, and heading all the way back to John and Tori's marriage comes out.

Tim had once told Gibbs, that in his family, when someone dies, they drink and cry and tell stories until they can laugh again. They're definitely drinking, and Penny and Sarah are crying, but there's not much hope for laughing, not about John.

* * *

It's after the tale's been told, after they've had some time to absorb, that Ducky says to Glenn, "How about we investigate and seek out a suitable place for dinner?" He wants to let Penny and her children and grandchild have some time together, alone.

Glenn knows exactly what is going on and thinks that's a fine idea. After all, there are much worse ways to spend an afternoon than strolling around Rio de Janeiro chatting with Ducky, checking out every restaurant they walk by.

And honestly, he wants a few breaths away from this… mess. He'd met John several times, and yeah, he was _intense_ but Glenn hadn't guessed there was anything that dark going on. It makes him deeply uncomfortable that he didn't sense or see it.

He would have been that idiot neighbor talking to the cops about how 'quiet' the guy with all the body parts in his freezer was. And that scares him.

* * *

When Glenn and Ducky leave, Mike stands up and heads to the balcony, looking at the beach. "Come on, let's hit the sand."

The other three agree.

It's about a five minute walk, and then they're on the sand, getting closer to the water. The beach isn't abandoned, but it's not packed, either. At high season the sand is barely visible on the beaches of Rio, today, there's the four of them, and about twenty other people catching the late afternoon sun.

"Natural habitat of the McGee." Tom says as they get to the water.

"Yeah. Remember Dad saying that, taking us boating as kids?" Michael responds.

Penny's wading out into the surf. Not too far, she just wants to feel the water, not get soaked.

Sarah kicks off her sandals and takes three steps, water swirling between her toes. "Dad, my Dad, said that to me, too. Probably my first real memory of him, being on a boat, four maybe five-years-old. I was giggling as he controlled the sails, and he was telling me this was where we belonged."

Penny nods at that. "Your mom got video of that. You both looked really happy."

"Yeah." And of course, remembering that brings back the rest of the memory, the part she hasn't thought about in… ever really. Tim was on the boat, too. Green with seasickness, angry, hating everything on earth, but especially hating boats and the ocean and their father. Sarah thinks more and realizes that had to be the start of the summer where John decided he was going to make Tim like boats or die trying.

She can see Penny's also placing that memory on the timeline, what happened around it, the things the camera didn't pick up.

Penny sniffs, feeling the tears on her face, she wipes one off, looking at it, then looking at the water swirling between her legs. "Nelson would say all water is one." She's calf deep, gentle waves lapping at her legs, wind blowing her skirt and shawl. "That we're water, given some time to explore the earth. 'From the water we came and to the water we return.' He said that about James." She kneels, surf swirling around her hips, soaking the skirt, as she cups the water between her hands. "He's here, somewhere, and so are your brothers, and his father, two of his brothers, one of mine. Our atoms are never destroyed, just spread apart, flowing around us forever." She lets the water drain from between her fingers, staring off at the bay, water glinting in the sunset. "That's why he didn't want James buried on land. Didn't want him sealed up in a box, cut off from the rest of us." She sniffs. "Took hours of yelling to get that out of him. He thought it was silly, didn't want to admit it. He wasn't sure about souls. 'Never saw a soul,' he said, 'But I know sea and sky, and that's what we are. Sea, given form with a sprinkling of earth and brought to life by the light of the stars. Blood and sweat and tears, piss and cum…'" Mike and Tom look shocked at that word coming out of their mother's mouth, and Sarah's blushing, but Penny's not paying attention to the look they're sharing; she's watching the ocean, remembering Nelson kneeling in front of her, voice trembling. They'd been fighting for hours, yelling, raging, and the heart of it was finally coming out of him by that point. "'You start out a pulse of water, form in water, and when you die your water leaves your body, tries to get back to the rest of the water. Your tears, the water of your friends and family, of everyone who ever loved you leaks out, seeking another second with you. Every day, every night the light of a billion stars hits the oceans, glints off of it, makes it live. I couldn't stick him in a box and wall him off from that.'" She carefully wipes the tears from her eyes, and dips her hands into the sea. She looks up at her boys, and granddaughter. "It's not heaven, but it's forever, and it's certain. And that's all he needed."

Tom's standing next to her, rolled up cammo pants just brushing the waves as they slip by, his hand rests on her shoulder. "What do you need, Mom?"

Penny stands up. "I don't know." She sighs, running her hand through her hair. "Things I can't have."

"I want the image of him to have been real," Sarah says, fairly sure that's part of what Penny's not willing to say. What she wants but can't have. "I want to remember things like sailing with my dad without a cloud hanging over it." Penny wraps an arm around Sarah. "I want to be able to enjoy memories like… Like those stupid little shot glasses he always brought home for me… First one from Tokyo on my twenty-first birthday, without feeling like I'm stabbing my brother in the back."

Penny nods at that.

"Shot glasses?" Tom asks.

"He'd get me shot glasses from the different ports he went to. Post cards before I was twenty-one, shot glasses after. I had a book of them, with a map of the world on the first two pages, and little dots for each city I had a post card from. I think I've got Pearl Harbor from every angle, now. And enough shot glasses from Kitsap," the _Stennis'_ homeport "to host a party."

"Dad did that with us," Mike adds. "When we were kids, no matter where we were stationed and how often we moved, the first thing that got unpacked was the map. Big one, covered most of a wall, and there were little dots all over it for where he'd been."

"He always sent back extra stamps from wherever he went. We'd get letters, you'd," Tom's looking at his mother, "read them to us when we were little, and there were always stamps in them. Bright and pretty and… And when John got big enough to read and write, he'd send letters to Dad, too, and got his own stamps, and…" Tom swallows hard. "And we were all clambering to write, to get our own letters. John used to help me write mine, when I was too small to hold a pencil correctly."

"You were three, and your brothers all got their own letters, and you were so jealous, so you had to be able to write yourself." Penny smiles at that memory. "All four of you, at the kitchen table, working on your letters. You would draw him pictures and John would carefully write the letters on the back, and you'd copy them."

"Yeah." Tom bites his lip. "That's how I remember it."

"That's why John was the only one of the four of you who started Kindergarten unable to read or write. All the rest of you had to get in on your own letters as fast as you could."

The sun's slipping behind the skyline of the city, shadows lengthening as Mike toes off his shoes and steps into the surf, too. "He taught me how to drive. Dad was on a float, and you were working at that research lab, doing…" Mike looks at Penny and she shakes her head, "whatever it was. He had leave, and I wanted to learn how to drive, so he taught me."

Sarah winces at that.

"What?" Mike asks.

"I've seen Dad teach people stuff," and again, she's thinking of Tim. "It's a miracle you ever got behind the wheel of a car again."

Mike smiles. "It was a long time ago. He wasn't exactly patient, but I didn't have to do it perfect the first time out, either. I take it he didn't teach you?"

"No. Mom did. Pop taught Tim. After they broke up, I never saw him for more than two days at a time. Mom had full custody, and he… I don't know how they worked it out. If he was around, he got to visit. He wasn't around much. I got a lot of post cards, and some letters. And three or four times a year we'd spend a few days together." Sarah stares out toward the horizon. "They gave me his medals, and Grandpa's and his dad's. They gave me his flag and his sword… Do any of you… They don't mean anything to me. I never met Grandpa, but he was real to you."

Tom nods. "I'll take them, unless… Mom?"

She shakes her head, staring at the ocean. "Nelson was never bits of metal and cloth to me. This," she trails her toes over the waves, "is where he lives. Your grandfather is just stories to me. Even your grandmother barely knew him. They were married for four months, and he was away for two of them. And John's…" She's crying again, just like the empty spot on her mantle place, where John's picture used to be, the picture she can't stand to see, now, she doesn't want his medals. "I don't…" Penny doesn't know what to do with that. She doesn't know how to reconcile the fact that John was a huge part of her life, her oldest _son,_ and yet the cause of so much anguish. "They mattered more to him than anything else," she finishes limply.

"I don't want them," Sarah says. They, along with all of the other things John's XO gave her at his burial, are still in a box, in her closet, untouched since she got home with them. "I want a reason, an excuse, something…" Sarah's crying hard right now. "Brain cancer, anything. Hell, I want… I want to be able to say Tim provoked him, and, I know he didn't. I do. And, I feel so terrible, so _guilty_ for wanting it, because it wasn't Tim's fault, but I don't want my Dad to be a monster."

Penny nods at that, too. She doesn't want her son to be a monster, either. Wants him to have been someone else more than anything she's ever wanted, and she understands, in a way she never did before, that desperate desire to find any excuse, no matter how lame. But, like with everything else about this, like Sarah, just because she wants an excuse doesn't means she's going to get one, and doesn't mean she, or Sarah, is willing to just make one up.

Tom and Mike don't have anything to add to that. John wasn't central to their lives, and while there's disgust at how his story ended, and grief at his loss, this doesn't hit them the way it does Penny or Sarah because he wasn't part of any sort of daily existence for them. Neither of them had any sort of fantasies or desires for things that involved John.

But Penny did, looking out into the ocean she can feel every drop of hope she had of reconciliation bleeding away. She never thought they, as a family, would get to good. Never expected Tim to be able to tolerate time with his father again. And given what Ducky knew, she never expected him to be able to sit at a table with John, either. But she had hoped that, at some point, John would get it, would understand what he had done was wrong, and why, and even if thing with Tim were past saving, if he could have made that leap, could have found a desire to repent hurting Tim like that, then her relationship with him wasn't past saving.

And now it is.

And now, forever, the last thing she ever said to her son was, 'If you can't see reason, then you cannot be in my life!'

And now he never will be.

Sarah had hopes. She'd had this little fantasy, and she knew it wasn't going to happen, but it was hiding there, in the back of her heart, that they'd all get together for her wedding and everyone would get along. She doesn't remember her parents ever having anything that could be called 'good times' but they were always civil to each other. And she and Mom and Tim used to have good times, and she misses them. She and Dad had good times, lots of them. And she and Tim… lots of different fun with him. So she kept hoping that, maybe, since they all managed to do fine one on one, that somehow they'd be okay together, for a night or two, at least. Her dad would walk her down the aisle, and just like Glenn's little sister is one of her bride's maids, Tim would stand up with him, and Mom would be standing there, waiting to see her come walking down and… And all that's left of that is the memory of the wish for it.

Ducky and Glenn find them still standing there, an hour later, watching the waves roll by.

* * *

"You asked, pretty much, if John was gay. Why?" Mike asks Ducky as they eat dinner.

Sometimes it's nice to not be speaking the local language. There's a freedom that goes with that, because no one around can overhear what it is you're talking about. It's clear that John's very much on everyone's mind as they go to dinner, it's also clear that, had they been in the States, there would have been no shot of talking about him. No one wants any of this conversation heard by outsiders. But here, anonymous, speaking a foreign language; that opens the boundaries of what would normally be considered outside the realm of polite dinner conversation.

Ducky realizes that not only did he not actually connect that question about what John felt about 'male people' to anything else, but, nothing they've mentioned about Tim and John's issues has touched on that, too. "When Timothy had a 104 degree fever and was delirious, I heard some of the things your brother used to call him come out of his own mouth. While I don't think any of this ever involved physical contact, there did seem to be a deeply sexual undertone to the things John was saying to him, threatening him with. Why fixate on his son, but not his daughter? Why that sort of fixation? It wasn't enough to verbally assault Timothy, it wasn't enough to threaten him with violence, when Timothy needed to be 'put in his place' John didn't threaten to beat him or keelhaul him, he threatened to have him gang raped." Tom and Mike are wincing at that. "Why? There's a level of self-loathing that's common among certain types of psychopaths. Men who fixate on what they hate about themselves and try to rid everyone else of it."

Mike and Tom think about that while chewing. "But, Tim's not gay, right?" Tom says. "Married, kid…"

"He's not." Sarah says. "I knew Dad was a raging homophobe. I had a lesbian roommate in college, and he met her once." She winces. "Not good at all. But Tim, no. Spend five minutes with him and Abby and you know he likes girls."

"Tim is, to a lesser degree now, and a greater one then, quiet, timid, gentle, feminine," Penny adds.

Mike laughs. "Gentle… Uh huh. I went to bootcamp with those guys, and they tell me Tim more than holds his own. And… he survived that fight, so he's got to be a fighter, now."

"He is, now." Sarah grabs her phone. It takes a moment, but she finds the shot of Tim and Abby out for dinner after Tony and Ziva's wedding. "There he is, in a kilt, eyeliner, and nail polish, out for a romantic dinner with his pregnant wife. Timid left the building a while ago, too. But, yeah, he's a bit more femme than Joe Average, and he's very good at quiet. He can practically turn invisible when he needs to.

Both Mike and Tom look uncomfortable at the image of Tim with Abby. Glenn's amused by the shot. Ducky glances at the picture more closely. "That's my gray fedora. I've been looking for that!"

Sarah sighs a bit, pokes her feijoada, and says to Ducky, "Are you looking for a reason, too? Trying to make sense of why Dad could be that guy?"

He gently squeezes her hand. "Probably. There's nothing in this world more terrifying than senseless, violent hate. Whether it's true or not, it's easier to think that John was delicately wired to begin with, and finding something inside himself that his world could not accept, he shattered, and then, trying to put the pieces back together, sought out to eradicate it from himself and anyone near him."

Glenn almost says something at that, but stops himself.

Sarah looks at him, not asking verbally, and he shakes his head.

"It's okay, you can say it. I doubt someone else here isn't thinking it," Sarah says.

"He's your Dad, Sarah. I don't…"

"It's okay."

Glenn takes a deep breath, not sure he wants to say this, but, if he doesn't, she'll keep nagging, and if he lies, one of them'll catch it, so… "All right. Look, that's poetic and all, and maybe it covers the crap he put Tim through when he was a kid, but…" Glenn shakes his head. "He didn't try to kill Tim when he found him kissing another boy or wearing a skirt and eyeliner. Not like Tim was on the _Stennis_ leading a gay pride parade. He tried to kill Tim for making him look bad. I know the man I knew, the guy who met me as Sarah's husband to be, I know the image of her 'Dad,' and unless there's been a massive mistake about this, he had to be a flat out sociopath to be her 'Dad' and also be the guy who ordered Tim killed.

"I didn't live it. And I'm putting this together from the bits I've heard, but… Annapolis was the sticking point. That's when John goes supernova. If Tim goes, he brings pride upon his clan and gets to be generation what, twenty-six? of McGees sailing the seven seas for the glory of the USA. He doesn't go, and John's the one who couldn't keep up the family tradition. Tim's kind of soft and girly as a kid, and that makes John look bad in front of all of his other Navy buddies. John's the one who can't raise a 'proper' son. Tim shows him up, embarrasses him in front of the SecNav and shows the entire Navy that John's not in control of his fleet, so he's got to get the control back.

"All the rest of it… I don't know. But what happened on the _Stennis_ sounded to me like John was willing to kill or die rather than let anyone get the better of him.

"I mean, if Tim's test had failed. If he set it off and John's guys swooped into action, took care of it, shut it down, and passed with flying colors, do any of you think he would have done anything besides make some snide comments?"

Ducky nods at that. "We had a case several years ago that John was… not exactly part of, but near. Other than making Timothy uncomfortable with some snide comments about his weight and love life, nothing happened."

Ducky watches Tom and Mike and Sarah, they've spent time with John most recently out of the six of them, he's curious as to what their take on it is.

"I wouldn't have thought there would have been any issues if John passed," Mike answers, "But I also didn't know he and Tim were having such a bad time, and I would have never thought that he would have told his secretary to have someone killed for him. But, yeah, he was a bad loser and you never wanted to screw something up on his watch."

Tom's not saying anything, but it's the sort of silence that goes with thinking something heavy.

"Tom?" Mike asks.

"Brandon," Tom's oldest son, "got into Annapolis seven years ago. I told John the next time I saw him, our semi-annual beer and chat, and he did all the right things, congratulations and the rest of it. We're in Tokyo, because I had leave and was home, and the waiter brought us the wrong beers, and John went off on him. Only reason the poor guy didn't disembowel himself was that John did it in English and I didn't translate. He was so sorry he looked ready to cry, and that was without knowing what John was saying to him. Then John didn't talk to me for a year and a half. I didn't put together what was going on, until now. We're busy, months can go by without touching base, and I didn't think anything about it, but the next time I hear from him, it's to tell me that you're on the New York Times Bestsellers list."

"Oh." Sarah says. "Tim got there years before I did."

Tom's eyebrows rise. "Tim writes?"

"Dad never said anything about that to anyone. He's Thom E. Gemcity, has a series of novels out. Each one hits the bestseller list for the first week it's out. He's a good, solid midlist author."

"Because that isn't who Tim was supposed to be," Penny says. "He was supposed to be a sailor. Supposed to be the next McGee at Annapolis, supposed to be the third Admiral McGee. That's what John said most often to me about it, that Tim was wasting his time, life, and potential."

"So, Tim shows him what he can do, for the Navy, and he goes bonkers and tries to kill him," Tom says, thinking it through. "I think Glenn's got it. He couldn't stand to lose, probably didn't think he'd get caught, or that it'd come back on him, and he took the shot to even up the board."

Mike thinks about that. "Almost. I bet he saw it as cheating. We all did it the 'right' way. Went to Annapolis, put our years in, got shot at, literally bled for it, put everything else in our lives on hold or in second place, lived for the Navy, and worked our way up. Then Tim shows up, with the SecNav, who, not to put too fine a point on it, but I've never even _met_ and counts coup on John. He got the prize without doing the work."

"He was in a Captain's uniform when he did it," Ducky adds, thinking Mike may be onto something here. "An Irish Naval Service uniform. That was his cover for the op, Captaen McGee, but other than the insignia, which is really only visible on the bill of the cap, it looks identical to a US Naval uniform. And these days, Timothy is on a first name basis with Secretary Jarvis. That may have been the trigger, the 'final insult,' assuming that John saw Timothy's life as an insult, a rejection of the things he loved best. Timothy in the trappings of his dearest joy, destroying it. After all, if that attack had been real, it would have crippled the Third Carrier Group. An attack that would have made Pearl Harbor look like child's play, done by his son, carried out on his ship, and he was unable to stop it."

They sit there quietly for a moment, all six of them thinking about that, feeling it, and, while it's abundantly clear that no one ever really knew John, that feels plausible.

Sarah looks up from her plate to all of them, and quietly says, "I was wrong. Having a reason doesn't help."

Glenn hugs her.

* * *

They spend two days, mostly on the beach. They talk to each other, about life in general, and John's life in particular, and time with each other is comforting, but, like Sarah said, it doesn't help. It doesn't clean up the mess or make what happened better. It just puts them in a somewhat better place to deal with what happened. It gives them some context. And it's a place for Sarah and Penny to at least admit that they miss and want the good times they had with John, without feeling too guilty about it.

Ducky thinks that's probably all they could hope for.


	119. McScuito Mark II

It's different the second time. Not that it's less exciting, but… there's a sense of calm this time.

So, they're only _almost_ bubbling out of their skins with excitement at getting to see McScuito Mark II.

Abby's already on the table, holding Tim's hand, both of them waiting to get the show on the road as the UltraSound Tech gets her stuff set up.

New one from last time, but Tim doesn't remember the last Tech's name. According to her nametag, this one is Nancy.

"So, are we thinking this is a boy or a girl?" She asks as picks up ultra sound wand and applies lube to it.

"Boy," she answers.

"Okay, then let's get some shots of him!" And after a few seconds, a little humming from Nancy, and Abby stiffening up slightly, and then relaxing (Tim's working on not paying too close of attention to how they get those pictures. He's afraid his brain might decide it's sexy if he watched and that'd just be… well, probably icky and horrifically inappropriate, so he's watching the monitor) they find the familiar little white on black shrimp on the monitor.

"And there he is!"

And like the first time, Abby's hand clenches in his in excitement, and he feels a hot rush of excited pleasure as he kisses her, eyes never leaving their baby.

"His heart's beating fine." Nancy zooms in so they can see the blood thrumming through him. "Uh huh… Yep…"

That sounds a little off.

"What?" Abby asks, sounding a little scared. Neither of them are experts in this, but from what they're seeing everything looks good.

"How far along do you think you are?"

Abby thinks, remembering that she's got to add two weeks to the right number. "Ten almost eleven weeks? Why?"

Nancy nods. "Yeah, that looks right. Did you want to do a Nuchal fold test?"

And Tim and Abby remember that you've got to do that before the twelfth week. "Yes."

"Okay, let's get that measured, too."

* * *

"I was going to ask why you two waited so long to come in, but… You've had some excitement lately, haven't you?" Dr. Draz asks as she walks into the office, looking at Tim.

Tim and Abby nod. Tim adds, dryly, "You could put it that way."

"What happened?"

"Ever hear the phrase 'I feel like I got hit with a truck?'" Tim points to himself.

Dr. Draz winces. "I'm sorry. They catch the guy?"

Tim and Abby glance at each other, since they've never tested out the cover story, they've never answered any questions about it before.

Tim shakes his head. "No. But," Draz knows he's a cop, "I've got good people checking into it for me."

"Good. Okay, I'm sure that's more small talk than you'd like."

They're both nodding at her.

She opens up her folder. "Everything looks fine. Nuchal fold is exactly the way it's supposed to be. Heart, lungs, brain, spinal cord all look exactly like they should for almost eleven weeks along. All in all this looks like a perfectly healthy small person."

Tim and Abby both beam at that.

"I do have a question for you, I see you've got a prescription for Zofran?"

Abby nods.

"Who's Dr. Palmer, your PC?"

Also a question they don't precisely know the answer, too, though both of them are familiar with the idea that your buddies are not supposed to be writing prescriptions for you. "Yeah," Abby answers. "We've been seeing a lot of him lately."

Draz eyes Tim again. "I'd imagine so. Well, first off he's a few months off of cutting edge, we've got something better now, it's called Flarlan. Zofran works for four to six hours, and this works twenty-four. Zofran was designed to deal with chemo-induced nausea, and Flarlan was designed to deal with morning sickness in specific. If you especially love Zofra, we can stay with that, or I can switch you to Flarlan."

"I'm usually feeling pretty good by noon, so, do I want something that works for 24 hours?"

Dr. Draz shakes her head. "Always a good plan to use as little medication as'll do the job. I'll write you up a longer scrip for more Zofran. We've also got another new goodie. We test your pee and can tell the baby's sex from it. Insurance doesn't cover it, but if you don't want to wait the nine weeks…"

"Scary expensive?" Tim asks. 'Not covered by insurance' are words he often hears bandied about in horror as he's been sitting in different waiting rooms. Fortunately as government employees, they've still got insurance that covers everything, and as an agent hurt in the line of duty, he's got an extra layer of coverage, so those are not words that have slipped out of his lips. (For which he's grateful. He got a hold of one of the itemized price lists of what his treatments are running and almost passed out because he thought it was a bill.)

"Not too bad. Seventy-five. We can do it here and it doesn't take long, so…" She's looking at Abby.

"Oh yeah! Lead me to the specimen jar."

"Once we're done with this part. Any extra concerns? It's pretty much the same routine as last time."

Tim can't believe he didn't think of it until now, but he didn't. "Where's the placenta?"

Dr. Draz smiles. "Exactly where it's supposed to be, right up top. Though that reminds me, the hospital you used last time doesn't allow VBACs." She can see Tim and Abby's blank looks. "Vaginal birth after C-section. It's a liability and expense issue. Closest one that does is about an hour away from here in Alexandria."

Tim's ready to say, "Another C-section's fine," after all, it seemed to go smoothly _to him_ , and he likes their hospital a lot, he especially likes how close to their home it is, but in that he is now a veteran pregnant daddy, he doesn't say that, and just waits to see what Abby has to say.

"I'll research. The C-section wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it'd be."

Draz nods. "And if you opt for another one, this time we've got a much better idea of what pain medication agrees with you, so post op should go better."

Abby crosses her fingers. "If we do a c-section, we schedule it ahead of time, right?"

"That's the idea. Up until they put the epidural in, you can always change your mind, but if you wanted to, you could leave here today with a birthday set. Assuming your baby cooperates."

"Huh." Tim can see Abby's desire for the "perfect" natural birth warring with heading out of here with a set date and time. The scientist loves order and precision, and that's definitely where she's most comfortable. The Goth likes natural and organic. He's not sure which side she'll come down on. "So, we could schedule today, and if I did my research and decided to go natural instead?"

"Not a problem. If we schedule today… We're pretty far out, so obviously things can and likely will change, but this makes sure there's an operating room and an anesthesiologist and all the rest of that aware of the fact that sometime in the general vicinity of your due date, they're going to be swinging into action."

Abby nods at that. "Grab your calendar. Let's get a date scheduled."

Tim smiles at that. He likes order and precision, too.

"So, due date is February 5th. We like to do repeat c-sections at 39 weeks, because you're less likely to have started real labor by then, which minimizes the chance of rupture. How does January 28th in the morning sound?"

Tim feels another hot, tingling rush at those words. He's grinning like a dork, but just so happy he can't not let it out.

Abby's squeezing his hand, hard, and nodding at Dr. Draz "Sounds awesome!"

"Wonderful. Anything else?"

They both shake their heads.

"Okay, let's get you set up for the sex test, and then off you go!"

* * *

Smiles broke out across the Gibbs clan as they each checked their phones and saw the tiny, grainy shot of the ultrasound, along with the caption: _Sean James McGee, ETA January 28_ _th_ _, 2016, 10:00 AM. More details when we see each other in person._

And Jimmy would have to admit, as he was showing the shot to Dr. Allan (and anyone else who stayed still long enough to be badgered into seeing the shot), to being in an especially fine mood.


	120. All Hands

Tim gets into his office in a very good mood. He opens up his computer, uploads the shot of Sean, and begins printing it out to put on his door. He figures that's the most efficient way to get the news out to the wider world that another McGee will be joining it soon.

His mood crashes a bit when he wheels himself over and realizes that if he really stretches he can get the shot taped up about a foot lower than it should be. He sighs, holding it in place, and then notices he's got to put the tape on the picture first, and then put it up, because he can't hold it in place and apply tape to it at the same time.

He's taping the picture up when his computer chirps at him. He stops taping. He hasn't heard that chirp before. It's not his go check your email chirp, or his you've got an IM chirp, doesn't sound like Facebook (which he's rarely on at work and hasn't logged onto yet, anyway). It's not the 'a job you're on the hook for just came up' chirp. And he's fairly certain it's not the 'we're low on hackers get over here and do your job' chirp, either.

But, he knows he did tell the computer to let him know when all sorts of things were up. (He can very easily get so into his work that he needs some sort of alarm to let him know to shift focus.) And he knows that if this is a chirp he doesn't remember setting up, he's getting a Zebra alert instead of a Horses alert, so this is some manner of exotic thing looking for his attention.

The computer's on its third chirp by the time he gets to it, and when he sees what's up, he's cursing that he's only got one hand.

He sends out the call fast, anyone who is not actively on a priority one job (terrorism threat, kidnapping) just got called into work.

Someone's attacking NCIS, trying to break his firewall, using their intranet mail servers as an attempted entry point.

Manner, Howard, and Brand are all heading toward his office as soon as he's finished typing up that alert. Three techs in his office, and twenty-two more around the globe. Good place to start.

"We've got an attempted security breech in progress."

Brand's eyes go wide. She's still new enough she doesn't realize something that sounds a lot like this happens all the time. She's happy and excited and a little nervous.

Manner doesn't look impressed. Feds get hacked all the time, usually those hacks fail. In fact, he's a bit annoyed to see Tim get so excited about this.

"Looks like they're trying to use our email system to get in."

Howard also looks bored by this. They know how to shut this down. "So, we're all hot and bothered, why?"

He smiles at her, and by extension anyone who's watching this through his video feed.

"First off," he gestures so they can see what's on his screen, and hits the commands, curses under his breath when he hits a few wrong keys, and then hits them in again, slowly, so that the rest of his crew can see it on their computers, "this one probably would succeed if we just left it alone." They can all see that's some sophisticated code aimed at them. "Second of all, we aren't usually a target of this kind of attack, so they're looking for something specific." They get hit two or three times a day, but usually by people who are just messing around. This attack looks like something that could make it through his firewall, given enough time. "Third of all, I want to see how fast we can get an NCIS mirror system up, and then while they think they're raiding the place, and we're spooning them crap information, I want to see what they're looking at, who they are, and what they're using the information for. This attack looks like it's got some brains behind it, not just kids messing around for kicks, so let's get to it."

And suddenly everyone who's listening knows why this is an all hands situation. Shutting the attack down would take a matter of minutes. Building a mirror site will take hours, if not longer. Containing the attack so that the hackers think they're getting somewhere until they get the mirror up and the hack switched over to the mirror site is yet another level of something all-together.

"Okay, I've got to go see Leon, you all know your specialties, break off into them, and get moving."

Brand's looking elated at the idea of dealing with this, and a bit lost because she's not sure what team she should be. "Never a dull moment, right, Brand?" Tim says. "I want you with Howard, working on finding out who is doing this. Subtle enough so they don't know we're tracking them back, right?"

"Yes, Boss."

"Manner, you know what you're doing, right?"

Manner nods. He's already got his phone in hand, checking to see who else is up and working. "Yeah, Blake, Tomishido, and Frederickson are on, too. We've got making the hackers think they're getting in without letting them see anything interesting."

Tim smiles at them, and waits for a second for them to all file out so he can get wheeling himself up to Leon's office.

* * *

"So, I take it there's something interesting going on?" Leon asks as he eyes Tim.

Tim quickly explains what is going on, and adds, "We've got this, and I'll send up my usual post case report, just thought that you'd like to be kept in the loop about what's going to be a major change to our cyber defenses."

"Yes, that'd be nice," Leon says dryly.

"Here's the change, what we're building right now is a mirror site. Whoever gets into it thinks they're in the NCIS systems, but they aren't. So, for right now, we're building a quick and dirty version just to handle this attack. Once we've got this rolled up, we're going to build a better version. Basically, we're going to get a new, slightly less functional firewall, the mirror, and an alert to let us know if anyone's in. We'll back track from there, and see who's doing what and what they want. Now, it's not impossible for someone to be so good they realize this is a mirror, so we'll still have the real firewall in place, too, but you'll have to get through the fake one and figure out you're not in our real systems before you can take a crack at it."

Leon nods. "Sounds good."

Tim's grinning at him. "Trust me, it will be! Okay, got to go do it." And Tim begins to swing his chair through a turn toward the door.

Leon hops up to open the door for him, and he's at the door when he adds, "By the way, I got your email. Congratulations!"

Tim actually has to think for a second about what Leon's talking about before it hits and he feels tremendously stupid for forgetting. "Oh, yeah, thanks! We're over the moon about it."

Leon smiles at him, nodding. "I understand."

* * *

If he could be bouncing on the balls of his feet, he would be, but he can't, so instead of actually bouncing up and down, Tim's just giving off the impression of wanting to bounce up and down as he waits for the elevator.

He's so happy to have an actual job again. Can't wait to be using his brain! The doors slide open and he almost rockets in, ready to get going, fast!

The doors slide shut, and though Tim had hit the button for the basement, he also presses the button for the Lab, as well.

He rolls in, sees the LabRats ratting away, wrestling data out of samples and Major Mass Spec. Abby looks up from her pipettes and sees the look on his face.

"You've got a real case."

"Yeah. Not sure when I'm heading home, but…"

She smiles at him, seeing how happy he is to be working. "I know the drill. When I get lunch, I'll bring you some?"

"Thank you." He wiggles his finger, and she leans down. He kisses her gently, fingers brushing her tummy. "You let them know?"

She turns away from Major Mass Spec to her computer and points at the shot of Sean on it.

He smiles again. This is a very good day.

* * *

Okay, once upon a time Tim did this whenever he needed to. Code all day, code all night, vanish into numbers and symbols and make the computer sing his tune in its sweet little hum of a voice. No problem! Bring on the code. He was the code master and it was his willing tool.

Not today.

First off, he can type faster than he can talk. At least, he can type faster than he speak code. Sigh. By the time it's out of his mouth he's often getting lost in the details.

Second of all, while it does appear that what eventually does hit the screen is good, it's tiring him out a whole hell of a lot faster than he thinks it should. He used to do this for hours, slurping down coffee, fingers flying, brain firing on all cylinders.

It's been three hours, his eyes are already blurring and he's having a hard time staying focused. Part of it, he absolutely knows, is the lack of caffeine. Large quantities of mild stimulants help keep his brain on track. Part of it, absolutely, is the Tylenol 3. He knows he's not as sharp as he wants to be, but he also knows that if he stops taking it, he'll be hurting too bad to work.

He's (according to him) pathetically grateful when Abby comes in with lunch, thus giving him a good excuse for a break.

"How's it going?" she can see he's less 'go get 'em' than he'd usually be this far into a coding spree.

He rolls his eyes and sighs, pulling the bag toward him. "What's for lunch?"

"Cold cucumber-dill soup, smoked salmon sashimi, iced mint tea."

"Sounds good." He's looking really tired as he takes the straws and glasses out of the bag.

"You're fried, aren't you?"

"I shouldn't be."

She shuts the door and then kisses the top of his head, sitting on his desk, resting her feet between his legs on his chair. "You are allowed to be fried the first time you go back to doing something strenuous after you get really hurt. I didn't go back to work for three months after Kelly was born, remember?"

"Yeah, but you also didn't get to sleep after she was born. I'm sucking up twelve hours a day."

"Which you need." She turns the monitor toward herself and can see where he left off, and suddenly more code starts filling in on the screen. "See, someone else is taking over for you."

He squints a bit, then makes himself not squint; he does not need to squint to read a computer monitor five feet away from his face. "Harrison out of the Great Lakes office. He's good."

"Wonderful. Let me guess, there's no way I can get you to go home."

He shakes his head. "Can't go home. I can take breaks, catch a nap on the sofa, but as long as I'm saying we've got to turn this into a trap for the guys attacking us, I've got to keep watch on it."

She nods. "Then get a nap, okay?"

"After lunch, I'll get an hour down."

"Good."

* * *

Okay, two hours. It was supposed to be an hour. He was sure he wasn't going to sleep. Just lay down on the sofa and rest a bit. Next thing he knew Jimmy was gently poking him.

"I guess you can't be in too much pain."

Tim sits up, gingerly, wincing. "I wasn't." As soon as his brain realizes he's awake, it starts sending flares of pain through his shoulder, arm, calf, and foot. "Umng!"

"That's why I poked you, would have let you sleep but your neck and shoulder were all squashed up, figured you'd hurt even worse if you spent more time like that."

"Thanks." Tim's very gingerly lifting and lowering his shoulder at the collarbone, feeling pain sparking through his pec and shoulder. He tentatively rolls his foot and it screams, too. "Not that I'm not happy to see you, but..."

"My spidey-senses told me you needed help."

Tim raises an eyebrow.

"Got called in on a case. Allan's gassing the van, so I thought I had a minute to say hi and," he hugs Tim, "say thanks for my namesake. Gave Abby a hug on the way down. I've got to get going, okay?"

"You're welcome."

Jimmy's standing up. "I told Abby, I'd poke in when we got back, mostly likely after she's headed home. If you need a ride home tonight and I'm still here, I'll give you one."

"Unless this wraps a lot faster than I think it will, I'm not going home tonight."

"Okay."

"Have fun with the bodies."

Jimmy waves, heading out of Cybercrime.

* * *

Tim swears that once upon a time, he had stamina. He's absolutely certain he used to. But for the time being it's AWOL, and he's the grumpy MP looking to drag its ass back on board and throw it in the brig.

Or he would be, but he's too damn tired to go looking for his lost stamina.

Right now, he has successfully kept an eye on everyone, planned but did not execute how to back track the attack, and ordered pizza and burritos for the whole team.

He'd like to get another nap, but the sofa and both beanbag chairs are currently in use. Manner went home at his normal time, punting his job off to Connon. Howard and Brand both hit sixteen on and were sacking out for their mandated ten off. Trevet had hit ten on and was grabbing a nap to clear his head. Really more than ten hours at a go isn't a great plan, but some hackers do hit their stride after that. (Brand was actually sulking about having to break at 16. Meanwhile, Tim's wishing he had her energy.)

The NCIS mirror decoy is up and running. Tim's made a mental note that that's going into their permanent defenses. Anyone who breaks the firewall is going to get a mound of crap. The pirates who are going after them right now are getting piles of it, meanwhile his crew is getting to see what they're going after. They're mostly pulling up employee data files, Vice Director Craig's travel itinerary for the last six months, but not for the six months coming up, the location of several hundred cases' worth of stored evidence, and case notes for two hundred more cases. His guys haven't found the pattern behind what they're taking, and in that they're still taking stuff, it's readily apparent that they haven't yet figured out that what they're getting is just strings of random numbers. With any luck, they assume that what they're getting is encrypted.

Meanwhile, NCIS has the location of the hack down to somewhere in Mexico City, and in only ten more hours, they should have it down to a street address. That is, assuming that this stop in the track back is the real one. He's got people checking to see if it can be backtracked any further, other people trying to get a fix on where in Mexico City, while a third group attempts to figure out who these guys are, and the fourth (which he is theoretically in charge of) attempts to figure out why they want _this_ particular pile of stuff.

Tim's feeling especially stupid that it takes him this long, but he's tired, he's hurting, he's out of practice, but finally as the clock hits 01:30, he remembers that upstairs there's a person who specializes in putting together vast wodges of data, sorting through them to find patterns, and then explain what they mean.

* * *

"DiNozzo." Tony sounds distracted when he answers.

"You guys still here?" Tim asks.

"Yeah, case up here went hot this afternoon. Just got the scene processed. We found the body of Herico Juaras, personal secretary to Emilio Ventente, the head diplomat from Mexico."

Tim feels something click when he hears that.

"How'd we get the case?"

"Long story. Part of my multi-year long terror cases. What's up?"

"I need you to send Bishop down. We're getting hacked, as of ten thirty this... yesterday morning, from Mexico City."

Tony says something under his breath, possibly, "Eight" but Tim's not sure. He does say, loud enough for him to understand. "According to Ducky our time of death is roughly 10:00 yesterday morning."

"Interesting."

"Yeah. Bishop'll be down soon."

"Thanks, Tony."

* * *

There are patterns, and there are patterns inside patterns, and then there are patterns that require the lens of a certain kind of mind to see.

And then there's junk.

Ellie's looking through what files are being taken. She's sitting on the conference table, shifting things around on the plasma, making notes, munching on a never-ending bag of Swedish fish, sipping her coffee, and shaking her head.

Meanwhile, Tim's in his office, feeling awake and pretty good because he's on crimes solver mode and that's giving him a decent second wind. He doesn't want to think too hard about how he's going to feel when he crashes.

"Okay, so, crime scene photos…"

Tony's got them up on his phone. Leon already knows they're building files for the hackers to find and that the real ones are going to be entered in a few days under a different case name and lead investigator.

Tony keeps flipping through, and finally says, "All set. Should hit your inbox…" and Tim's computer beeps.

Tim glances at his inbox and shifts the photos to the right file. "That's most of them, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Cut a few out. All the ones that indicate we know there were two guys there. We're going to make it look like we know Renuald Transez was the killer."

"All right, and he is?" Tim asks.

"Wet works for a group that makes its money ensuring safe travel for drugs over the border."

Tim nods. "Okay, and… once again, you've got this case why?"

"They use that money to help fund a group that's been trying to shut down the Panama Canal."

"Oh. Haven't we been out of there since…"

"'99. Yeah, we ended up with it because we had more boots on the ground and better intel."

"Ah…" Tim's hit the point where he's too tired to get all of these details. He uploads the photos. "Anyway. New files are up and in. If they grab them, we'll know."

Bishop hops in as he says that, still shaking her head. She takes a long drink of her coffee. "Judging by what they're taking, my best guess is that they want something we've got in evidence, and they want to know who worked the case. They're probably hoping that if anyone notices the breach that they won't be able to tell what they accessed because they grabbed so much stuff."

Tony nods. "Okay, back up to the lab. Let's see what we found but didn't know about."

* * *

Two hours later a PAY ATTENTION TO ME I'M FREAKING RED ALERT IMPORTANT chirp blares out of Tim's computer.

He jerks awake, says some extremely profane things at how bad he's hurting from falling asleep at his desk, rubs his eyes until they focus, and then ineffectually whacks at his mouse to get his computer to shut up.

The third time he successfully manages to do it.

His eyes scan over the screen, he smiles, and he sends back a very quick IM. _Good job! A round of whatever the hell your team likes to drink is on me. Paypal me the bill!_

He shifts in his chair, everything hurting all over, but he's got things to do, so he grabs his wheelchair and shifts over to it, feeling his chest and arm and legs ache as he does so.

In the conference area he announces, "Jimenez and Smith out of Rio got the address! We know where those bastards who are hacking us are. I'm heading upstairs."

* * *

By the time the elevator gets to the bullpen, Tim's really hurting. He thought he was hurting before. He was wrong. He hurts all over in a way he hasn't for weeks.

He's making little whimpering noises each time he pushes the wheels forward, and knows in a way that he never has before that these days he literally cannot make himself pull an all-nighter.

Draga and Ziva aren't at their desks. Tony's not at his, either. Bishop is at hers, still munching away, files spread out all around her.

"We got the hackers' address," Tim says, and notices that she doesn't look up. He looks closer and sees the cords on her earphones.

"Bishop!" She turns to him, and he hears a groan from behind Tony's desk as Tony slowly pulls himself up from the nap he was getting on the floor. For a second, he and Tony share a quick 'we're too old for this shit' look, and then Tim says, "My guys got the address of the hackers. We know where they are. So…"

Tony nods. "Ziva and Draga are driving down to Norfolk to talk to a lead. Is this the sort of thing where we've got time to get to Mexico ourselves, or should we send in the guys on the ground?"

"I'd send in the guys on the ground. I mean…" Tim doesn't know the Mexico City field team. In fact, he's not entirely sure Mexico City has field agents, what with the whole it's several hundred miles from the ocean and not a big spot for US Naval presence. He knows that his guys are there because they're stationed out of the consulate, thus giving them the best shot at rock solid communications and good security. "Where are your guys on the ground?"

Tony rubs his eyes. "Um… San Diego?" He stretches, winces, twists his neck and it pops loudly. "Think Leon's still here?"

"Let's go check?" Tim's got no idea of Leon's here or not, after all, not like he can see Leon leave from his office these days.

They head up.

"No Vera," Tony says. Vance's new secretary isn't at the desk.

Tim knocks on the door, no answer, so he pokes his head in, no Vance. He shakes his head at Tony.

"So, Mr. Fourth-in-Command. Can you order a strike team?"

Tim's never thought about that before. "Probably. Question is, do you want to shut this down, or leave it in place and see if they come for whatever you found?"

Tony shakes his head. "Already know what they want. Jimmy found it in the autopsy. Henrico had five data chips sewn into his arm. The Lab's cleaning them up, and in the morning Abby'll start messing with them. I'm sure you'll get called in on them, too."

Tim nods. "So, then, you want me to call in a strike team, or grab the jet so you can go yourself?"

Tony sighs. Then he laughs a little, pulling out his cell phone. "That's how Gibbs would have done it. I need to call the CIA. They'll get pissy if I don't let them in on this, and I know they've got boots on the ground a lot closer than we do. But, if you can get it up on MTAC so we can see what we're dealing with, and brief the Spooks, that'd be great."

Tim nods, tired. "That I can do."

* * *

It's been years since Tim's watched a mission he broke go live in MTAC. But he's sitting there, next to the observation seats, not in his usual place at the com (Draga's handling that now) watching the glow of three CIA agents and ten SEALs swoop down into what looks like a small auto body shop in downtown Mexico City and "neutralize" the "targets."

Once the targets were "neutralized," he sees two more bodies, his guys from the Mexico City office, hurrying in. They're taking custody of the computers. It took a major pissing match between Tony and Hullen (CIA contact for this op) but somehow Tony won control of the scene and the evidence.

CIA's getting credit for the bust.

Mexico is happy to see another branch of what has been a problem for them go up in smoke.

All around, it's been a good day.

And when he rolls out of MTAC, and sees Abby standing there, waiting for him, he very happily lets her roll him out of NCIS and home, to a long and blissful sleep.


	121. Back At It

Tim worked straight through Tuesday, 'round the clock, in at 11:00 to the next 11:00 to the one after it on Wednesday morning. And then on Wednesday he basically slept 'round the clock, too.

Abby took him home, grabbing a quick bite on the way there, and then he rolled into his office, too pooped to even try and make it up the stairs, and crashed into a deep sleep where he woke up briefly to have dinner with his wife and daughter, and then back to sleep again (this time in bed) for the rest of the night.

Thursday morning, usual wake up time, he's moving again, groggy and sore and planning on another 8:00 PM bedtime (and probably a nap in the afternoon) but he's moving because there's 200 emails in his inbox and most of them are not requisitions for more staples or time off.

He's feeding Kelly, while asking Abby, "Tony said something about there being 'data chips' in…" he doesn't remember his name, "the victim's arm. Did you guys get into them?"

Abby shrugs and takes a bite of her graham cracker. She's been craving them since yesterday. No idea what about graham crackers Sean wants, but he's getting a lot of them. "We got into them all right, but it's gobbled-y-gook. So, once we got them up and running, off to your guys they went. Last I heard, there's a guy out of Rota who's an encryption specialist—"

"Atherson." Tim nods. They haven't worked together yet, but he's thinking that if the mirror site he wants to add to his NCIS defenses works the way he wants it to, they'll need to. He's thinking that a hard but not impossible encryption placed on files that are actually collections of random numbers should drive anyone who tries to break into their stuff full-on raving insane.

"Anyway, we got them cleaned off and running a bit before I took you home. From there the data went to him, and the actual chips went to evidence."

Tim nods again as he wipes cereal off of Kelly's chin.

They hear the sound of the sliding glass door open as Heather comes in. "Morning! Oh, there's my girl!" She sweeps over to Kelly, giving her a kiss, and then turns to the adults. "Good to see you, Tim, Abby said you were on a case. They're not treating you too rough, are they?" She's nervously looking him over, staring at his eyes.

He smirks at Abby before replying to Heather. "This time the dark circles under my eyes are just from being tired. Apparently my working-round-the-clock skills are rusty."

Heather smiles at that, relieved. "So, is now a good time?"

Abby says, "Yeah, I think so," and then fills Tim in, "Yesterday, I told her we wanted to talk to her when all three of us were able to get together."

"Right!" Tim can see by the look on Heather's face that she knows where this is going and is happy about it. "How would you feel about being a nanny to two little McGees?"

Heather grins. "Two little McGees sound awesome."

"Wonderful!" Abby hugs her, very happy, and then puts Heather's hand on her tummy. "Say hello to Sean James. If all goes according to plan, he'll be on the outside January 28th!"

"Hello, Sean! Oh, we are going to have so much fun."

Kelly's looking very confused by all this, which is when it hits the grown-ups that they have not made any sort of specific comments _to her_ about all of this. Abby says to her, "You've got a little brother, here, inside Mommy's tummy."

Kelly's eyes narrow. That is not information that means anything to her. She does reach out and poke Abby in the tummy, but nothing happens, so she's not satisfied by that response.

Tim tries from this direction. "You're a big sister. And in the winter, when it gets very cold outside, you'll get a little brother to play with."

"Molly?" Kelly asks.

"Just like Molly! Molly is Anna's big sister. Anna is Molly's little sister. You've got a little brother growing inside your mommy. He's too little to come out, yet. But when it gets cold he'll be all grown and ready to come out."

Okay, she's looking a little more steady with that. She knows who Molly and Anna are and how they relate. "Bwofer?"

Good point, no one in their family has a little brother. (Okay, not true, Abby has Luca and Kyle, but Kelly doesn't know who they are, and Jimmy is the little brother, but no one's ever even met the illusive Clark.) And as of yet they have not gotten into what Aunt or Uncle means, just that that's the title certain people in the family have.

Heather's smiling at her. "You and your cousins and your mommy and I are all girls. The baby, Sean?" Tim nods, she's got the name. "Is a boy, just like Daddy."

And at that Kelly bursts into sobbing tears because she's got no idea what a boy is, but she knows that Daddy is bigger than Mommy and she doesn't see how anything that size can fit inside her without hurting her mommy. Unfortunately, the adults have no idea what's set her off, and she's woefully ill equipped to explain what the problem is.

Finally, Heather says the magic word 'baby' which is when it finally clicks for Kelly that whatever a brother is, it'll be small, and she begins to calm down.

So, on Thursday, both Tim and Abby are twenty minutes late into work, and somewhat frazzled when they get there, but get there they do.

* * *

First matter of business, before heading into the basement, before battling his emails, is to head up to the Bullpen and check in on Tony. Namely, just because he had gotten his end of the case (and a bunch of other cases) dealt with, did not mean that Tony actually had a shooter… two shooters, Tim thinks Tony mentioned something about there being two of them, in custody.

When he gets up there, he rolls into the bullpen, and... no one. Not even the signs of anyone just stepped out. No abandoned drinks. Computers are off. Hopefully that means they've caught the guy and are all having a late morning, or are out getting him, as opposed to they're all out hunting down new leads.

Tim pulls his phone out of his pocket and types in: _Got you_ _r guy yet? Any specific information you want from what we get off the drives/computers?_

Nothing comes back, so he hopes that means Tony's sleeping.

Next step: Down to his office. He wistfully remembers how fast going up and down the stairs is, let alone the satisfying feeling of moving as soon as you want to be somewhere as opposed to having to wait around for something to get to you, before rolling back toward the elevator.

Step Three: Into his office, turn everything on. Okay, what the hell time is it in Spain? He checks. Six hours ahead. So he pulls up Atherson on his computer for face to face time. He'd expected Kim Atherson to be female, but a middle-aged Black man is facing him on the other side of the screen.

"Hi. I was wondering if you could update me on what you getting off the data DC sent over?"

Atherson snaps to attention at that. Tim might not have known him on sight, but he knows Tim. "Nothing, yet, Boss." Tim's itching to check Atherson's background, that's a very Marine sounding 'Boss.'

"Corrupt data or nasty encryption?"

"1024 bit key."

Tim knows that's code for _this is impossible._ "So, right out of the Cryptonomicon?"

He's not surprised that Atherson gets that reference. He's also not surprised to see that makes Atherson relax a bit. "Exactly. If you can find a key for it, if you can find me part of the key for it…"

Tim nods; he gets it. They don't make computers big and fast enough to break that encryption, not without help.

"That all, Boss?"

"Almost. I'm thinking of spiffing up out cybersecurity. We've got that mirror site in place right now, and what I want to do is make a fully functional version, with all of our files. I want file names, dates, and who is on them encrypted, tough but not unbreakable, and then I want all of the details in those files to be encrypted piles of random numbers and letters."

Atherson smiles. Anyone who breaks the first layer will assume they've got a dual encryption going. He laughs at McGee's idea. "You are sick."

"Thank you!" Tim nods, smiling. "Once we've got the full mirror up and in place, are you set to handle that?"

"It'll take me less than a day to write the scripts…" He pauses and thinks. "You just want me to do the encryption, right? Someone else is handling the script that produces a mirror file for every real one?" Tim nods. His crew in DC will handle that. "Just promise me, if anyone does get into it, that you'll make sure I get logs of the back tracking so I can see them try to break it." Atherson is grinning at that idea.

"Oh yeah. That'll be fun to watch. Trust me, we get someone take a whack at it, it'll be movie night for NCIS Cybercrime world over."

Atherson laughs at that. 'I'll bring the popcorn."

"Thank you, Atherson."

"No problem, Boss."

Tim logs off from that and then calls up his Mexico City team. No one answers and he realizes he should have checked the time there. It's… no they're only an hour behind, so... He double checks. He's only got two guys out of Mexico City, and they're on shift together, from about 10:00 to 14:00 and from 18:00 to 22:00. _Interesting schedule, must have built in siesta time._ But so far it's working.

He sends an email to them asking for facetime once they get in.

Then it's back to his email backlog.

* * *

_999 emails to read_

_999 emails_

_Open one up, deal with the muck_

_999 email to read_

He swears the damn things are coming in just as fast as he's dealing with them. It's occurring to him that part of being able to get through with his back log was doing nothing but emails, but part of it was also that no one was sending him anything of any substance. But as of Tuesday, he's really back, which means that, in addition to requisitions for staples, he's also getting case work, thorny code issues, and requests for 'opinions' (aka, please tell me what to do) on sticky cases.

It feels good. Sisyphean, but this is the hill he wants to be rolling a boulder up. (At least now, in a week or two the shine may wear off.)

He's absently rubbing his knee, reading over a request from one of his Techs in the Seattle Office for how to translate what he just did so the Agent in charge understands and is able to use the information he's found, let alone get the right stuff for him once he's out again, when it hits him how much he's not hurting right now (only an ache in his foot, knee, and shoulder. He can't even feel his ribs right now.), and apparently the combination of light work and adequate sleep is very good for keeping his brain off of his body.

Another hour after that he gets face time with Valenz and Droit, his agents in Mexico City.

"What have you found?"

Valenz, who judging by both accent and skin tone, actually is Mexican, replies, "Lots and lots of data, but nothing useful, yet."

"1024 bit encryption?" Tim asks.

Droit, a woman in her early twenties, shakes her head. "Word files."

Tim stares at them. "Word? Word for Windows?"

They both nod, looking forlorn.

Valenz adds, "None of them are less than a thousand pages long, they're just blocks of random numbers and letters. No spacing. No punctuation. No paragraphs. Just millions of characters."

"Some sort of code?"

Droit shrugs. "Maybe. Since it's in Word we can't even use our usual tools on it. Right now we're trying to get them into a form the computer can mess with."

Tim nods, not like you can give the computer a .docx and tell it to decrypt.

"Um…" He's thinking. While he does write on his typewriter, he also writes on his computer for any sort of second or third drafts and all of his editing, and he knows Word inside and out. "Okay, so, either you produce your information, encrypt it, and then…" He winces. His computer geek wants to scream at this, and the writer is appalled at the work involved. "God, this is messy… Cut and paste it into Word. Which version is it?"

"Word 2015."

"Newest version. Give me a second." He pulls his version of it up and fiddles around. "Okay, open one of the files."

He sees Valenz and Droit focus on the screen, and Droit's hand moving over the keyboard. "Top of the page, see all those options on the toolbar?"

Droit nods. It's similar, but not identical to Open Office, which is the software his team is using. (Tim prefers Word for writing novels. He doesn't write novels at work, usually. His employees really don't write novels at work. Switching to shareware software for anything he didn't absolutely need the licensed version of saved his budget 500k a year in licensing fees. He's fine to swap that out for a bit less functionality.)

"See the 'Review' tab?"

More nodding.

"Go to versions." At the very least, the versions tab will show him what changes happened between saves, and if everything was uploaded all at once, he'll be able to see that, too. "Open the most recent version, open the version before that." He's half waiting for Droit (who's doing this) to say there aren't any other versions, but she's clicking away. "Okay, save both of them with different names." He waits a few more seconds. "Over to compare." He uses that all the time when he's writing for his edits. It's an easy way for him to merge two versions of the story into each other. "Put both versions up, and let's see how different they are."

They all wait, Compare takes a while on big blocks of text, and this is supposed to be thousands of pages long. After ten minutes of heel cooling, he sees his tech's faces light up, smiles spreading wide. "What?"

"Lots of letters are popping up as different between the newer version and the old one," Valenz says. His eyes are skimming over the screen.

"It's in Spanish, one letter at a time, but no code beyond being buried in this. A meeting place and time."

Droit adds, "Maybe fifteen words buried in thousands of pages of text."

Tim's thinking that's actually a clever way to hide a text. A book code of sorts. As long as you had the base document to compare it to, you could hide whatever you wanted in it and it'd be impossible for anyone to find. And unlike a book code, you've actually got to know your way around the software in question to find the cipher.

Tim's smiling as he says, "Dig the good stuff out and let us know what's going on. You're up to date on the fact that the CIA's read into this, too, right?" He catches some less-than-perfectly professional eye rolls between his techs and sympathizes. "Yeah, I know, it'd be a lot more fun to 'share' everything we know and just give them the raw files, and let them stew until someone figures out how to use Word, but sooner or later we'll want them to be nice to us, so suck it up and hand it over."

"On it, Boss."

* * *

"Hi, Ziva." Tim looks up from his computer as Ziva heads into his office. It hits him that he texted Tony hours ago and hadn't yet heard back. "Everything okay?"

"Yes, McGee. Tony sent me a text. He'd apparently just gotten one from you, but right now he and Bishop are in Kazakhstan."

"Because why wouldn't they be?" Phew, he breathes out, happy his part of this case is keeping him nice and comfy in DC. "So, I guess you want the heads up?"

"That would be nice."

"Pull up a chair. It's good."

Ziva nods and sits next to Tim.

"First off, those chips in…"

"Juarez."

"Yeah. They have the encryption of the gods on them. Without help, there is no way to break them." Though he had sent Atherson a heads up to compare the encrypted files to each other to see if possibly there was a similar sort of code that they were using with the Word docs. He knows that it's a beyond long shot that they'd use the exact same encryption on the almost same base documents and end up with a letter for letter comparable text, but, in that they're getting precisely nowhere without the key, it was worth a shot. "No news back on that, yet. However, if you've got anything, or the CIA has anything they think might be an encryption key, or part of a key, we need it."

Ziva's paying attention, looking through her notes. Back when they did just plain murders she could keep it all in her head, but with cases like these, where there are hundreds of actors moving through years' worth of data, she needs notes.

"I'm not seeing anything listed as a key."

"Okay. It's worth keeping an eye open for, and if CIA has tech guys with more data, it's worth pressing them to see if they can find anything."

She nods and makes a note of that.

"Next part, how many Word files have you run into?"

That does seem to trigger something for Ziva. Her eyes light up. "A lot of them. They're sending emails back and forth to each other with these files on them. CIA has been over them with a fine tooth comb, and they know there has to be something there, but not what." She's flipping through data pages on her phone. "Like this one. A Word document with 400 pages of the New York City phone book on it. CIA thinks it's a book code, but they haven't found the matching cipher, yet."

"That one's older isn't it?"

Ziva nods.

"They figured out some new tricks. Anything that matches something else, something you can check… Okay, this is going to be boring, take a lot of time, and probably not get you any information you haven't already figured out, but here's how it works. Someone scanned in the New York City Phone book. Then they went through and just added letters and numbers to spell out whatever it is. To anyone looking for a code it'll look like typos. Anyone who has the real version scanned in can use Word, which has a compare feature, to compare the old version to the new version, and it'll light up all the changes.

"Now, the ones that my guys pulled out of Mexico City are blocks of random numbers and letters. Nothing you can compare to, unless you've got the original, or they've written them on Word 2015, and you know how to use the Versioning Tool."

"So, you are saying that I need a herd of interns to scan documents so we can compare, and the secretarial staff to start going through any of the new ones we've got?"

"Unless you want to do it yourself."

For a moment Ziva looks overwhelmed, and the she smiles. "You know, I think this looks like a job for all of those students at Quantico."

Tim has an evil smile on his face, too. "I'd think that pulling a class of CIA wannabes off training and making them scan documents seems like a fine way for them to grasp the truly grueling nature of spy work and how remarkably unglamorous this whole thing can be."

Ziva's getting up when it hits Tim that he's got no idea how the actual case from upstairs is going. "So, you guys have your shooters?"

She shakes her head. "That's why they're in Kazakhstan."

"Your shooters ran _there_?" Okay, yeah, it's probably a good place to hide out, but McGee wouldn't ever want to be there. From what he knows about the place, ever since it lit up in civil war back in early '15 it makes Afghanistan look like a garden spot.

"No. Or at least, we do not think so. We think the shooters may be in Belize. The CIA and the Mexican Federales are tracking them along with the Local LEOs in Belize. The explosives that were taken from the site of the shooting ended up being used in Kazakhstan ten hours after the shooting."

"Why would the personal secretary of the main Mexican Diplomat have explosives in his possession? And what the hell were they flying to get them there so fast?"

Ziva sighs. "And this is why I will now take a quick and easy murder any day of the week over one of these."

* * *

_I love you, McGeek!_ Pops up on Tim's phone a few hours later.

_Got cell service, I see._ Tim writes back.

_For the next five seconds. Bishop's been complaining about those damn Word documents since we got this case dropped in our laps four months ago. Everyone knew there was something up with them. No one could find what. CIA has whole teams of cryptographers going through everything we found trying to find the ciphers for those damn things._

_Glad it's useful. Mexico City's team is handing over everything it can find. Can you get me in touch with whoever's in charge of Cryptography at CIA on this case? I've got my own specialist and some really encrypted stuff from your victim._

_Sure. Okay, moving again._

_Stay safe, Tony!_

_No problem._

* * *

Ever since last summer, Tim has (and this is putting it mildly) not been the CIA's biggest fan. And apparently, as he's dealing with this CIA cryptography asshole with a chip the size of a nuclear submarine on his shoulder, the feeling is mutual.

"Look, it's a simple question; have you guys found anything that is or might be an encryption key?"

"I'm really not authorized to share that information with you," CryptoAsshole says, smirk in his voice. "You are not read into this operation."

The first response, which Tim bites down before it gets out of his mouth, is that if this fucker ever wants to get a look at what he's got on those five chips, let alone what comes out of Mexico City, he better damn well get read into this op, as of the day before yesterday when his team found them a functional terror hub with all of the computers intact and in play.

He's feeling pretty proud of biting that back because that means he's not screwing up Tony's delicately balanced team of alliances.

The second response, which actually goes get out of his mouth, is this: "If I'm not cleared for this information, why do I know you're the person to talk to about it, what precisely it is I need from you, and what exactly I need to do with it?"

"I wouldn't know, Agent—"

"Director."

CryptoAsshole is very clearly not impressed by Tim's level. He might have just as well proclaimed himself director of a local pre-school. "Director McGee, but I can't be too careful. Once I get the OK from my higher ups, I'll answer the question. Until then, I don't know you, I don't know your agency, and I don't know anything about this case you're asking about."

Tim hangs up. "Asshole." Now would be a really great time to have a secretary, because he'd love to say, 'Get me the head of CIA Cryptography,' but there's no one but him to go about getting this person. Instead he scoots his phone over an inch and starts typing. _CryptoAsshole won't talk to me._

_Ha! When did you get good with nicknames? I call him Smithers._ He gets back from Tony eight minutes later.

_?_

_If you're ever in a room with him and his boss, he's right out of the Simpsons._

_So, his boss is Mr. Burns?_

_Down to the bad hair and liver spots._

_Don't want to upset your apple cart. Want me to go hardass on his Boss's Boss? Or you want to handle it?_

_Boss's Boss?_

_Think Leon's going to be happy if I tell him some CIA pissant won't give me the encryption key I need and is claiming he can't because I'm not read in. Next step on my side is to have a chat with the Director of Cryptography at CIA._

_(Laughing) Let me make a few calls. Yes, I'd love to see the look on Smithers' face, but I want them to keep playing nice with me. Give me an hour, let me see what I can pry loose._

_Okay. How's it going on your side?_

_Sifting through debris, body parts, and explosive residue. Mostly Bishop and I are making sure someone who knows how to handle a crime scene is keeping an eye on things. Hope to be home with a pile of forensic evidence tomorrow morning._

_You know, I don't miss that, at all._

_Yeah, I could handle a bit less hot, dry, dusty middle of nowhere, everyone hates us, body armor chafing from the sweat, you're afraid to take a step for fear of ending up with someone's liver on your shoe, and only catching cat naps sitting up riding/flying between stops._

_Ugh._ Tim's having vivid flashbacks to Afghanistan and how much he did not enjoy that trip. _How many died?_

_Not sure. At least six._

_Sorry._

_Yeah, I know. Bishops looks ready to puke, and I'm sure Flyboy wouldn't be doing any better._

Tim nods, staring at his phone. He can remember his first meat puzzle case. Not good at all.

_Just got an email from your guys in Mexico City._ Tim's computer just chimed, too. _Time to do some reading._

_Yep. Me, too._

_If you don't have what you need from CIA by… 20:00 feel free to go hard ass on their Cryptography department._

_Thanks._

* * *

An hour later, his computer chirps to let him know someone wants face time. It's Atherson.

He's smiling. "I don't know how you did it, but I've got a key in my inbox."

Tim smiles back, shaking his head. "Not me. Agent Tony DiNozzo and the miracle of how charm, a smooth delivery, a talent for BS, and a spine of steel works wonders for inter-agency cooperation."

"Good. There's a ton of stuff here, and it's late. I'm setting it up, making sure the guys in Okinawa," where it's morning and not almost (or way past) quitting time "keep an eye on it so there're no surprises."

"Sounds great. Have a good night, you've earned it."

Atherson beams at that. "'Night, Boss."

He grabs his phone again and fires off. _Got key. Prepare for massive data dump in the morning,_ to Tony. Tim checks his computer, it's a bit after five. Abby should be down soon. _Heading home soon. Ortho appt. in the morning._

_Heading home tomorrow morning, your time. Get in early Saturday morning. Monday morning get together and debrief?_

_Sounds good._

* * *

"You look _really_ tired and _really_ satisfied," Abby says, leaning against the door to his office.

Once he put his phone down and realized he was done for the day, Tim started to crash.

He nods, beat. He really should have gotten a nap this afternoon, but until two minutes ago he hadn't noticed he needed one. "Good day. I love my job!"

"Well, come on, let's wrap it up with a good night." She heads in, wraps her arm around him, gives him a kiss, and he slowly pulls his wheel chair closer to him. Once he gets seated, she heads behind him. "I'll push."

He looks back up at her, and gets another quick kiss. "Thanks."

As they're heading out, Brand is snoozing on the sofa.

"That's your new cyberbaby, right?"

He nods, and sees she's looking chilled, all curled up on the sofa in a little ball. He wheels forward a few feet, grabs the blanket that's on the back of the sofa and tucks her in.

He straightens up, noticing she didn't even move when he did that. "Sound sleeper."

Abby nods. "Um… I saw her when I dropped lunch off on Tuesday. Is she wearing the same outfit?"

Tim looks at Brand. He can't tell what she's wearing anymore, because she's covered now, but, best he can remember she is wearing the same outfit, and she's been here the whole time he's been around. He can see her hair is looking pretty greasy, and… he inhales… yeah, she's a bit whiffy, too. It's a much milder version of a smell that immediately pulls him back to grad-school. Hacker that's been on a coding-binge. On the upside, she's a teen girl, instead of a teen guy, who, in his memory, tend to smell so bad after three days they can knock a person out.

He gently shakes her shoulder. "Teenage hacker with no set hours overdoes it, alert the media."

Abby smirks at that.

"Brand, come on, wake up. You gotta go home."

"Mrghm." She flails a hand at him. "Too tired."

"Come on, get up. I'll drive you home. Well, Abby will."

"Mmm?" He hasn't introduced Abby, and Brand doesn't know who that is.

"Abby, Mrs. McGee, my wife. I haven't been driving since I got hurt, and I'm not starting tonight. Come on, get up. You need real food, real sleep, and a shower."

Brand sits up slowly, glaring at him, teen whininess and coding funk radiating off her skin. She's about to complain when the part of her brain that knows who she's talking to (namely her boss and not her parents) snaps into the front of her head, and she blushes hard.

"I'm fine. I don't need to go home."

Abby picks up what's going on before Tim does. "Home's kind of spooky and lonely all on your own, isn't it?"

Brand rolls her eyes, but nods.

"Okay, you're coming home with us. We've got a guest room, bed's made up. Come home, have something to eat, and crash. Your place'll be a lot more comfortable when you're not running on empty."

Brand stands up slowly, shuffles back to her desk, looking like she's sleep walking, grabs her purse, and Abby rolls her tired man, and leads his tired tech, to their car.

Brand's awake enough to say, "Cool car," but she's pretty much asleep again by the time Abby's got the car in gear.

Abby chuckles at this as they head home. "Gibbs did this for me. First major case on my own, running my own lab. It was the dead of winter, snow on the ground, and I'd never driven in it before, never seen more than an inch of it in real life. We'd been working the case for three straight days, and I was dead on my feet. He took me home, tucked me in on the sofa, and made sure I got fed in the morning. Only time I ever saw Stephanie look like she approved of something he had done."

"I didn't know you knew him when he was married."

"Only saw them together a few times. They were usually fighting then."

"Is that how he adopted you?"

"Step one." She checks Brand in the rear view mirror; she's dead asleep in the back seat. "We adopting a teenage hacker?"

Tim chuckles at that. The idea that he's old enough to be the father figure to someone out of diapers is vastly amusing to him. "Maybe. Let's see how it goes."


	122. Right Arm

Tim's up at his usual time, going through his usual routine, and thinking about what to do with the teenager who is likely still sleeping in his guest room.

He's thinking it'd probably qualify as creepy to head in and leave a note for her.

Which is when he remembered that he lives in the 21st century and that the teenager sleeping in his guest room is more or less surgically attached to her phone.

So, he gets out of the shower and sends her a little note.

_Morning Cristin,_

_You're at my house._ He's not sure how much she remembers from last night. Pretty much she got in the car, fell asleep, slept walked out and into their kitchen, stared at them, glazed and wrecked, through eating a slice of pizza, and then immediately crashed into the bed in their guestroom, and from the sound of it, hasn't moved since.

_We're out doing morning things. Heather (nanny) and Kelly (little girl, you met her last night) should be down there when you wake up._

_Eat something._

_Go back to sleep._

_Shower's down the hall if you want it. Got clean t-shirts and sweats on the chair._ Abby's old T-s and the smallest sweat pants (his) they had. They're still too big for Brand, but they are clean.

_I'll check in when my ortho apt. is over. Give you a ride back to your car if you're awake. Let you sleep if you're not._

_You're off until Monday. I checked, 55 hours in three days is okay for a job like we just had, but once that's done (and it is) you go hand it off and rest._

_McGee_

* * *

Gibbs eyes Tim as he slides into the truck.

"You're in a good mood."

Tim nods. "Got to work a real case." Then he gets Gibbs up to date with what's been going on. He wraps up with, "Before Kelly was born, we were wondering if I could do stay at home dadding." He shakes his head. "Pretty clear the answer is, 'No.' Even the injuries hurt less when I'm working. Well, working with a decent amount of sleep. They hurt something fierce when it's crash time."

Gibbs smiles, he knows all about that. "Driving yourself soon?"

"Theoretically my right foot can handle it. Not like you use your knee much for driving. I'm supposed to wait until I'm off the narcotics, but…"

Gibbs' eyes narrow. "No buts."

"Then, no. Not sure when I'm putting down the Tylenol 3, but not today, and not tomorrow, and likely not next week, either."

Gibbs nods at that, too.

They drive a few more, quiet miles, then something hits Tim, speaking of not being all that sharp, "Jethro…"

Inclined head that means, _I'm listening_.

"I know how much difference working is making for me. Are you okay? Abbi, Mona, the house, taking care of me, is it doing it for you?"

He sees Jethro go still, carefully not answering, and gets the sense he's caught between not lying and not telling the truth. Tim's eyes narrow at that as he tries to decide if Jethro is trying to prevent Tim from worrying about him, or if there's something else going on.

Finally Jethro says, "You know how you told your guys not to poke into how you got hurt?"

"Okay," Tim says slowly.

"Don't poke it."

"I told them not to poke because I didn't want everyone at NCIS knowing the Admiral tried to have me killed. Because that's private, and I didn't want the whispers or stares. You and me, we don't have private."

Gibbs laughs at that. "Maybe you don't."

"Fine." There is a certain lopsidedness to Jethro knowing everything about them, and them not knowing everything about him, though Tim likes to think its evening up. "But one day, you'll tell me?"

Gibbs nods, because one day, he will.

* * *

Today they're just working on his arm. From everything he can tell, there's one more general take a look at everything and make sure it's healing up check on his legs, two weeks from now, and then his foot and knee get completely handed over to the Physical Therapist.

More scans. They ache. They burn. One position feels like his whole arm is ripping in half. Tim supposes this is better and easier than the first scans, back when he was getting the first of the casts, but this isn't fun by any stretch of the imagination. Anything even remotely connected to his right arm is registering extreme displeasure at the idea of moving in any direction, let alone moving and being held in any position other than the one he's been in for the last six weeks, but he grits his teeth, eyes tearing, and does it.

Then it's time for more waiting. He and Gibbs just sit there in the Ortho's office, waiting for the images to come back. "Starting to feel like I live in doctor's offices."

Gibbs nods. He's starting to get that feeling, too. With Tim not driving and Abby working, he's been to all of these appointments, too.

"Bet the last one was fun."

Tim smiles. "Last one was fun." He's grinning from ear to ear and shaking his head. "Kind of stupid, I mean, I love Kelly so much, all the girls, but…" he bites his lip, still grinning, "little boy."

Gibbs smiles, too, he gets it. "Yeah. Ten years. You, me, Sean, Jimmy and Donny, Tony and Third."

"Not gonna be a Third. If they have a son, they're thinking David."

Gibbs grins at that. "Dave. Dave DiNozzo. Little guy, curly hair and brown eyes like Ziva, sassy, little wise-ass like his dad."

Tim's watching that grin. "You know something we don't? Like why Ziva's stateside and Bishop went to Kazakhstan?"

Gibbs shakes his head. If anything along those lines is up, he hasn't heard, yet. "Just seeing it."

"Okay."

"Gearing up, going camping, guys-only weekend in the mountains."

Tim's grinning at that, too. "S'mores, fresh fish from a lake, stories around a big bonfire?"

Gibbs nods.

Then Tim pokes a bit. "Jack Gibbs? Red hair, blue eyes? Say, five-years-old? He gonna be there, too?"

Gibbs rolls his eyes and shakes his head. "Already had that conversation with Abbi. I'm done with that. I've got my kids. Seven of you buggers is enough."

Tim smiles at seven, not even sure why that lights him up so much, but enjoying it. "Okay. But you have had that conversation with her?"

"Don't date a woman pushing 40 if you don't want to have kids and she does. Not a kindness for anyone."

"And Abbi's still here, so she's cool with it?"

"Yeah, she is."

"Good."

* * *

Dr. Kent heads in a moment later, new cast and sling in hand. "Good morning," they do the small talk routine and finally get to the meat of it.

He's putting the scans up on the plasma screen on the wall. "So, this is your shoulder." Tim'll take his word for it. For all he knows, that could be anyone's shoulder. Though, as he looks closer and sees the small scrap yard worth of metal holding the arm together, he decided that this does have to be his shoulder and arm.

Kent blows up the shoulder scan. "When your shoulder was ripped out of joint it tore free at the Corocohumeral ligament, Glenohumeral ligaments, and the Capsular ligaments. We put the humerus back into the glenoid fossa. The Corocohumeral and Glenohumeral ligaments ripped free of the bone taking tiny chunks of bone with them. You can see the staples we used to make sure those ligaments hooked back into your humerus properly. And, as you can see," he's moving his finger over the brighter white areas near the dead white staples, "those sutures there show that the bone reattached and knitted back together properly. So, it looks like your shoulder is stable enough that it doesn't have to be immobile any longer."

He tosses up the next shot. "This is your wrist and hand." Kent shakes his head. "Wrists heal up slowly in the best, cleanest of breaks, there're just so many tiny bones and ligaments. It's looking a lot better than it was." He splits the screen and Tim can see a shot of his wrist from right after they got it set, and the shot from now, but he's not sure what he's looking at that makes the current one better. Probably all those brighter, white lines where there were just empty black spaces and screws before. "But you're not ready to go cast free, yet."

He zooms into Tim's hand and fingers. "Fingers are looking good. All of those little defensive breaks are healed up. Metacarpals, the bones in your hand, are almost there. Just like the ones in your wrist, they're tiny and have a lot of ligaments and muscles involved, and heal up slow in the best of circumstance, and this isn't the best." Kent makes the picture of Tim's hand even bigger. "Here and here, first and second metacarpal" he points to two screws in Tim's hand, the bones that attach into his first and middle finger. "These are right under the tendons that move your first and middle finger. Right now, I'm keeping those fingers immobile to let everything in here get really rock solid.

"Your new cast is going to cover your hand, wrist to mid forearm, and your first two fingers. Since your last two fingers didn't break, and none of the metacarpals under those tendons snapped either, we're going to let them start moving around again. But take it easy." Kent wiggles his pinkie and ring finger. "The tendons that move these have to go through your wrist. Getting moving again is going to hurt, beyond just you haven't been moving. There's a ton of scar tissue in there that is not going to want to be moving around. Same story with moving your thumb, with a side of your thumb did break and get dislocated. Moving it is not going to be fun, keep at it, but do it slow and gentle, okay?"

"Okay."

"I've sent everything to your PT and CCed Dr. Palmer, as well. I've also emailed them suggestions for someone who specializes in rehabbing hands."

"Oh good, more doctor's appointments," Tim says dryly.

Kent nods. "I know; you're so excited. Part of my job is managing expectations. Balancing hope with reality. Reality, this is going to be long and hard and take way more effort than you think it should. Things you use to do on automatic will require effort and thought for a lot longer than you think they should. But this is also reality, if you don't give up on it, if you don't decide, 'I've got 80% of what I had back, it's good enough,' you will get full function in your hand back."

"I'm a programmer and a writer, I need both of my hands working at 100%. So, how long…"

"One hundred per cent? Spring? You'll be typing long before then, but, you're really good and fast at it, right?"

"Yeah."

"Spring."

Tim sighs. He doesn't want to hear "Spring." He wants to hear "last week."

Kent looks at him. "I know."

Tim's got _doubt it_ all over his face. Kent rolls up his sleeve and shows Tim the scars all over his forearm and wrist. "Skiing accident. I've got enough metal in my wrist to make yours look clean and tidy. Two years of rehab, but I am a fully functioning orthopedic surgeon again. Trust me, put the work in, and you will get it back. After all, you hit the wrong key, you go back and delete. It's a little different if I don't get the scalpel in the right place."

Tim nods at him. "Okay. Got it."

"Good. I'd like to set your next appointment for two weeks out. If all keeps going well, you'll be down to just a wrist/hand brace and sling then."

"Yippie?"

Kent nods. He gets it. "Let's get the new cast on."

It's still warm from the 3d printer and smells strongly of melted plastic. He almost feels a little naked with just plastic from his mid forearm to fingers.

"So, let's see what kind of range of motion you've got. We're going to start at the top of your shoulder and move each joint as far as you can without pain."

Tim sighs at that. At least since he's been doing some movement with Jimmy his shoulder isn't completely immobile. He lifts it up and down, back and forth at the collarbone, and Kent hums a bit at that.

"Your shoulder has been adducted and internally rotated." Which Tim knows means his arm's been across his stomach for six week. "First off, try to rotate your arm."

Tim's able to move it almost a centimeter away from his stomach before it hurts. He's feeling pathetic about that, but Kent looks pleased. "Believe it or not, that's good. Next, abduction." Tim remembers from college that means move your elbow away from your side and toward Gibbs. And again, he's got about a centimeter before his shoulder screams at him. Kent's nodding along at that, too. "Extension." Moving his arm forward and up, and in that direction his shoulder is telling him in no uncertain terms that it's not doing jack shit, thank you very much. "Okay, we've got to see how much your elbow is ready to move before we get retraction. So, onto your elbow." Pretty much the only part of Tim's arm that didn't get hurt was his elbow. He's got three full inches of extension before his tricep says no more, and a similar distance of retraction before his bicep goes on strike. "That's looking good. With as badly broken as your humerus was, and the amount of surgery they had to do to put it back together, I was afraid you'd have more damage to your muscles. You'll have full range of motion in your elbow first. Okay, palm up." The cast kept his palm facing his stomach for the last six weeks. He gives it a try and just like with extending his shoulder his body is sending very clear, 'Oh FUCK NO!' signal to him on that. Kent keeps nodding. "Palm down." Exact same response. "Thumb?" It twitches slightly without pain, and he can almost wiggle the top joint. "That's good. Pinky?" He can bend the middle joint almost a quarter inch without pain, but the bottom one aches when he tries to move it, and he doesn't have the control to do anything with the top one. His ring finger is in the same boat.

"Okay, given how badly everything was broken, this is a really good place to be starting."

"I'll take your word for it."

"That's why you're paying me," Kent says with a smile. "Cast feel good?"

Tim nods.

"Good. We've got a new sling for you." Kent starts to open it up. "The cast kept your arm in position before. This is a little firmer, little more snug, than the sling you were using with that cast. He fits it around Tim's arm and shoulder, and adjusts the strap that goes around his waist. I've got it set so you've got about two inches of play for internal/external rotation of your shoulder, and a similar amount for extension and retraction. If you're getting tired and achy and want more support, just pull the straps tighter." Tim's noticing that this has four different Velcro straps that attach to his waist and ribs. "Once it's tight, it'll hold your arm the way the cast did. Loose means more movement. Try to keep it loose as much as you can, okay?"

Tim nods.

"Ultimately, you'll only have it tight for sleeping, but you're going to have to play that by ear. If it's more pain meds or tighten it up, tighten it up."

Tim nods at that, too.

"Okay. Speaking of pain meds, everything doing the job the way it should?"

Tim nods at that, too.

"Good. I'm going to write you another script for more Tylenol 3, and then you're set to go."

"Thanks."

"No problems. See you in two weeks."

* * *

"Back to work?" Gibbs asks when they get into his truck.

"Maybe. Gotta check at home." He pulls his phone out and texts. _Awake?_

A few seconds later, as Gibb is pulling out of the parking lot he gets back. _Yes._

_Be home in about twenty minutes. Then we'll take you back to your car, okay?_

_Sure._

"Gotta stop home."

"Picking something up for Abby?"

"Not quite." He explains who is home and why they need to get her.

He sees Gibbs' hand leave the steering wheel, start to head in the general direction of his skull, then stop and go back to the steering wheel. Gibbs then closes his eyes for a second and bites his lip before saying, "You took your exhausted, teenage, _female_ , employee home with you?" _Are you fucking insane?_ is clear on his face.

"I tucked a sleeping agent in, at work, last night. Which is right out of your playbook, right? Abby took the teenage girl home. Which is right out of hers."

"Tim…"

He knows what's got Gibbs worried. It's also why he wasn't immediately all, 'let's go adopt a teenage hacker' when Abby suggested it. He's the Boss. She is his VERY young employee. This could be a disaster of epic proportions if it went badly. "I'm being careful. I was telling her she had to go home, and that we'd drive her, because she was too tired to drive home, and then Abby's asking if home alone is spooky and lonely and next thing I know she's sleeping in my guest room. I haven't been alone with her, and I'm not going to be."

"Okay."

"Heather's home right now, you're coming in with me, we're giving her a lift back to her car, and that's it."

"Good. She's too young to be… You can't be giving her favors. You can't have her getting a crush on you, and you can't be in a position where she might get the wrong idea."

"Speaking from experience?"

"Yes."

Tim digests that for a moment, wondering exactly when Gibbs learned that, then… "Wait, Abby told me you did the same for her when she was brand new at NCIS."

Tim catches a sheepish look on Gibbs face. In fact, if this was anyone but Gibbs, Tim would characterize that look as trying not to blush. Then he knows what Gibbs was doing that night. "Wait, with Abby? Were you trying… You were married!"

Gibbs shrugs. "Stephanie wasn't supposed to be home."

"Jethro! She thinks you were being all sweet and protective."

"By the time she fell asleep in my car, I was."

"But you weren't when you offered her the ride?"

Gibbs shrugs again. "Long case, bad case, Stephanie was supposed to be out of town, Stan and Abby'd already been out clubbing once, apparently she was fine with friendly and casual, and I just wanted to drink and fuck, thought she'd be up for it, too. Didn't realize how out of it she was until she fell asleep in the car. Then I realized how out of it _I_ had to be if I'd misread the signals that bad. So home, tucked onto the sofa, Stephanie smiled at me for the first time in a month, and I went upstairs to my own bed to crash, too."

Tim grits his teeth and sighs.

"Don't you look at me like that. You did the exact same thing the first chance you got, and unlike me, you didn't strike out."

"Probably because she knew we were going on a date," Tim says dryly.

"Would have helped."

Tim's not sure what to do with that. "You ever try again?"

Gibbs shakes his head. "Got the little girl too firmly in my head after that to ever do more than flirt."

Tim nods, feeling a little relieved at that.

Then Gibbs turns to him and smiles. "Bet that feels a bit like walking in and seeing you spooning Diane."

Tim rolls his eyes and shakes his head. "I thought we were _never_ going to talk about that again."

Gibbs nods, changing the subject a little, "So, how's Brand settling in?"

"So far so good. At some point I'll sit down with Howard and find out exactly how she was doing, but she was on 55 of 72, just kept working it until there was nothing left to work."

Gibbs looks impressed by that.

They're home five minutes later and Tim is about to get out of the truck when Gibbs stops him. "It'll take you twenty minutes. I'll get her."

"Can you grab me a towel, too?"

"Why?"

"Hand towel. Fold it up, wedge it between my wrist and my stomach, it'll force everything to stretch a little, and improve my arm stability."

Gibbs nods. "Bio-medical engineering, huh?"

"Magna cum laude."

* * *

Gibbs heads in and finds the infamous Brand. He's happy that he did not roll his eyes. She's sitting at the kitchen table in way too big clothing, with her hair long and wet, looking like she's, at most, twelve-years-old.

She's also having a pretty good conversation with Heather (who, as of five minutes ago, he thought looked twelve, but she's a paragon of maturity next to Brand) both of them chattering away while Kelly rides Heather's hip.

She's the one who sees him first. "Pop!"

"Hey, Jethro," Heather adds, bringing Kelly over for a hug and kiss.

"Heather," she gets an affectionate kiss on the cheek as he takes Kelly from her, and Kelly gets a big hug and a big kiss. "Hey, Kelly girl."

"Pop!" She's happily slobbering kisses all over him. "Pway? Mona?"

"Not today, baby. Just picking up Brand," she leaps up as soon as he says her name. He extends a hand. "Leroy Jethro Gibbs. You can call me Jethro or Gibbs."

"Hi. I'm Cristin." She looks very shy, and even more achingly young as she blushes with him staring directly at her.

"Tim's in the truck. Head on out. I've got to grab a towel."

Both the girls are looking at him like he's insane. Gibbs starts to explain and then stops. "It'll make sense when you see it." He kisses Kelly again. "Go have fun with Heather."

Kelly nods at her Pop as he hands her back and heads into the bathroom in search of a hand towel.

* * *

When Gibbs gets into the truck, Brand is already in the backseat, looking pretty nervous. Tim's making small talk, asking if she's feeling okay.

"You introduce yourself?" he asks Gibbs while taking the towel and folding it up.

Gibbs nods.

Tim inclines his head toward Gibbs and says, "My dad."

Tim's done that before, introduced Jethro as his dad, but like with the various Slaters, there's usually been some sort of qualifier. "My dad, or close enough," or "Dad'll cover it," something like that. It's the first time he's said it and just left it there. Gibbs smiles at that.

Brand's nodding, watching him stuff the towel between his hand and stomach, and without missing a beat Tim starts to explain what he's doing, as clearly as he can with his teeth clenched.

"Hurts?" Gibbs asks.

"Yeah. Got it a quarter inch past comfortable. Figure that's the fastest way to start getting more range of motion."

"Run it by Jimmy when you get in, okay."

"I will."

"We picking up pain meds on the way?"

"Got some in my desk. Abby and I can get the rest on the way home."

Gibbs waves that off. "Heading to the house this afternoon anyway, going by the Target, might as well pick it up for you. Got some of my own errands to run, and might as well save you a few more minutes."

"Thanks."

"No problem."

Gibbs drops them at the door at NCIS. "See you tonight."

Tim waves. Brand scoots out. "Thank you, Mr. Gibbs."

Gibbs nods at that, smiling.

Tim starts slowly rolling toward the office, as Brand says, "It never actually ends, does it?"

"Hm?"

"They take care of you forever, right? Been talking to my parents about that, especially the last few months," she rolls her eyes, "tired of being babied, you know? I'm not a little kid. Mom pretty much wanted to move here with me."

He nods. "Yeah. I know. I moved 3,000 miles away when I was seventeen. Jethro joined the Marines the second he turned eighteen. You need time on your own, so do they, but if you have a good relationship, they never stop caring, and neither do you."

She nods at that, catching Tim calling him "Jethro." He starts to roll again, but stops as she says, "Why do you have different last names?"

"I'm adopted."

"Oh. Okay. So… not until Monday?"

Tim shakes his head. "No. Not until Monday. Go home, rest, play, explore DC. Summer sesson's in full swing at American and there are piles of students your age, also all away from home for the first time, head over and socialize. My grandma's a professor there, and according to her, there's something going on for everyone, there's got to be something interesting for you, too. Or call your buddies back home, but you do not come in again until Monday, got it?"

She nods and heads off to her car.

* * *

A/N: I know, apparently all of you are really gung-ho on the adopt the teenage hacker issue. (Abby agrees with you!) And, it'll come more and more into play, but, guys, Tim's a 38 year-old-guy. She's BARELY 18. He doesn't know her, beyond her resume, at all. He's brand new to being the Boss and CANNOT be seen to be offering special favors/treats/affection to the girl he just hired out of Parochial School. Even if, and we all know this is Tim here, it's entirely innocent and fatherly on his part, Brand may not see it that way, and he can't risk her getting his signals crossed. So, this is going to be a tread with caution relationship, that I intend to have a lot of fun messing around with.

As for the medical stuff, that's the official way of saying that they shattered the long bone in Tim's arm, ripped it clear out of his shoulder joint, shredded his wrist, and broke his hand and fingers. Carpals are wrist bones, metacarpals are hand bones, phalanges are finger bones, etc. etc. Pretty much, it's a nice way of saying his right arm is BEYOND fucked.


	123. With The Flow

A/N: For those of you who aren't into American Politics, the more conservative of the two main parties (and usually less pro-immigration) is the Republican party, both the color red and elephants are it's markers.

* * *

"There's absolutely no shot of me getting you to take that _thing_ off, is there?" Penny asks Ducky as they head to American University's chapter of No Illegal Humans.

Ducky touches his bowtie, his red, elephant-bedecked bowtie, knowing immediately what the offending garment is.

"My dear, if they cannot stand this level of mild provocation, how are they possibly going to work with Jethro?"

Penny inclines her head, that's a point. And she did get him to take the American Flag pin off his suit, so that was saying something. She sighs. Ducky has been a welcome and charming companion for all of her interactions with the adult, _science_ activities on campus. She is, however, somewhat wary of bringing what is very obviously a cis-het-white-male-oppressor into the younger, political side of things.

But, wary or not, they're going.

* * *

"Shall I be Dr. Langston or Mallard?" Ducky asks as they stroll across the campus.

Penny smiles at that and then shakes her head. "If you're Langston, they'll assume I took your last name, and that loses both of us points."

"Mallard-Langston has a ring to it, don't you think? And if I've got the hyphenated name…"

Penny smiles. She'll be amused to see how the twenty-something activists will parse that. "Sure, Dr. Mallard-Langston. Though Ducky will probably work well, too. Most of these kids go by first name only."

Ducky nods.

* * *

It's a pleasant group. More welcoming, especially toward Ducky, than Penny was expecting, but… It's boring. She supposes there's a possibility that they are keeping things tame because she and Ducky are new to the group, and old in years, and thus presumed to be conservative about law breaking and whatnot, but…

It's a letter writing campaign.

Apparently one of the kids, a poly-sci major has been working on a dissertation on maximizing political responsiveness while minimizing representation. (He's trying to prove that Congress and the Senate should be one body of 1,425 representatives. In other circumstances, both Penny and Ducky would find his research interesting.) However, in his number crunching, he's come up with a formula for exactly how likely a given politician is to sway an opinion based on how many letters he gets, pro or con, from registered voters in his district.

He's got numbers on how much more valuable physical mail is over emails, let alone petitions. Apparently physical mail indicates an older person. Older, registered voters are much more likely to vote than young people… So, they've got paper, envelopes, stamps, pens, and lists of names of registered voters they're going to pretend to be, from districts all over the country. Then over the next week, different members of the group are going on road trips to mail the letters from the right Post Offices.

In that Penny and Ducky have "grown-up" or "classical" handwriting ("Old" is the word the kids are trying not to use. Legible cursive would be the most descriptive term for it.) they're actually quite popular with this group.

Some of them are copying a few of Ducky's letters verbatim because his writing is clear, attractive, and does not sound like it was written by a twenty-two-year-old.

As they head off, Ducky says to Penny, "Do you suppose I should have mentioned that if you do write an actual letter to your Congressman, he will send one back, and a large number of very surprised people will likely be calling their Congressmen soon?"

She laughs at that. "They'll figure it out. Coffee?"

"Certainly."

Once they're seated in a small café on campus, Ducky sends a text to Jethro. _Meeting accomplished._

A few minutes later, as Penny comes back with a raspberry Italian soda for herself, a cup of iced-coffee for Ducky, a mug of black coffee for Jethro, and a plate of cookies for all three of them, he gets back. _Just dropped Tim off. Over in a few minutes._

* * *

"And how is Timothy?" Ducky asks as Jethro sits down. He's always a bit on edge when Duck or Penny picks the place. Ducky because he usually goes for spots that are way too damn fancy, and Penny because… because she picks places like here, where everything just feels... off.

He can't pronounce half the drinks, and all of the food is organic, fair trade, vegan, granola and sprout-oriented stuff that he probably would like if Breena was serving it, but his Marine soul is rebelling against it here. The tables are tiny, almost afterthoughts, the seats are all fluffy, the art is… eclectic, that's the nice word, right? Ugly as sin and clashes with everything is the less polite version, and the music annoys him on principal alone.

Penny's grinning at him, enjoying this way too much.

At least the coffee is good.

"Doing okay, Duck. My truck's got less metal in it than his arm." Every time they look at the scans his knee aches in sympathy and his stomach clenches. "Doc says spring before he gets full use of his hand back. But he's down to just a cast on his wrist and fingers, and they're starting up on getting his shoulder moving again. That's good, right?"

"Yes it is."

Gibbs takes a sip of his coffee, and for as much of the vibe of this place annoys him, he's going to have to buy a bag of whatever this is, because it is tasty. He glares at Penny again and she smirks, very pleased with herself. Gibbs rolls his eyes, he's seen that look on Tim, too.

"How'd your meeting go?"

"We impersonated members of different congressional districts and wrote letters," Ducky says dryly.

Gibbs shakes his head. "Mail fraud? You guys really know how to skirt the edge, don't you?"

"You know us dangerous radicals, right Jethro?" Penny adds.

"We impressed a cadre of children by having functional cursive skills and a command of basic written English." If Ducky's delivery was dry before, he's verging on Saharan now.

"No dice, then?"

Penny shrugs. "One of the grad students looked… I don't know. I got the sense he may have been looking for more, too."

Ducky nods. "It's only a feeling. And more may be anything from protesting in the streets to doing something useful. I have no idea if he may have any deeper connections."

"Just a feeling of restlessness."

"Cop?" Gibbs asks.

"No." Ducky shakes his head definitively as he takes a drink of his own coffee. "I'm sure I would have made him if he'd been a cop. Not that sort of restlessness."

Gibbs nods, undercover cops usually have a sort of feel to them. He can usually pick them up pretty easily. "Mosque on Thursday?"

Penny nods. "Yes. I'm running a talk on how to register to vote. Some of the ladies are newly citizens and have never lived anywhere they've been able to vote. Some of them were born here, but their husbands/fathers/brothers are not enthusiastic about them voting. The Imam is though, and was happy to let me grab one of the side rooms for a quick how to register and how to vote—"

"How?" Jethro's got an eyebrow up.

"The literal mechanism. How the machine works."

He holds his hands up. "Just pokin' ya."

"Uh huh." She's giving him the _smartass_ look.

Gibbs grins back. " _Semper's_ all set. Got her registered yesterday. She's water legal now. How about your end?"

"As of Wednesday we are the registered officers of Sojourner Inc," Ducky replies.

"Sojourner?" Gibbs asks.

"Penny thought there was a certain eloquence to naming the company after a woman who led others through dangerous lands to set them free."

"That's also the name of the boat," Penny says. "Paperwork for that should be done by Monday."

Gibbs nods. "I'll get her set to carry either registration as needed."

Ducky fiddles with his glass. "So, as of now, all we are waiting for is the proverbial damsel in distress?"

Penny laughs. "It would appear so." She takes a sip of her drink. "Were you serious about having me come along?"

"If you wanted to. I'd think being stuck on a tiny boat with a man you don't know, and a dog, would be unsettling for a lot of these girls. I'd think we'd want them looking and acting as… western… as possible when we get in sight of land, round here, this time of year, that's shorts and t-shirts and pony tails, and… And compared to Pakistan or Afghanistan or where ever, that'll be hard enough, with just me for company… Don't want them feeling… abused by it, ya know?"

"It will be easier to be the kindly old grandfather if there is a grandmother around, as opposed to being the dirty, old letch?" Ducky adds.

Gibbs nods. "Yeah." He fiddles with his cup. "Been thinking about that some. Trying to figure out how to keep 'em covered enough so it's not too uncomfortable, but western enough so I can sail 'em on past without getting a second look. Long t-shirt, those flannel PJ pants Abby likes, bandanna or something like that for the hair…"

"Let's actually meet the girl before we get planning, Jethro. For all you know, she'll be happy to hop into whatever makes it easiest for her to get into the country."

"Yeah. I can hope, right?"

"We can hope."

"I know we're all gathering at Abby's house for dinner tonight, anything to fill your time between now and then?" Ducky asks.

"Heading over to the house for a bit. Got some errands to run." Gibbs's phone buzzes. He pulls it out and sees it's a text from Ziva to him and Abby.

"Case is still hot. No Tony or Ziva tonight."

Penny squeezes his hand as he says that. "Missing it?"

He nods. "Yeah. Tim's all fired up, tech stuff coming out at a million words a minute. Abby's guys are finding trace in places we didn't use to know to look for trace. Jimmy's done on this one, unless Tony gets custody of the bodies, and he doesn't think he will. Tony's running a case with four other agencies over three continents. I see what they're doing with it, and yeah, I miss it, a lot."

Ducky smiles at him. "While Jimmy was in California, and I was back, overseeing Dr. Allan, that felt remarkably useful, in a way I hadn't for months and am afraid I'm not going to, again."

Gibbs nods. "Yeah. One of these day's a ghost'll pop up and they'll call me back in, but… Yeah, I miss it."

They both take sips of their drinks, and Penny watches them, wishing she could help fill the hole careers that were entire lives left in their wake.

"One day at a time."

Gibbs takes another drink. "Yep." Then he stands up. "Gotta get moving if I'm going to be at Tim and Abby's by seven. See you there."

* * *

He makes it to the house in less than an hour. Given traffic and where the coffee shop was (wrong side of DC) he made epic time.

There's really not much he needs to do here, today. There are things he can do. More siding needs to go up. He could start arranging piles of shingles around the place so once they're up on the roof they're easily located. He could start ripping out drywall.

But he's not.

He heads over to the boathouse and opens the doors, and then scrambles up _Semper's_ side and into the cabin. He supposes there should be more hoopla for a maiden voyage, but he also likes the idea of the first time out being just the two of them.

He gets her engine going, and pulls her out. Once he's free of the boathouse, he shuts it off, and begins to set his sails. Won't be out too long, but he wants some time with her.

It's been a long time, twenty-five years, since he was on a sailboat. But like bicycles and the lot, you don't forget.

The last time he was on one, in the water, it was a rented boat, his girls were with him, they were on the Pacific Ocean, and it was a balmy winter day.

So, right now, beyond the gentle sensation of moving water and the feel of the ropes under his hands as he goes about catching the breeze, this is basically nothing like the last time he did it.

He can see them, both sitting on the rail of that boat, watching him, talking, laughing.

"Do you like it?" He wishes Shannon would answer, but he knows, in a way he didn't before, that he's talking to himself, just getting the ideas out. And he also knows, as he feels the tug of the wind catching sail, that he's not just talking about _Semper._ "I hope you do."

He nudges her over a bit, heading into the current. "I think you'd like Abbi. Feels weird to say that. Would have liked you to have met her." He shakes his head at that, too. "Okay, that feels even weirder." Which doesn't mean it isn't true. He remembers Penny saying that Ducky and Nelson would have gotten along. Maybe he'll talk with her about this when they get on the water together.

"Don't know what you would have said about this. Wonder if that's the sort of thing we wouldn't have talked about. I would have done it, and you would have known, and just sort of, given me that look, when I'd head out, the one that said it was okay." He smiles at that memory. He had more than a few missions where he couldn't say what he was doing, but she'd always nod at him when he left, tell him to be careful.

"I'm being careful." He stares into the blue sky above, feeling the wind on his face. "And I'm filling up the hours, some more useful than others. And there are a lot of things I'd like to say to you, share with you, but… but not getting to say them doesn't hurt so bad anymore."

He tacks starboard, seeing how she handles. _Semper_ swings easy and responsive through the turn. Gibbs nods.

"She's sweet and solid, got a good feel to her, and I want to do good things with her. Make a difference.

"Maybe get the Palmers out here on Sunday. Not sure if Breena wants Molly on here, though. She's a little too happy to hop into the water first shot she gets. Might decide to try that cannonball trick off the side." Gibbs laughs at that idea. "Gotta get some little life vests." He realizes he's not wearing one. "Get some big ones, too.

He tacks again, aft this time, and _Semper's_ just as sweet in the other direction. "Kind of wish I could get Tim on here. Penny wonders how much of him getting seasick is actually about boats. You remember that movie you made me watch, stupid comedy thing, with the guy who drew comics about cute and fluffy bunnies and didn't like boats… Kind of wonder how far a good experience on a boat would go to helping with all of this." He takes a sip of the coffee in his thermos. "Probably not far enough. Don't think I can get him on one voluntarily. Not unless it's a crime scene, and these days…" Gibbs shakes his head. "Don't think he's ever getting back on a ship. Not if he can help it." Thinking of Tim makes him think of Sean.

"Got our first boy." He smiles at that. "Yeah, I know. Still makes me smile. Wondering if Ziva's got one in the works. Could be Tony's just making sure Bishop gets good experience. That'd make sense. I'd do that. Ziva knows field work better than any of them; she doesn't need practice. But, if you're going abroad, usually you take the person who speaks the languages, right?

"She says the case is still hot, won't be at Shabbos tonight. Not sure what can be that hot. Tony's not getting back until morning. Manhunt's been handed off. They both tell me about how cases now just go on and on. All the intel Tim's getting will take weeks to go through, not like burning the midnight oil will help. But if she's tired, or feeling off, or doesn't want all of us immediately noticing when she skips the wine… That'd make sense." Gibbs grins. "Wonder if Tony knows, yet." Then he laughs, imagining telling Tony his first child is on the way. "That'll be fun."

He ties off the sail, happy with the direction they're going, and sits, comfortably, on the rail. "Or maybe I've got grandbabies on the brain."

His eyes scan the banks, watching what looks like unbroken miles of trees passing by. Of all the places and ways he could have ended up, this one seems pretty good. "You remember, back in the diner, telling me I couldn't have both? Couldn't have you and NCIS. I wanted both. Still do. But… I'm okay with what I got."


	124. Shalom

Tim's wondering, as his grandmother (as the family matriarch) sings the prayers and blessings, at what point you qualify as Jewish.

It's an idle thought, mostly amused. Tony and Ziva aren't here. But they're still lighting the candles and doing the blessings and singing the hymns and… all of it, because, apparently they all like their rituals and no one in this family has any problems with saying thanks for a good week and good food.

So, yeah, at what point does this stop being something you do because some of the members of your family are part of it, and start being who you are?

He doesn't have an answer for that, especially since he'll likely be going to church and supper with the Slaters on Sunday.

* * *

"So, I get why Tony's not here. He's en route, right?" Breena asks. "Where's Ziva?"

"Last I heard he, Bishop, a pile of evidence, and a suspect are on their way back. I think she's meeting up with them at Andrews so she and Draga can take a swing at the suspect as soon as they get him in." Tim's been texting back and forth with Tony and Ziva all day, his guys hunting through the data dump they've got for things that may be useful to interrogating their suspect.

"So, weekend interruptus for the rest of us?" Jimmy asks. Evidence for a bombing often involves bodies, and Abby's nodding along as well.

"Maybe," Tim answers. "Not sure. I think they're escorting the evidence and CIA is getting it. Ziva tells me that she and Tony are getting a reputation as the people you send suspects to when you want them broken, but you also want to be able to show it was clean. They've got black sites for when they want it done yesterday, or messy, but when they want to look like boy scouts, they send them to us, now."

Gibbs smiles at that, something of the proud daddy look on his face.

"Looks like all of your training is paying off," Penny says to him.

He shrugs, modest, still smiling.

Of course, Gibbs didn't just train two investigators. And number three is staring at him, thinking there's something else going on with that smile.

"Okay, what's up?" Tim asks.

Gibbs spreads his hands in a _nothing_ gesture.

"Nope. As Ziva would say, you look like the cat that ate the canary. What are you thinking?"

Gibbs takes a sip of his wine and shrugs. "Nothing."

"Gibbs!" Abby says.

He shakes his head. After a few seconds he says, "Your guys still pullin' data for her?"

Tim nods. "By now, it's Okinawa doing it again, and a few of my night owls."

"So, she's probably at Andrews, readin' up?"

"Should be. Last I heard Tony was due in round 05:00."

Abby looks up at that, smile on her face, and Breena gets it after a tenth of a second, too. If Tony's getting in _that_ late, Ziva normally would have had dinner with them, gotten a nap, and then headed over. So, if she's not here right now, it's for a different reason.

Like, maybe the bottle of wine, the blessing and drinking of which is a big part of each Shabbos.

Or maybe, if she happened to have some really good news she hadn't shared with Tony yet, that she didn't want to let out before he knew it, she could be hiding away.

Or they could all be a bunch of ninnies with overactive imaginations and she's just putting in the due diligence to do her job right.

Could be… But speculation is fun.

* * *

Ziva is not, in fact, at Andrews.

She's home, on her sofa, cup of tea next to her, laptop open, "reading" the reports that are flooding in from Okinawa now. She's "putting together questions," "getting background," and, sporadically, texting with Bishop to see what she's putting together on the flight home.

What she's really doing is staring at her computer, wondering if today's the day her whole world changes.

She's late. Sort of. Okay, not really, not yet. Her period should have showed up today. It should have, like it has every twenty-nine days since she stopped taking her pills, decided to grace her with its presence at some point last night.

She's usually so regular that the night she expects her period to show up, she sleeps with a tampon, and as of this point she's never woken up with a clean one in the morning.

But she did today.

So, she's late, ish, maybe. Lot of long nights this last week, and that can mess a cycle up (though it hasn't before.)

She has the test, in the bathroom, where it's been since they started 'trying.'

Part of her wants to leap up right this second, take the test and find out. Cheering along is the part that's afraid Tony will flip out when this goes from a somewhat nebulous concept to something that's 'real.' That part knows he'll come around, but it also wants some alone time to savor this without having to deal with a terrified man.

Part of her wants to take the test with him. He's been there for every other bit of this baby-making thing, he should get to know the same time she does. Cheering that part on is the fantasy of the little gray screen flipping to pregnant and him leaping up, jumping for joy.

Part of her is afraid that they'll take the test together, it'll come up negative, and she'll have to look at him and see relief in his eyes. It's not too much to ask him to be enthusiastic about their child. She's comfortable with that. She's also sure that asking him to be disappointed by a negative result is too much. He won't, can't feel that, because for him, negative means at least another month in his comfort zone. For him, negative is another month of getting to swim along with a life vest before getting dumped naked into the deep.

Part of her, the part that's noticed another text from Bishop and quickly replies to it, knows she's going to have a hell of a time interrogating anyone with this on her mind. That part is also aware of the fact that Tony will notice she's off while she's interrogating, ask about it, and in the observation bay is not how she envisioned telling Tony about their baby to be.

Of course, as she finishes texting, it's not like not knowing is doing much for her concentration, either. She's re-read the same update three times now.

* * *

Eventually, the tea she's been drinking works its way through her system. (As tea and all liquids are wont to do.) Which means a trip to the bathroom, where the test is, with her very unmade-up mind whirling around with images of little baby David-DiNozzo.

Brown hair and eyes. That's a given. Well, okay, it's not absolutely impossible that she might have a different combination. Ziva's grandmother's family was from Poland originally. Her grandmother had blond hair and blue eyes, and because she looked Aryan, she was able to be smuggled out of Poland as a child. Her grandfather was also from Poland, dark hair, dark eyes, didn't look Aryan. He made it out of Warsaw, made it to the Polish Resistance, but they turned him in to the Nazis. He escaped again and began the trek to Palestine, done with Poland, done with Europe, and sure that no Jew would ever be safe until they had their own country. Her father's family was Iraqi, dark hair, dark eyes. They fled to Israel when Iraq forced them out. Her father was young enough at the time that he doesn't remember it, but her grandparents did. They changed their name when they got to Israel, a sign of burning the reminders of a land that tossed them out.

She shakes her head, not the time to be thinking about that.

Brown hair, brown eyes, easy smile. She'd had an easy smile as a child. Tony still does. And this baby… This baby is going to grow up fat and lazy… That's not quite what she's looking for. _Safe_. That is. She won't worry about being killed on a bus. Her school won't have armed guards. She won't get her first gas mask as a baby. She won't have rocket drills at school.

She'll join the military only if she wants to.

Knowing this family, she'll know how to use a gun and fight by the time she's in middle school, but she'll never have to worry about defending her home with it. She won't watch the people on the street and wonder if they have bombs under their clothing.

Ziva's fingers touch her belly. Whatever she looks like, this child will be fearless.

And right now, she will be, too.

* * *

There are situations where Ziva finds patience easy. Give her a sniper's rifle and set her on top of a building, she can stay calm and focused all day.

Staring at a little gray screen watching the tiny grains of sand drop from one side to the other of the hourglass to the other is, however, not a situation where Ziva's patience kicks in.

No, right now, speaking of kicking, she wants to be kicking things, speeding up time by distracting herself. But she can't look away from the screen, because if she looks away, she won't see it turn, and she can't miss it.

So she doesn't. The hourglass vanishes, the screen goes black, and then PREGNANT pops up, and she's jumping for joy, awash in the happiness of this moment.

* * *

Knowing is way better than not knowing. How that could have ever been in doubt is something she's finding immensely silly.

Knowing is… perfect.

Because right now, this is perfect. Right now, there's one more person in the world. Right now things are clear and sharp and bright and beautiful.

Right now is a future she'd given up on for a long time, a future she'd occasionally dream about, but banish when she woke, because those were the dreams of someone with a future, someone attached to life, living in its service, not a dealer of death. Not someone with a shelf-life of maybe 30 years.

She texts Draga, Tony, and Bishop. _Change of plans. Get him home and let him sit. At least twenty-four hours, forty-eight will be better. No contact, no one speaks to him. All alone except for the two minutes when someone brings food. Then we're going to break him._

She gets back from Tony. _Why are we changing?_

_Got some intel that makes waiting work better. Fill you in when you get home._

_Won't mind a good long sleep and some decompressing time before going after this asshole. Sounds good to me. Still going to pick us up?_

_Sure._

* * *

The only reason she can pull this off is because Tony and Bishop are _tired._ They're asleep on their feet. Otherwise, they would notice a certain bubbliness that's been hitherto uncharacteristic of their Ninja.

Tony's crashed out in the passenger seat. Bishop's laying across the backseat as Ziva drives.

"So," Tony says, slow, tired, "What'd you find?"

"Do not worry about it, Tony. It's complicated, and you'll do better with it when you've got some sleep."

He sighs, looks at her, lots of gratitude in his eyes, and kisses her hand. "Sleep sounds awesome."

"Mmmm…" Bishop says, eyes closed, holding up one thumb in an _I agree_ gesture.

* * *

Tony DiNozzo is a crack investigator of the highest caliber. He is also practically unconscious. This is a good thing because his wife, who is also a crack investigator of the highest caliber was a bit distracted after taking said pregnancy test and didn't do a good job of cleaning up the evidence.

Which is sitting in the bathroom trash bin, right on top, just waiting to be seen.

Which is not one of the seventeen ways she envisioned telling Tony. Fortunately, he gets in there, does his business, brushes his teeth and crashes right into bed (still wearing his jacket and shoes.)

* * *

Thirteen hours later, he's out of bed, looking rumpled, but a lot happier, wearing his usual laying around the house Ohio State T and shorts.

He wanders around their apartment for a second, wondering where Ziva is, and if she got called in or something, and the notices her sitting on their tiny balcony, watching the sun set between the high rises.

He opens the door, stepping out, joining her. "Hey, beautiful."

She stands up, eyes sparkling, and kisses him. "Missed you," comes out several seconds later, along with a huge grin.

He sits down in the chair she just vacated, pulling her into his lap. He's about to break into what happened while he was away, what new evidence they had, but… he's not feeling it. Right now he wants to sit with his wife and enjoy the sunset.

* * *

In the Jewish calendar, days begin and end at sundown.

Ziva approves of that. She knows it's less precise and more complicated than days beginning and ending at exactly the same time every single day. But, even knowing that, she still prefers a concrete mark of one day passing to the next. She likes the poetry of one day bleeding away, finally extinguished, and a new one born.

There's not much light left. The sun's almost all the way past the horizon, and the lights of DC are starting to dim what's left of sunset.

It's a good time.

Her voice doesn't catch, there's no nerves, and for all the worrying she was doing earlier about it, right now she's sure it'll be good.

"I am pregnant." She's looking at that sky as she says that, trails of red and orange still bleeding into black, and feels him jolt at it, then she looks to him, smile vibrant on her lips, peace deep in her eyes.

He's smiling back, mega-watt smile, she's seen the fake version of it a million times, but this one is real, holding her close, petting her hair and kissing her. When he pulls back, he says, "Wow! I…" he swallows hard, looking just so in love and so blissed out and so ecstatic right now. "I didn't think I could feel like this."

She's grinning from ear to ear, kissing him again, because right now there aren't words for this, but there are actions, so she'll take them.

* * *

It's late. Really late. Ziva's sleeping, and Tony should be, too. He would be, but his internal clock is skewed from travel, and right now he's just too excited to drift off.

He kisses Ziva's hair, and decides he better get used to her sleeping a lot. If Abby and Breena are anything to go by, any day now she'll be sleeping 24/7, or at least want to.

Maybe it'll be different for them. He snorts a little laugh at that, somewhat amused at what Sleepy Ziva might be like.

He gets out of bed and heads over to his dresser. There's a cigar box in there, with five cigars in it. (Three of them are real tobacco, _good_ tobacco. The other two are sugar-free chewing gum. He knows there's no way McGee or Palmer will smoke a cigar.) It's something he brought himself when they started trying for real, a promise of sorts that he wasn't going to disappoint her on this. He is going to be a father, and he's going to do it right, and doing it right means celebrating this child for every day of his life.

He takes two of them out, tosses on some going out clothing, and heads to his car.

* * *

He'd forgotten that Gibbs sleeps now. Somehow that doesn't work in his mind. He's very firmly got the idea of Gibbs=awake in his head.

He's also forgotten that Gibbs has a friend now who will bound to his front door and bark bloody murder if you try to just walk on in in the middle of the night.

And he'd forgotten that Gibbs locks his door, too.

He's a bit distracted right now.

But, after a minute, as he stands on the porch thinking this might not be the best idea he's ever had, and that possibly Gibbs does not want to be rousted out of bed at 4:36 in the morning, no matter how good the news is, when a very sleepy, rumpled, wearing only a pair of sweat pants Gibbs opens the door.

For a second he looks surprised, and then that smile breaks out all over his face.

Tony grins back at him.

This… ability to just know… no words spoken, no need for filling up the space around them with sounds, this is something Tony has always appreciated about Gibbs. He's one of the few people Tony can be silent with.

Tony pulls out the cigars. "Smoke 'em with me?"

Gibbs nods, solemn and joyful, and then pulls Tony into a long hug.

By 04:40, Tony and Gibbs are sitting on his back porch, smoking away, not saying much, just being with each other. Between puffs Gibbs puts down the cigar, and says, "You're gonna be good at it."

Tony nods. "I know. I didn't. But… I do now."

Gibbs pets the back of Tony's head. "Atta boy!"


	125. Daily Grind

"Good weekend, Dr. Allan?" Jimmy asks as his assistant heads in.

Allan nods as he hangs up his jacket and rolls up his sleeves. "Very. Starting to feel like I'm getting the lay of the land."

"I take it you didn't get lost this time?" Allan has been working on getting around DC, so each weekend he's been setting a list of places to go and see, and as of yet, he has not had a weekend where he didn't end up somewhere he didn't intend to be.

Allan smiles. "I successfully used the Metro to get to the Zoo, the Smithsonian, then down to Alexandria, and back to my place."

"Good job. Next thing you know you'll be debating getting rid of your car and finally qualify as a real Washingtonian."

"Wouldn't mind not paying for parking. Though, I was thinking I might like a bike."

Jimmy nods at that. "Good exercise, easy to take with you…"

"Motorcycle."

"Oh." He thinks about that for a second. "Those are cool, too."

"So," Allan looks at Jimmy, already in his coveralls, "I take it we have customers today?"

"Indeed, Dr. Allan, indeed." After it falls out of his mouth, and Allan's heading off to grab his coveralls and gas the van, Jimmy wonders briefly if he said that last bit with a Scottish accent. He shrugs, if he did, he did. Allan already thinks he's kind of weird.

It's okay; six months into working for Ducky, he thought Ducky was kind of weird, too.

* * *

There is a certain walk a man who just got his woman pregnant for the first time has.

It's the physical manifestation of the understanding of, finally, having fulfilled this whole, 'man' concept. Talk all you want about duty, honor, blah, blah, blah, on a biological level, the body knows what it is to be a man, and that's to make other, little men.

On an evolutionary level, manhood means finding a woman, getting her pregnant, keeping her pregnant until the baby comes out, healthy, and then making sure her and your young survive.

So, having achieved this, the male body wants to show off. Its very favorite part, doing its very favorite thing, just did the most important thing it can. This makes it very happy, and very proud.

Thus the walk. Or, more precisely, _strut,_ of the newly pregnant daddy.

Had anyone been watching closely, they would have seen it on Jimmy the day after he found out Molly was on the way, (The day of, he more or less floated around in a stunned somewhat silent headspace. It took a few hours for the whole, _holy shit, I made a kid, AWESOME!_ part to kick in for Jimmy.) but, in that there was a dead body the day he found out, he sort of blended into the background without attracting too much notice.

Had Tim been able to see himself from the outside the day before his wedding, he would have recognized that was not his usual gait, and he certainly would have known why he was strutting around, but, in that it was the day before his wedding, everyone else who saw it assumed this was Groom-related strutting, and besides some needling from Jimmy and Tony about being full of himself at his bachelor party, no one looked twice. After all, if there is a second runner up in the strutting department, getting the woman you're going to have the babies with is it.

Gibbs, well, remember, part of the point of Marine posture and training is to look as big and male and impressive as possible, so add that to the 'baby on the way' strut, and Gibbs was marching around with his (metaphorical) dick so far out he was practically tripping people with it.

And, of course, Tony DiNozzo, newest member of the Daddy club, is in no way immune from this phenomena. If Tony was a bird, he'd be in full Peacock mode, plumage displayed, showing off to anyone who knows how to look, that he is a MAN!

* * *

They're planning on telling everyone at Shabbos, so, for the time being, Tony and Ziva are (besides having told Gibbs) keeping quiet about 'Little D' as Tony's been calling her.

Which means, in a life filled with cops, somehow, not spilling the beans, for a whole week.

Ziva's (privately) thinking that Tony'll get to… noon… before someone who knows what that strut means sees him and figures it out, but, and this makes her smile, she doesn't mind the news getting out early.

* * *

Ziva and Draga head down to Holding to grab Alvin Harris, their current suspect, though at this point Tony's thinking suspect is a bad term for this. Information sink is probably better. They aren't holding Harris for any specific crime; they don't think he masterminded the bombing that got them into Kazakhstan in the first place; they do think he's a 'person of interest' in relation to an 'ongoing terror investigation.'

As he and Bishop head to the observation bay, she looks up at him. "Did you hurt your back this weekend?"

"No."

"Knee?"

"I'm fine, Bishop."

"Huh." She watches him take two more steps. "You're walking weird."

He glares at her a bit and opens the door for them.

* * *

While Tony is strutting his way into NCIS, with Ziva rolling her eyes a bit, and handling new baby in a much more female sort of way (namely she's quietly glowing all over the place and smiling a whole lot), Tim and Abby are pulling in and ready for another day, as well.

"So, what's on for today?" Tim asks.

"Same old same old. Too much evidence, not enough time, pull miracles out of the ethers and save the day."

Tim kisses her. "Have fun."

"I hope to."

A minute later, when she's got his wheelchair out, and he's in it, both of them heading to the front door, she asks him, "You?"

"This is going to sound stupid, but, I don't think I ever actually mailed that report to Jarvis."

"Uh..."

"Yeah. I remember you gave me your feedback, I made some changes, put it aside so I could read it a day or two later, and I think I completely forgot about it."

"Oops?"

"Yeah. So, assuming nothing is on fire, that's my day for today."

* * *

Jimmy and Allan pull up to the crime scene, or not, it's where they found the body, he may or may not have been murdered here, and like always the various Agents part for them.

Pleasant suburban house. Even has the white picket fence around the back. Jimmy's looking for Agent Carter, who placed the call this morning letting him know there was a body. Allan's getting out the gurney.

"Get lost?" Carter says, sarcastic, coming up from behind Jimmy.

Carter usually works car thefts and drug cases, so he and Jimmy rarely cross paths. In fact, Jimmy thinks the two of them have only worked four cases together in the last six years, and all of them are from before Jimmy took over as lead ME. But, apparently, every now and again, a drug case turns up a body, which brings his part of NCIS into the case.

"Accident on 495," Jimmy says, turning around to look at Carter. "Took twenty minutes to get to an exit and re-route. Where's the body?"

"'Round back." Carter gestures, and Jimmy follows, Allan trailing behind. "We had a warrant for the place. It belongs to Lance Corporal Henry Fling. He's been missing for the last two weeks." Jimmy walks back with Carter. "Agent Dawson saw the deep freezer on the back porch, saw it was locked…"

"Put two and two together and decided to check," Jimmy says with a nod.

"Exactly."

They round the corner, and Jimmy feels his heart stop. His fist clenches, and then releases, and he stops walking, staring at the deep freezer. "And, is it Lance Corporal Fling?"

"No." Carter looks impatient, not getting why Jimmy isn't walking any more. "Don't know who this is."

"Uh huh." Another slow, steadying breath eases out of Jimmy. Allan can tell something is wrong with Jimmy, but Carter doesn't know him well enough to know he's pissed, and Allan can't see what's wrong. "And… when Agent Dawson opened the freezer, did…" Jimmy looks around for Agent Dawson.

Carter nods to Dawson, who springs into attention and practically runs over to them. By the looks of it he's been doing this job for maybe eight minutes. "Did you think to close the freezer back up again?"

Allan gets it, winces, looking over and seeing the chest freezer sitting there, lid open. It July. It's at least 90 degrees out. The freezer's in full sun. They've been in the car for an hour and a half, and the call came in before that. And their body, which had been perfectly preserved in its own tidy little chamber of frozen evidence was now sitting in a melted puddle.

Dawson looks horrified. "Was I supposed to do that? Agent Carter told me to get pictures."

Jimmy smiles at him, not wanting to chew out the Probie acting on orders of someone who should have known better. "Yes, Agent Dawson, it is standard procedure to maintain the location of the body, _precisely_ the way you found it, _until_ the Medical Examiner comes."

"Oh, God. I'm so sorry. Is this… I mean… Shit!" Dawson looks like he's going to pass out.

"Is this your first case?"

"Yes." He's cringing.

Jimmy stares at Carter but talks to Dawson, "No one expects _you_ to know how to run a crime scene right off the bat."

Carter's eyes narrow, he gets the message the _he_ was supposed to know, loud and clear.

Jimmy ignores him, heading over to the deep freeze, getting ready to see how bad it is.

* * *

Tony cheats a bit on Ziva's timeline. Mainly because he's in the observation bay, watching her and Draga interrogate away, until 13:57.

In fact, a few times, entire minutes go by where Tony's not thinking about the baby.

He gets a text from Tim around 11:00. _We still on for debriefing?_

_Later. Still interrogating. Let you know when I'm done._

_Cool. If Bishop gets a free minute, send her down, want to give her all of the intel we've got._

_Email it?_

_I've got a better place for her to spread it all out and look at it than you do._ Tony thinks about Tim's collection of touch screen plasmas, white boards, and conference table, and decides that he's likely right about that.

"McGee says he's got more intel. Feel free to head down and play with it."

She nods absently. "I'd like to keep watching this. You see how his eyelid twitches every time Ziva touches her star?"

Tony nods. (He considers it the height of professionalism that he did not leap up and strangle Harris the first time it happened. No one _twitches_ at the mother of his child!)

"Alvin Harris is supposed to be a mercenary, only thing he believes in is mayhem. He's not a true believer. This is the wrong guy or something about him has _really_ changed over the last few years."

Tony doesn't like that, but… Alvin Harris is supposed to be an ex-Royal Marine, dishonorably discharged after going AWOL in Afghanistan back in '07, but every now and again he says something that sounds just _slightly_ off to Tony. The r sounds are not quite what he expects. He's biting his lip, staring at Harris. "You were there; we've got a fingerprint match."

She's looking up at him, exasperated. "We've got what the CIA told us was a fingerprint match. We didn't run it ourselves, and we don't know where the comparison prints are from. You mind if I have Abby run facial recognition? I'm wondering if we've got someone who just looks like the guy."

* * *

_Holy Shit!_ Tim thinks as he reads through his draft. Jimmy really wasn't kidding. Being on narcotics is like being drunk. You think you're fine, or only mildly impaired, and you go do whatever the hell it is, and then see video of it later and want to die. Yeah, that's how Tim's feeling about this draft of his Cyber Test report. (He's got a sinking suspicion he's going to be just as horrified when he opens up the M'Gy Dragons and actually re-reads what he came up with.)

At no point while he was attempting to work did Tim think he was _that_ impaired.

He's also thanking any and all higher powers that he did not send this version on. This is scary bad.

So, while Cybercrime hums around him, Tim gets writing.

* * *

He's got that first re-draft done, looks up, notices it's past eleven, remembers that he and Tony were going to talk, and fires off a text.

_We still on for debriefing?_

_Later. Still interrogating. Let you know when I'm done._

Good God, who is this guy? Ziva's been on him since Saturday and they're still going? Wow! Tim thinks as he writes to Tony, _Cool. If Bishop gets a free minute, send her down, want to give her all of the intel we've got._

_Email it?_

Okay, yes, he technically can do that, and pretty much crash their servers. It's a _lot_ of data. Plus, he's seen Bishop work, the entire third floor'll be covered in files if he sends this up to her. _I've got a better place for her to spread it all out and look at it than you do._

Tony doesn't respond to that. Tim reaches for his coffee, sees it's empty, and decides to get a refill. Once he's in view of the coffee station he decided to stand up (ouch) take two steps (ouch, ouch, ouch) stand, leaning against the counter (ouch, but not as bad) make his coffee, pick it up, take two more steps (ouch, ouch) sit back down, (owww... God damn it, that's gonna stain), and wheel himself back to his office.

 _Way to walk on the wild side, right McGee?_ Tim shakes his head wryly, but, that's how this gets better one step at a time.

* * *

It's 15:42 and Jimmy is ready for today to be done. This jacked up little turd of an investigator is demanding a time of death from him, and he is trying to be polite.

"I'm sorry, Agent Carter, but when you find a body in a deep freeze, there's no way for me to give you a time of death. I've got cause. I can tell you approximately how long passed between death and freezing. But once he froze, time basically stopped. Fortu-"

Carter's glaring at Jimmy, cutting him off before he gets to the part of this that is 'good news.' "Ducky would have."

Jimmy stops being nice. He'd been trying to keep from laying into Carter, because he knows Carter rarely handles murders, and this was a tricky scene, but with that… Nope. He's done being nice. Carter's about to take all the abuse Jimmy wanted to toss on him from the moment he saw that freezer was open. "Ducky would have chewed you out, in front of your men, for opening the deep freeze, seeing there was a body in it, and then leaving it open to get pictures. The only possible way anyone could have told how long this body was in there would have been based on the ice crystals around the body, but, between the open door and bright lights, I don't have any ice crystals to work with." Jimmy pulls up the pictures from the crime scenes. "You didn't even get good pictures of them."

Carter's puffing up, annoyed. "I didn't realize that I needed to be taking pictures of the crystals."

Jimmy steps closer to him, and Carter may be taller, but Jimmy's way more pissed off and on the side of the angels on this one. "You didn't need to be taking pictures of the crystals. You needed to do your damn job and secure the body, keeping it and _the environment it was found in_ pristine, until I could get there and release it to you! I've handled hundreds of crime scenes and every single other one was run by someone who understood that it was imperative to preserve the environment the body was found in. But somehow, maybe you were sick that day at FLETC or just didn't have the brains to pass basic police work 101, you didn't get that message. So, instead of me having exact measurements of how deep the frost around the body was, and instead of using the deep freeze and a dead pig to figure out exactly how long it takes for that frost to form around a fresh corpse, thus giving you exactly how long he'd been in the deep freeze, this poor bastard is going to sit in my morgue, until you manage to stumble, _by blind luck alone_ , because I seriously doubt you've got the chops to actually locate evidence, into something else incriminating, and can run the case based on that." Jimmy glares back at Carter. "Other investigators, they get to poke around, look at the scene, start taking pictures while they wait for me to get there. You no longer have that privilege."

"I've been a Lead Agent—"

"Stuff it. As of now, the only thing you get to do before I show up is wrap tape around the perimeter and keep people out of what's inside. As of today, if you or yours finds a body, you turn into a traffic cop, and all you do is direct the flow of people around the scene. We've run the prints, they've come up negative. Abby's on DNA, and I've got Dr. Allan working his dental records. If those don't pan out, we've got a John Doe with no time of death, making this man impossible to identify and his case impossible to solve, all because _you_ didn't properly secure the body!"

Carter storms out, and Allan, who vanished about two seconds into Jimmy reaming Carter, rematerializes. "You going to tell him Abby's already matched the DNA?"

Jimmy shakes his head. "I was, originally, but now, not for an hour or so. I want him to stew on that. If Mr. Alm here had been a John Doe, what he did would have destroyed our chances of figuring this out."

"Lucky for Mr. Alm that we know he went missing fourteen weeks ago."

"Yeah." Jimmy smiles.

* * *

"I will take clean murder over this terror crap any day and twice on Sunday!" Tony says as he struts (annoyed, frustrated strut, but strutting nonetheless) into Tim's office.

Tim, who's working on the clean up draft of Carrier Group Three CyberSecurity Test, looks up at Tony, who's pulling a chair over while closing the door to Tim's office.

"Interesting development?" Tim asks as Tony sits down.

Tony's got that gleam in his eye, the one that shows up when he's annoyed, disbelieving, and needs to blow off some work related steam. "Don't you know it! Our suspect? Not a terrorist. Nooo. That'd be too damn easy. No, this guy, he's a deep cover plant trained by MI6 to infiltrate other terror organizations, recruit people he thinks are 'talented' and then they go 'work for him' which is code for one way trip to wherever the hell the Brits keep people like that. Meanwhile, they've got a crew of mostly MI6 guys and a few actual terrorists who blow shit up and mess around with things so Harris has things he can 'take credit for.'"

Tim thinks that's actually a fairly clever way to go about getting bad guys out of circulation. "So, how'd you get him?"

"We didn't. We're _supposed_ to have him. Part of what's going on right now is that he's supposed to be captured by us and getting his butt into our prison system so he can keep 'recruiting' guys who are about to get out. Once they do, they go hunt down his company and then get swept up by the Brits."

"That would have been good to know."

"Yeah." Tony's rolling his eyes. "Apparently, it's some sort of deal with the Brits. We let guys out of Gitmo, which looks good and gets us good PR or something, and they use guys like Harris to pick them up again, so we don't have to worry about 'recidivism.' Someone could have given us a heads up on that. Apparently CIA knew, that's why they gave him to us because we're the 'nicest' route to Gitmo, except, joke's on all of us, we don't have the right guy."

Tim's eyebrows scoot together. "Who do you have?"

Tony shrugs. "Not Alvin Harris. Which is news to MI6 and the CIA." Tony takes a sip of his coffee. "Abby's got her guys working on figuring out who _this_ is, but face to face comparison didn't match. Anyway, that's the update on my side. What do you have?"

Tim shakes his head and sighs. "A new and unending love of my side of the problem."

"Yeah, I figured. Anything else?"

"Data. Lots and lots and lots of data. Those five chips…" Tim's about to rattle off specs, but realizes that Tony's already nebulous on what a gig is when it comes down to real world information and getting into terrabites is just going to confuse him more. "Imagine my whole office filled with paperwork, info on both sides, in tiny, tiny letters."

Tony's nodding.

"We've got that twice over and then some on each chip. Whoever your diplomatic assistant was, he had the goods on everyone and thing. It's all decrypted; all we need now is for someone to do something with it."

Tony shakes his head. "I've never wanted someone to get killed so badly in my life. We go out, we go through evidence, we get leads, it all of it fits in one, maybe two boxes. How is anyone supposed to keep all of this straight?"

Tim laughs. "I think that's why you've got computers. No one can keep this in one head." Then he remembers what Bishop does. "Or… I mean, is Bishop running this in her head?"

Tony lifts a hand, showing he has no idea how she does it. "She might be. She's got her ten million files all spread out and scattered around, then she does her thing with them and her laptop and tells me something and I nod and say, 'Okay,' and do it, because it sounds okay, but she might as well be getting those suggestions from voodoo for all I can tell."

Tim laughs at that, too.

"Actually… That's something I want to talk to you about. We can't keep this all in our heads and the paper folders are useless. Draga's been asking about trying to build our own terror database. According to Bishop they had this huge searchable file of the Gods back at NSA. Anything and everything you ever wanted had already been scanned, loaded, and you could just get it out by typing words in.

"That would be good."

"Yeah. We don't have that."

"You don't have that for murders, either. And, unless Draga's secretly two hundred database wonks, he's not building it for you."

"I know. But I need it."

"I think I can get you murders, because that's our in-house data." Tim's already writing his next project down. Though, technically, this should be a job for record keeping and IT, and he's probably going to have to run it through them, but... He can't imagine he'll have a hard time getting Leon behind it.

When Tim gets done writing, Tony says, "So these chips and your full city block of data… You think I've got enough goodies in there to barter that into access to the NSA's database?"

Tim shrugs. "I don't think I could do it. But… You got someone at NSA who's persuadable?"

"Maybe. Gotta figure out how to play this so I get what I want and don't end up with us getting it all confiscated."

Tim waves that off. "I've got back-ups of back-ups that no one knows about. We're not losing this. Whether we've got the resources to do anything with it is a different story, but it's not going anywhere."

Tony nods, he slumps a little, grits his teeth, then stands up, flashes his million watt smile, and says, "Okay, let's go see if I can do anything with this encyclopedia."

Tim smiles and waves him on, as he's at the door, Tim adds, "And it's only Monday! Think about what sort of fun tomorrow will bring." in a cheery voice.

Tony flips him the bird and heads off.

* * *

"What'd'ya got, Abbs?"

"A sense of Deja vu. When'd you start channeling Gibbs, Tony?"

"Probably when I got far enough into this case that I began longing for a murder."

"Jimmy's got one. Well, technically Agent Carter has one."

Tony's surprised by that. "Isn't Carter on drugs and autos?"

Abby nods. "And he's way out of his league apparently. Looks like Jimmy wouldn't mind if you had a murder, too."

"Great. Unfortunately, doesn't work that way."

"Yeah, I know." Abby smiles at Tony. "But, I've got some fortunately for you."

"Please!" He looks relieved. "Give me good news."

"Follow me," she heads into the auxiliary computer bank, and then waits for him to follow, standing next to her computer. He's a few steps behind, and sees her watching carefully as he walks in.

"What?"

Abby smiles, eyebrows flicking up, and then shakes her head. "You'll tell us when you're ready. Anyway, we don't have a complete DNA match, so I can't tell you who the guy in Holding is."

"I thought there was supposed to be some fortunately in this."

"There is! I can tell you he's a bin Laden. Son, brother, cousin, no idea, yet. But, y chromosomes don't lie. This guy is part of the clan."

Tony's eyes go wide as he absorbs that. "Wasn't Osama bin Laden one of fifty kids?"

"Something like that, and he had a pile of his own, as well, and I'm sure his dad wasn't an only child, either. I googled, didn't find the exact number, but they think there may be 600 of them. Here's the other bit that may help narrow this down some, he's got a few markers on his x chromosome that are associated with Northern European populations."

"So… Mom's from Europe?"

"Or Grandma. Or great, great, great grandma."

"Okay… Better than nothing." Tony thinks about that some more. "Actually…" He hurries two steps forward, kisses Abby on the cheek. "Thanks, Abbs. As soon as Sean's out, I owe you all the Caf-Pow you can drink!"

She smiles at him, watching him strut off, and says, "That's a lot of Caf-Pow."

"It's worth it." She hears from the main lab.

* * *

Ziva hears a knock on the interrogation door. That surprises her. She and Draga have been at this all day, save for a quick lunch break. She feels like she's just starting to put a dent into Mr. Harris, and that if the way he's squirming about in his seat is any indication, he's just about hit the edge of his rope.

Tony pokes his head in, looks at Harris, smiles at him, wide and happy, and then waves Ziva and Draga out.

Ziva heads out, not happy about that, but follows Tony to observation. "What?"

"Damn it!" Draga's watching through the window. As soon as they were out of there, Harris grabbed the water pitcher and relieved himself. Now he's glaring at Tony. "It took us hours to get him that uncomfortable."

Tony shakes his head. "It took hours to get him playing that uncomfortable. Trust me, you weren't touching who this guy really is."

"We were starting to get intel on attacks in Bahrain and Gibraltar," Draga says.

"That's one of the cover levels. Top cover, Alvin Harris, British mercenary/terror for hire. Next level, Alvin Harris, not actually dishonorably discharged, didn't actually go AWOL in Afghanistan, deep cover MI6 Operative."

Ziva's shaking her head, looking mad, she doesn't like that at all.

"Fuck," Draga says.

"Next level, this guy isn't actually Alvin Harris. MI6 is reporting now that the last contact they had with Harris where they absolutely knew it was Harris was over a year ago."

"Well, who the hell is that?" Draga asks.

"One of the multitudes of Bin Ladens."

"What?" Ziva can't believe this.

"How?" Draga asks.

"We don't know, and guess what, we don't have to find out, either! What we have here, in addition to all that spiffy new intel McGee got for us, is the engraved invitation to the NSA and CIA databases. In exchange for free access to their intel, I am allowing them to fight over who gets this asshole, and letting them deal with him."

Tony hands over two thumb drives. "There's one for me, and one for Bishop, too. These are our new, spiffy, and fully functional passes to the NSA and CIA computers." He kisses Ziva. "Now, Mr. Whoever the Hell That is Bin Laden, can sit in there, and we're all going out for a celebratory dr… milkshake, and then, tomorrow, we're rounding up our best leads on our best cases and seeing what NSA and CIA have on them for us."

And by the time that news got out, no one was wondering why Tony was strutting anymore. They were wrong about why, but not wondering.

* * *

Tim hits save on his report. It's a lot better this time. Still, a lot better doesn't necessarily mean done. He'll give it a day or two to rest, then one last read through and re-write, and off to Jarvis it goes.

He looks over the draft of the email for the reworking of their internal criminal database. Technically, this is IT's backyard, which means it's actually Leon's problem. He's already simplified the language twice. He knows Leon isn't Gibbs and that he actually knows (sort of) what a computer can do, but he doesn't want it to be too tech-y, because he wants Leon to understand what this needs to do to be better than their current system.

He's hoping he threaded that needle.

Tim glances at the clock. Almost going home time. He opens up the work documents for the new version of the cyber security his guys are coding away on, and give it a glance through. Nothing's jumping out as a problem.

"Hey." Abby's leaning against his door.

He looks up at her. "Hi. Almost done. Just gotta log out."

"Okay."

He scans over a bit more, decides it's good, and logs out. Then he stands up and takes the three steps to his wheelchair. Abby sees that and smiles. "You're keeping it further away from you?"

"That's the idea. So, good day?"

"Oh yeah. Got some news, too."

"Good new?"

"Oh yeah. Come on, let's grab Jimmy."

* * *

"There you go, Mr. Alm. All set for the night," Jimmy says as he tucks Mr. Alm into his drawer. "Your family will be here to see you, tomorrow."

"I'm not looking forward to that," Dr. Allan says.

"I know. Not my favorite part of the job, either." Jimmy sighs. "It's a comfort though, to be able to touch and see and say goodbye. So we offer it, and we stuff how uncomfortable it is down and away because no matter how uneasy it makes us, it's much worse for them."

Dr. Allan nods at that. "Yeah. Is that how you can do this, day after day?"

Jimmy shrugs. "I don't know. I just do it."

"Were you always this good at it?"

Jimmy laughs at that. "No. Have a good night, Dr. Allan."

"Good night, Dr. Palmer."

* * *

A minute later, as Jimmy's turning off his computer equipment and lights, he hears the doors swoosh open, and "Jimmy!"

"Hi, Abby." He's facing away from the door. "Got, Tim, too?"

"Yeah. I'm here."

Jimmy flicks off the last of the lights and heads over to them. "Hi. Did you have as long of a day as I did?"

"Mine went pretty fast," Abby's bubbling away, "And I think I've got some news."

"She wouldn't tell me until we got you."

"Well, you've got me, what is it?"

"Ziva's _so_ pregnant!"

"You sure?" Jimmy asks.

"Not one hundred percent, I didn't see her today, but Tony was strutting all over the place, and I've seen that walk before."

"I saw him, too…" Tim's thinking back, but he doesn't remember. "No idea if he was walking different. So, really, you can tell when a guy has a baby on the way by how he walks?"

"Oh my God, yes! You can't?"

Tim and Jimmy are both shaking their heads, as she takes Jimmy's hand and rests a hand on Tim's shoulder, leading them out of Autopsy.

"Oh, Lord, you should have seen you two strutting all over the place… Jimmy, you brought me tissue samples from that dead body, and you were all puffed up. And you... You swaggered on out of the house to go start picking people up for the wedding."

They both look mock-appalled at the idea that they may have been involved in such activities.


	126. Good News

“That looks good,” Tim says as he steps, slowly, over the divider between the kitchen and back porch at Jimmy and Breena’s house. A few more slow, tentative steps gets him to one of the chairs, where he’s probably staying until it’s time to go home.

“Hey, look at you, up and moving!” Breena replies, setting a pitcher of white peach sangria on the table. It’s a little warm for dinner outside, but it’ll keep cooling down as the sun sinks, and by the time they're really eating it should be pretty nice.

“For about ten steps at a time.”

“Ten more than last week,” Abby adds, giving Breena a hug and putting Kelly in Tim’s lap.

“Yep. If either leg actually worked, I’d be getting around pretty well by now, but…”

Breena pets his shoulder as she heads back into the kitchen. “I know. Give it time.”

“I can smell it, so I know it’s meat with a lot of garlic, but what do you have going over there?” Tim asks Jimmy, who’s standing at the grill.

“Lamb kebabs. Ziva says she’s making flat breads for them and dessert. Gibbs and Abbi are bringing some sort of veg. You two had salads, right?”

Tim nods. “Kelly got to help with one. Didn’t you, baby!”

“Helped!” She’s looking very proud of herself, and Jimmy’s turned to look at them with something akin to horror on his face. Fourteen month olds are not precisely the definition of helpful, let alone with cooking.

“And how did you help, Honey?”

“Berries!”

Now he’s eyeballing Tim. “Berry dressing.” Kelly’s holding up pink and purple stained hands. “Abby’s cutting everything up, and Kelly’s in my lap, we’re not doing much, so I decide I’ll get started on the dressing. Toss everything in the blender. She made sure the berries got in there. And in her mouth. And on the floor. Yeah.” Tim flashes Jimmy a _see if I ever make this mistake again_ smile. “It was great,” he says dryly.

* * *

Almost time to go.

Ziva loves to cook. She always has. And cooking for other people is even better than just cooking to make food for herself. 

This week, puttering around her kitchen, stretching out rounds of naan dough, getting it ready for the grill pan, she’s having a blast. She is in a full on celebratory groove, bopping around her kitchen, music on loud, easily flipping each flat bread as it finishes between dance steps.

Tony’s leaning against the door to their kitchen, just watching. After a few beats, where she does not appear to notice he’s there, he steps in and catches her mid-dance step. “Dance with me?”

She grins up at him, and lets him lead a few steps.

“So, anything I can do to help in here?” he asks after dipping her low at the end of the song.

“I think I’ve got in here covered. Only three more left to cook.” She plucks a perfectly golden brown with slight little charred spots on it naan off the grill pan, and tosses another one on. “Did Senior get you?”

Tony rolls his eyes at that. “I saw he called, but we ended up playing phone tag, what’s up?”

“He’s got a house he wants to move on for us. He would like us to see it before starting the bidding.”

Tony’s eyes go wide open. “Oh. Uh. Okay… He tell you where?”

“Georgetown.”

Tony thinks about that for a moment. He loves Georgetown, it’s one of his favorite DC neighborhoods. He’d very happily live there, but… It’s _really_ expensive. “Oh God. If it’s in bad enough shape for us to afford it in Georgetown, it’s about to be condemned.”

Ziva shrugs. She knows her way around DC, but doesn’t pay that much attention to neighborhoods, especially ones she doesn’t live in. “He says it is a great neighborhood and a very good school district.”

“Scratch that, it _is_ condemned.”

“Tomorrow morning, we’ll go, we’ll see. He invited Gibbs, too.”

Tony can just see it, the more this place looks like the ruins of urban warfare, the more Gibbs’ll love it. “That’ll be fun. You want to tell Dad then?”

A huge smile breaks over Ziva’s face. “Oh yes. Do you think Gibbs told Abbi?”

Tony’s mouth opens and then closes. “I don’t know. Is it stupid that I keep forgetting he’s got this extra person now, who he’s actually _trying_ to tell things to?”

“Yes.” Ziva winks at him and flips the bread. “Abbs keeps watching me, looking like she’s expecting to be told something.”

“Yeah, Palmer and McGee keep giving me stupid grins, too. So, tonight? Or make them wait for next week.”

Ziva’s glowing at it. “Tonight.”

* * *

“Stories!” Molly Palmer knows exactly what she wants, and she’s homing in on it. Namely, she wants her (new) very favorite story (Madeline) with her very favorite Uncle (Uncle Jethro) and she wants it _now._

The thing about summertime Shabbos is dinner starts at sunset. In Washington DC in the last week of July, sunset is at about 8:30, which is also known as an hour and a half after baby girls go to bed. They’ve tried a few dinners with the girls up, and basically found that no one was having a good time. Sure the girls liked it, and Molly especially was being extremely vocal about not being tired _at all_ , but between having to deal with exceptionally grumpy tiny people during dinner (not fun) and then having to deal with tiny little bears with sore paws the entire next day (really not fun) the adult members of Clan Gibbs have decided that babies get to sleep through supper when it happens after bedtime.

So, these days, the first order of business is get everyone greeted, followed by story time with Uncle Jethro (and Dad, though whether Dad means Jimmy or Tim depends on how little girls are doing.)

Jethro scoops up Molly, who already has her book in hand, and says, “Hello Molly.”

“Uncle Jetro!” He gets a big wet kiss on the lips. “I got book!”

“I see.” She’s holding it right up in his face, almost pressed to his nose. Gibbs leans back a bit and grabs it from her. “‘Twelve little girls in two straight lines, the youngest one was Madeline,’ right?”

Molly’s astonished by that. “How do you know?”

“I used to read this book a whole lot.”

“Oh.” Molly’s impressed by that. “Is it your favorite?”

He shakes his head. “Nah. But I like it a lot. Is this what we’re going to read tonight?”

Molly nods her head. Then she notices that Uncle Tim is already sitting at the table. So she squirms away from Jethro and scoots over to him. She’s trying to hop into his lap, which already has Kelly in it, and right now that’s too many little squirmy people on Tim at once, fortunately Jethro snags Kelly for her hello hug and kiss.

“Uncle Tim! Madeline has a hurt arm, just like you!” Molly says as soon as she’s in his lap.

Tim’s looking around, not sure who Madeline is, but Abby (who just stepped out of the kitchen) is grinning. “Yes, she does, doesn’t she, Molly?”

Molly nods in agreement, looking intently at Tim. “It gets better.”

Tim nods. “My arm’s going to get better, too. See.” He shows off how much less of his arm is in the cast now. He’s not sure how aware of what’s under the sling the girls are, but Molly seems impressed.

“How much better is it?” Abbi asks, sitting next to him.

Tim kisses her cheek. “Well, Jimmy comes over and tortures me twice a week, but each time he does it I get another two inches of range of motion, so…”

“So it’s worth it, and you bitching and moaning is just sympathy seeking,” Jimmy says with a smile. “Jethro, Abbi,” both of them get hugs. “Showing off your new book?” he takes Molly from Tim.

“Anyway, as I was saying, if NCIS doesn’t work out, Jimmy’s starting Master Palmer’s House of Pain.”

“Oh come on!”

Tim winks at Jimmy.

“Master Palmer?”

Tim just grins. Jimmy’s fairly sure that if it was just the two of them, that nickname would have a rude hand gesture attached to it, as well.

“Dr. Palmer’s House of Pain sounds kinkier,” Tony adds as he heads over.

Molly’s listening and watching and can tell there’s a joke of some sort, because the adults are all goofing around but she doesn’t know what’s going on. “Daddy?”

Jimmy kisses her forehead. “It’s okay. Uncle Tim and Uncle Tony are teasing me.”

She glares at Tim and Tony. Everyone at daycare is very specific about how it’s bad to tease people. “No teasing!”

Tim nods, seriously. “No teasing. I’m sorry, Jimmy.”

That satisfies Molly. Now she staring at Uncle Tony, who’s staring back, trying to figure out what to do with this. After all, there’s no way he’s going to say he won’t tease Jimmy, he’ll get ragged on that until the end of time. “C’mere.”

Now everyone is looking at Tony, wondering (okay, internally smirking, they all _know_ what’s going on) as he takes Molly. She’s looking a little startled, too. Uncle Tony’s good for rough housing, not so good for cuddles. He’s never done story time before. “How about Uncle Jethro and I read you and your sister some stories?”

Molly thinks about that, looks over at her Daddy, who nods, it’s fine with him if the usual Friday night routine varies a bit, then she looks at Jethro, who also nods. “Uncle Tony’s new to this story thing, so we’re going to have to show him how to do it.”

That makes Molly happy, because if there’s anything a two-year-old loves, it’s getting to boss people around. 

Especially adult people!

* * *

As Gibbs quietly closes the door to Molly’s bedroom behind him, he looks at Tony and grins. “Not so bad?”

Tony grins back, then shrugs. He’s still not awash in overwhelming and unending adoration for the little rug rats, but that wasn’t bad, and Kelly and Anna all tucked into one crib with Molly in her little bed is awfully damn cute. “Still like big people better.”

“That’s fine. You’re allowed to.”

“Wasn’t scary. Felt like I wasn’t completely out of my depth.”

Gibbs wraps an arm around his shoulders and gives him a squeeze. 

“Looking forward to doing that with Little D.”

That turns the squeeze into a hug.

“Really don’t like changing diapers. There’re all those little folds the poop hides in. _Ylghrk._ ” Tony shudders.

Gibbs bursts out laughing at that. “Better get used to it. Ziva’s not going to let you be a 1950’s husband.”

Tony shakes his head wryly. “Yeah. I know.”

* * *

“So, McComputerMaster, I’ve got a question for you.” Tony asks once the blessing is done and they’re all eating.

“Shoot, Tony. Looking to upgrade at home?” Tim asks, lifting a bite of lamb to his mouth. After one chew he adds, “This is awesome!”

Breena smiles at that. 

“Uh, no… Why, do I need to?”

“No, just…” Tony’s laptop is four years old. “Never mind, what’s up?”

Tony puts his glass down. “So, once we off-loaded our Bin Laden and started playing with our new data, Bishop had a really devious thought.” Everyone is nodding, following along. “Basically, she pointed out how, yeah, it’s great that we have all this access now, but with how they gave it to us, they can take it away with just a few keystrokes.”

“That’s how every well-designed secure system works, Tony.”

“Great.” Tony rolls his eyes a bit, indicating _that_ isn’t exactly a revelation to him. The revelation is what that means. “We’re using it, making more headway, putting things together faster and easier than ever before. It’s wonderful, but… Anytime CIA or NSA says jump, we’re gonna be going ‘how high’ because we can’t afford to lose access, now.”

“Double edged sword,” Ducky adds.

“Yeah. So… Can we make a copy? I mean, I give you my access stick, can you make me my own NSA database?”

Tim sniggers. “Can you get me the fifty million dollars of storage I need to hold it and the fifteen or so people I’ll need to run it?”

“No.”

Tim just looks at Tony. “But if you get me authorization from Vance, I’ll build you a backdoor so you’ve always got a way in.”

Tony’s smiling for a second, because how hard can that be, then he sees the look on Tim’s face. “Vance won’t give me authorization, will he?”

Tim shakes his head. “He’s looking at prison time if we get caught. I am, too. However, Draga can, and this is legal, set up a program on your team’s computers so that every time a new screen pops up it takes a screenshot and saves it. He’ll have to build your own database for it, but you won’t be able to lose anything you’ve accessed.”

Tony likes the sound of that. Especially since he’s building a web of hopefully related cases, so what gets used in Case A will hopefully come in handy for Case B. “That’s a start.”

“Yeah. Step two, and Draga shouldn’t have any trouble with this, write a program so that whenever you aren’t actively using your computers, they’re swimming through the databases, constantly pulling stuff up and getting shots. He can talk to me if he needs help turning those shots into searchable data. When you get enough of it, we’ll have a chat with Vance about your storage needs.”

Tony nods. “Ah. And this would be… legal?”

Tim shrugs. He thinks so, but he hasn’t seen the fine print on whatever agreement Tony got up with either group. He’s fairly certain Tony hasn’t seen the fine print, either. “A hell of a lot more legal than me attempting to copy restricted databases or hack a back door into them. So long as we’re just messing with our own stuff, it should be fine.”

“Ah.” Tony’s looking at everyone else at the table. “So, I guess we’re all pretty much up to date on what I’ve been doing this week, then?” Nods. “So, how about it, Abbi, haven’t seen you for a while, what CGIS doing to you?”

Abbi sighs. “New fiscal year starts September 1st, and this year we’ve gotten notice that the GAO is coming to audit us on September 2nd, so, as you can guess, this year is mayhem. They want not just Fiscal 2015, but the five years previous, too.”

“Fun!” Tim says, nodding.

“Oh, yeah, excellent. Add in the fact that I wasn’t in charge for ’11, ’12, or part of ’13, and that Swissin, the guy who had the job before I did, needed to take his shoes off to count to eleven, and conveniently died last year.” She’s glaring at the mental image of Swissin, wishing he was still alive so she could blow off some steam by reaming him out properly. Gibbs gently rubs the back of her neck. “So, I can’t even hunt his ass down and grill him, and I’ve got the least fun accounting nightmare you’ve ever seen.” She stabs a bite of her salad, picks it up on her fork, and then puts it back down. “I’ve got full quarters where there’s nothing, not even files. My computer guys keep telling me there should be information around here somewhere, that we keep copies of everything off site as well as locally, but they can’t find them.

“My boss is fussing about bringing in forensic accountants to go figure out what’s going on because he thinks it looks bad. He wants to just stonewall the GAO and hope they’re unwilling to call a Congressional investigation, which is making me wonder if he’s involved in those quarters being gone.

“IA reports to him, so I can’t exactly call them in on this without him finding out about it, and since I mentioned the forensic accountant, expecting him to go along with it, he’s got the heads up that I’m onto something here and is likely scrubbing things clean as we speak.” Abbi chomps her bite of salad.

The rest of the table is sitting there silent, very aware of how big of a deal this is, and that they cannot talk to anyone outside of the room about it.

“You’ve got a work laptop with access to everything on it, right?” Tim asks.

Abbi nods.

“Maybe tomorrow you and Gibbs’ll drop by, play with Kelly, and you’ll just leave it on my kitchen table. At the very least I’ll probably be able to tell you if your computer guy knows what he’s doing or if he’s BSing you, too.”

“Thanks, McGee. Probably not tomorrow, though. I’m back on first thing. Next weekend?”

“Sure. Or any night this week. Whenever you’ve got a few hours you don’t need to be on it.”

“So, if this is more than just… incompetence, where do you go with this?” Penny asks.

Borin shrugs. “Officially, as head of the Chesapeake Region, I’d report it to the head of our IA department, and then he handles it. As the person who’s going to have to answer to the GAO, I’m thinking those forensic accountants are showing up whether Tom likes them there or not. I want to have something to show beyond a bunch of blank spaces.” Abbi takes a drink. “The real question is, do I think IA is going to do something? This feels wrong.”

“Hinky?” Abby asks.

“Yeah. Those files are supposed to be off site and if they’re missing, too… Lots of hinky.” Abbi shakes her head. “Swisson just up and gave notice. Just retired out of the blue one day. Next thing I know, I’m in charge of the Chesapeake Division. Cases run smooth; they always did. He had a good handle on all of the crime stuff, but Swisson was an awful administrator. And I don’t know, maybe he got promoted too high. Maybe he was on the take. But this smells bad, and it’s biting me in the ass.”

Gibbs has been holding her hand. This is the first time she’s said that much about this all at once. He’s been getting bits and pieces, but he’s guessing something really shifted today, probably the information not being in the backup storage area. "Okay, enough of the fun of CGIS,” Abbi gives Ziva a long look, smile tugging at her lips. “Have an exciting week, Ziva?”

Ziva smiles. “For me? Quite dull really. Computers, more computers. I have been in the office every day this week. We may have some exciting tomorrow. Senior’s found a house he wants to show us.”

That gets a collection of pleased sounding responses, though they start to trail off when they notice Tony’s not looking too excited.

“Tony?” Breena asks.

Tony shakes his head. “Been dealing with him for a long time, so… Right now, we know it’s supposed to be in a great school district in Georgetown. So… what’s wrong with it?” He shakes his head again. “We’ll find out tomorrow.” He’s looking at Ziva, wondering if she’s waiting for him to say it, and he’s waiting for her, but then she nods a bit.

“As I said, for _me_ it was a dull week, however, for _us_ we’ve had some great excitement. I know you’ve all been gossiping about it, so…" She's smiling brightly now, and Tony can feel the grin spreading across his face. "Yes, you are right, we are pregnant! If all goes well, come the end of April, we’ll be adding another place to the table.”

That gets a lot of happy noise. Congratulations offered, and hugs. Abby woops at it, and Breena is giggling with happiness.

Ducky’s chuckling, and Penny’s grinning, shaking her head. “Oh, Lord, five babies under the age of three and a half. This crew is going to be a handful.”

“Can you imagine when we’ve got the house done, say Christmas five years from now, all of them bounding around the house high as kites on sugar and excitement, presents all over the place?” Abbi adds.

Gibbs is grinning at that, not just the image of it, but that Abbi’s seeing _their_ family five years from now in _their_ home.

“Might need another dog,” Gibbs adds with a smile, “something that herds. Keep ‘em all in one place.”

Abby claps her hand over Gibbs’ mouth. “Don’t you dare say that! Mona’s doing a great job of herding babies. You apologize to her!”

Mona, who had been laying on the porch, right at the sliding glass door, looks up at the mention of her name, but no one’s offering food, so she goes back to snoozing.

“She knows I’m foolin’ with her.”

“Are we finding out if it’s a boy or girl?” Penny asks.

Tony shrugs. Ziva doesn’t want to know. “He wants to know. I do not. But we still have a while to decide. The test they did for you… That was earlier than usual, right?”

Abby nods. “Yeah, instead of taking a peek with the ultrasound, this is a DNA test. Do you have your first OB appointment, yet?”

“No. We’re going to make it Monday,” Tony says. “Wanted to get numbers from you and Breena.”

“From Breena,” Abby says. “Unless something goes wrong. Dr. Draz specializes in ‘high risk’ a.k.a. ‘Old Moms’ you’re probably better off with her OB.”

“Dr. Humme’s great. I’ll send you her number,” Breena adds.

“I don’t know if there’s a deadline for the test we did, but we were at eleven weeks when we went in.” Abby replies, then says to Ziva, “So, it looks like you’re feeling good.”

Ziva smiles at that, too. She is feeling good. “A little sleepy, and a little more sensitive, but otherwise, yes, feeling good. Of course, I am also less than a month pregnant.”

The girls laugh at that.

Jimmy’s looking at Ziva and starts to say, “How long… Are you planning on… Uh… What are your thoughts on maternity leave?” He stumbles a bit, looking for a PC way to ask that question.

Penny smiles, approving of his effort.

“I do not know for sure. Right now, I feel fine, so working is not an issue. If that changes… I do not think it is fair, or safe, for the rest of the team if I cannot bring my A game to the field. It is one thing to be tired for a day or two, another thing to feel like you’re going to fall asleep at any moment for weeks at a time, and if you have to throw up six times a day…”

Breena and Abby are nodding along. “Yeah, your job, cat naps, and morning sickness don’t go along together well,” Abby says.

“Let alone trying to run someone down when your joints go all loose and your balance goes sideways,” Breena adds. “But, that’s not a problem for everyone, I mean…”

Ziva nods. “I know. So… I don’t know how long I’m staying, but…” and though Tony and Gibbs know this, it’s not something she’s said to anyone else in this crew. “But after, I’m not going back.” 

That gets a few seconds of shocked quiet, followed by, “Oh… wow!” from Breena.

Then, “That’s so cool!” from Abby. “Stay at home mom… For good, or…”

“I think for good. I’ve been ready for a change for a while now. It’s time to dedicate life to nurturing life. Eventually she’ll… and maybe a little brother or sister or both,” she’s beaming a smile at Tony, “will be in school, and I’ll be looking for something else, but while they are still babies, I’d like to be home.”

Tim’s watching Tony as Ziva’s saying this, and he catches a bit of panic in the back of his eyes, but it’s not nearly as bad as he would have expected it to be. Granted, he expected this to be curl into a ball, rocking back and forth whimpering in the bathroom, full on panic attack, so the fact that he’s still sitting there, looking calm-ish, mostly happy, and insanely proud, is a very big step.

He watches Penny, wondering what she’s thinking. She hasn’t said anything, and right now her face is unreadable. He gets the sense that she’s going to want to talk to Ziva alone, make sure she’s not feeling pressured into doing anything, but… But he doesn’t know.

Ziva’s saying something, and then shifts to, “So, that was my week. How about you, McGee?”

“Um…” For a second he can’t think of what he did this week. Then it comes back. He looks down at his right arm. “So, the Third Carrier Group Cyber Attack Readiness Evaluation as well as the Paradigms For Effective Surprise Cyber Attacks are officially finished. My reports are done, and as of 12:45 in Jarvis’ inbox.” Everyone goes quiet at that, not sure if this is the sort of thing where congratulations are in order. Tim sympathizes; he also felt awash in a lot of things, not sure what, really, as he hit the send button. “Got a note back from Jarvis, just as I was heading out, he hadn’t had time to read them yet, but he was surprised and pleased to see I’ve written them.” Tim swallows and sighs. “He says that I’m getting a Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Award, for going way above and beyond the call,” another sigh. Everyone stares at him, he hadn’t even told Abby about it, yet.

“You’re not looking thrilled,” Jimmy says.

Abby’s petting his thigh as he shrugs. “Am I getting it for going above and beyond, coming up with a test no one else could, and doing the job better than anyone else, or for shutting up about what happened to me and not making a fuss during an election year?” Tim shakes his head. “Well, that’s a grim reaction to good news. Penny, what have you been up to?” 

“I had a very good week…” And Penny begins to tell them about a breakthrough one of her study groups had this week.

In that Breena and Jimmy did the heavy lifting on the cooking, they do not have to do dishes. So, shortly after dinner breaks, Ziva and Abbi volunteer to handle dishes, and Penny decides this is a fine time for some ‘girl talk’ with Ziva.

They’re about three cups into the washing up when she asks, “Do you really want to be a stay at home mom? It can be… so limiting and dull and… Just, don’t let anyone pressure you into it.” It’s clear that by _anyone_ she’s thinking Tony or Gibbs.

Ziva smiles at Penny. “No one expects me to be a stay at home mom. No one ever has.” At least, if her parents or grandparents had ever expected it for her, those expectations died long before she could be pushed in that direction. “If it is limiting and dull or I do not like it, no one will give me any trouble about going back to work. Sure, I will not have my space on Tony’s team. He will have to hire someone to replace me when I leave, but I will not find it difficult to find work. And… like with McGee and Abby, one of us should have a safe nine-to-five job if we have children at home.”

“Are you sure?” Ziva sounds good, but Penny’s seen a lot of women, strong, resilient women who did such a good job of internalizing what the outside world said they were supposed to be, they didn’t realize it wasn’t coming from inside them until it was too late. “Men can be--”

“Penny, it’s not about that. If anything, Tony would prefer I kept working.” Abbi hands her a pile of rinsed dishes, and Ziva and Penny split them for drying. “Another income makes everything less scary.”

Penny nods at that. “Another income means you’ve always got options. It’s not a good idea to be completely dependent on anyone.”

“Penny, it’s not that you’re wrong, because you aren’t. But, do you really think I do not have an escape route? If I ever need to run, I’m ready to do it on less than a minute's notice, on my own, with a baby, with a baby and Tony. I’ve got back up plans stashed around the world dating back to the mid-nineties.” Ziva sighs. The fact that she's got those plans, and safety nets is part of the problem. “I’m done. I don’t want that life anymore. If it comes back, I can handle it, but… I have been done for a while. I still love the job, and I’m good at it, but, it’s not my life anymore. And more than that, I do not want it to be my life anymore.”

Abbi’s listening quietly to this, looking to learn more about Ziva, because she, too couldn’t fathom the idea of Agent David (In Abbi’s mind, she’ll always be Agent David.) hanging up the cuffs for good.

Penny’s watching her intently as she speaks.

“Death has always been part of my life. I was thirteen when Tali was killed. By fifteen, my parent’s marriage was dead. At eighteen, I was in the army and had killed my first man. Twenty, I was working for my father, traveling all over the world, killing people who needed to die. I was twenty-three when my father made me my half-brother’s control officer, hoping to keep him tied to our side, and before that year was over, I had killed him. That was the first turning point, I was done being an agent of death. I started working with NCIS and became someone who preserved life. But on our best days, we save what is already there. Most days we sweep up the shards of someone else’s shattered life. That is important, and vital, and honorable, and necessary. It is a good job, a good life, but as I told Gibbs, we preserve, but we don’t create, and I want to create. I want to focus on life, and living, and make things, make people. I’ve been dedicated to death for a long time, Penny, and now… I’m done. So, perhaps not today or tomorrow, but when I leave NCIS I’m not going back.” Ziva smiles at her. “I’m going to help Gibbs work on our home, the one for Tony and the baby and I, and the one for our family. I’m going to learn how to take real pictures, something I’ve always wanted to do, but never got to. I’m going to get fat and sassy and waddle around with this child growing inside of me and eat ice cream and work on building a nursery and a home.” She’s got tears in her eyes as she says that. “I’m going to be alive, and I’m going to dedicate myself to growing things, people, love.” Ziva blinks at that. “I’m going back, to the little girl I was, and the woman she thought she would be. I’m getting the life that was stolen from me by a bomber in 1995.”

Penny nods, hugging Ziva close, and quietly says to her, “L’chaim, Ziva.”

“Exactly, Penny.”

Abbi’s standing there, not sure how or what to do, for a second, and then Ziva grabs her and pulls her into the hug, too.

“You guys doing anything tomorrow evening?” Gibbs asks. He’s on the porch with the rest of the family, enjoying the evening. But there’s something else he’s looking to enjoy, too. Tomorrow hopefully. He gets several head shakes and nopes out of the assorted members of his family. “Good. Abby, Breena, can I have your guys tomorrow?”

“Some sort of top-secret, boy only thing?” Breena asks.

Gibbs nods. “Something like that.”

Abby nods. “Just bring ‘em back in one piece.”

“Do we get a say in this?” Jimmy asks.

“You got yours when you said you were free,” Abby replies.

“What are we doing? Or is just you and the WonderTwins?” Tony asks.

“Was thinkin’ all of us.” He gestures to the males of Clan Gibbs, sitting around the table. “Your dad, too, if he’s free. Get some work in on the house, dinner.”

“Man-stuff,” Abby says.

“My boys are all dads. I want to celebrate with them.”

Abby stands up and goes to sit on Gibbs’ lap, and give him a hug and a kiss. “Awww… Have fun!”


	127. Junior and Senior

The next morning, Tony’s saying, “There is no way this is it,” as they pull up in front of a street of appealing brownstones in Georgetown.

“Your father is standing over there. Gibbs is next to him. And they are both staring at the same building.”

Tony’s looking at it. From everything he can see it’s a normal, attractive, _expensive_ townhouse on a fashionable street in a good neighborhood. “It’s haunted, there was a murder in it, the house next door is a meth lab with a bordello in the back, the inside is burned out, _something_ has to be really wrong with this place.”

She’s looking at it. It’s brick, flush to the sidewalk, no front yard of any sort. Parking is on the street, and like all the homes in this neighborhood it shares sidewalls with the homes next to it. It appears to be three floors high (though there also appears to be an entrance on the front to a basement, so maybe four floors) and the main door is at the top of a narrow staircase on the second floor. It’s true she can’t see into it from here, but the windows are clear, there are flowers in boxes on the windows, it looks fine.

“I do not see anything wrong.”

“There’s got to be something! This is… Ziva, these houses go for six million dollars! Unless it’s condos on the inside, tiny, tiny condos,” Tony’s holding his fingers close to each other, “glorified studio apartments, that we’re going to have to fix up, we can’t afford this.”

Ziva shrugs. “He knows what our budget is. Let’s see what he’s thinking.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Oh God.”

They head out of Tony’s car and into the July sunshine.

“Ziva!” Senior opens his arms wide, embraces her, then steps back for a second, looks her over, a massive grin breaking out across his face, then he elbows Tony and says, “I told you. I told you she’d be so beautiful you’d risk your eyesight by staring directly at her when she was pregnant! How far along are you?”

Ziva glances at Tony, and he shrugs. _I didn’t tell him_ on his face. They both look at Gibbs, and he shakes his head, too.

“Two weeks? So much for telling you.”

“Ohhh…” He hugs Tony and then Gibbs, too, who looks really startled by that, and then hugs Ziva again. “Spring baby!”

“How’d you know, Dad?”

Senior waves it off. “Please, you can always tell. No makeup, perfume, ten thousand dollar dress, nothing, makes a woman more beautiful than a baby on board. Lights a girl up from the inside. Anyone with an eye for women can see it.” Senior winks at Ziva. “Looks like this isn’t a moment, too soon. I want to show you this,” he points to the house in front of them, “first. This is John Ellreth, a good friend of mine’s, house. We see this, and you’ll get an idea of what you can do with this sort of place. Then we’ll go see the house.”

Tony sighs with relief. No way they could afford this neighborhood. “So where’s the actual house?”

“Not far. Two blocks down, one over.”

So much for that relief.

As they’re heading in Tony says, “Uh… Dad, that budget I gave you, really, we can’t take a mortgage for more than 300k.”

“I know.” He’s smiling as he opens the door. “This is a traditional DC row house. The rooms are all in a row, usually, with one long hall and the stairs on the side.”

Gibbs is nodding along. They’re looking at a much larger version, in a much more expensive neighborhood, of what Abbi has.

“These are four floors and you can generally keep the floor plan as open or closed as you want. Some of the interior walls are weight bearing, but because these houses are so narrow it’s usually only one wall per floor.” Senior knocks on the wall of the hallway. “I’ve seen people keep narrow doors to each room, or take this wall out all together so that everything flows together.”

“Abbi’s place is like this,” Gibbs adds. “Kept the downstairs in small rooms, upstairs is one big room.”

In other circumstances, Tony might have teased Gibbs about that, but right now he’s quietly freaking out about how, yes, this particular house they are looking at is awfully lovely, and yes, it’s classic and elegant and beautiful, and he’d love to live here, because it’s exactly his personal aesthetic, but short of cleaning out all of the drug money they have in evidence, he doesn’t see any possible way he can _pay_ for something like this.

Ziva’s looking around, asking good questions, getting ideas in place.

Finally, after about twenty minutes, Senior says, “So, you feel like you’ve got an idea for a place like this?”

“Yes.” Ziva says, looking pleased. Tony nods.

“Great, let’s take a walk.” Senior’s got a massive grin on his face as he says that.

“I told you!” Tony says as they get close to the place they’re looking at. He can see from the end of the block the one Senior has to have in mind, so can Ziva. It is, literally, a burn out. There’s still fire department tape over where the doors used to be, and the smell of smoke is still apparent in the air.

“It’s a little rough,” Senior adds as they get closer.

“It’s a burned out hulk, Dad!”

“Can we go inside?” Gibbs asks.

Senior nods. “Only the first two floors and, watch where you step, floors are a little unstable. This was being renovated as a historical restoration, and… Apparently they didn’t quite know what they were doing with the old wiring. Anyway, once the fire got put out, they’d _burned,_ ” Senior chuckles at that, “through most of their renovating budget, so, it’s on the market again.” He steps under the tape.

Gibbs looks approvingly at the town house. Okay, yeah there is some (Tony’s whimpering, staring up, looking through the massive hole in the ceiling to the next level) fire damage, and the remaining carpets all need to be ripped out (water damage from putting the fire out) along with the drywall (technically it’s plaster and lathe), and the wiring (the reason for the fire) is original from 1910, there’s no HVAC, but there is a furnace (coal burning, technically illegal) from the 1880s in the basement, that from the looks of it likely still works. Like all houses built in the 1880s, it’s got one (tiny) bathroom, the windows are broken, but they’d rip them out if they weren’t because they’re tiny panes of glass in wood, but the side walls are brick, the foundation (stone) is solid, the roof (slate) is in great shape, the spiral staircase (wrought iron) is in one piece, and the beams are more than a century aged oak and hard as iron.

Gibbs is grinning from ear to ear on this. If Tony and Ziva don’t take this, he will, just because it’ll be fun to rebuild.

Tony’s staring at this albatross like he can’t believe anyone would go for it. Ziva’s poking around, smiling. After a few minutes she says, “What are they asking?”

“Three-ten, but we’re going to get it for one-seventy-five,” Senior says, cool as can be about it.

“How…” Tony asks, gingerly poking at one of the walls, feeling his finger sink into the crumbly, water-soaked and smoke-stained plaster.

“It’s complicated, just trust me on it.”

“Dad. I can’t ‘just trust you on it,’ not if I’m going to end up on the hook for paying for it.”

“I promise you--”

“Oh, God, Dad, those are your famous last words.” Promises and trust aren’t things Tony can relax about if his Dad’s the one doing the promising.

“Junior, let me work this deal. You’ll get a mortgage for the full three hundred thousand because you’re going to need the money for fixing things up. You’re not going to pay more than one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars down for the house. The rest of it’s going to be tax credits to the seller, points in a few other operations, redevelopment credits to the sellers, and a few other issues, but all you’re paying for is going to be one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.”

Tony’s eyes narrow. “Is this legal?”

“Yes. At least five lawyers will swear to that by the time we’re done.”

“Five?”

“Of course I’m going to run it by my contract department before finalizing it. Not going to leave you high and dry on this.”

Tony hadn’t realized Senior was on enough of an upswing to have a contract department again. It’s been a while since that’s been true.

“Are we going to have to do anything besides fix it up and move in?” Ziva asks.

“There’s a neighborhood association you’ll have to conform to. And you’re not allowed to change the outside, the Georgetown Historical Department has rules about that. Beyond that, no.”

Tony’s staring at his Dad, sure this is too good to be true.

Senior sees that look, reads it right. “If I can’t get it for you, clear, on less than 175, we’ll walk away.”

“Oh God. Dad…” Tony knows all about too good to be true, and right now, this is WAY too damn good.

“Exactly. _Dad._ I know I’ve screwed up in more ways than either of us can count as your dad, but… Let me be your Dad for once. I know I’m getting to the party late, but I can still dance, and this is the one thing I’m _really_ good at. Let me do it for you.”

‘Really good at’ isn’t anything Tony finds reassuring from Senior. What he’s _really_ good at is dreaming too big and then screwing up the details and leaving everyone in a mess. “You’ve been broke more times than I can count!”

Senior looks at Tony, a little exasperated. “How do you think I keep getting unbroke?”

Tony realizes he has no idea how his Dad does that. Just sometimes he’s flush, sometimes he’s not. “I love _the deal_ , and real estate isn’t about _the deal,_ not this level at least. This is just find an opportunity and muck about with tax law. I can do this in my sleep. It’s boring. This is how your grandfather and I got rich in the first place.”

“Then why did you _stop_?”

Senior touches the brick wall behind him, patting it gently. “Because all this gets you is money, and money is boring. At best, money is a tool, or… a ticket to something better.” He glances around, noticing that Gibbs and Ziva have the good sense to give him some time alone with Tony. “A good deal is gambling and sex and… and… a good deal hits all your feel good buttons at once. It uses everything, brains, charm, guile, knowledge, _everything_ to get a ton of people all together to make something better than they could do on their own. This… this is…” Senior shrugs. “This is easy. Since Delphine and I have gotten together, I do at least two of these a month, make sure we’ve got steady income.”

Senior’s staring at Tony. “Junior, I know you won’t take money from me. I know you don’t want it. But… This is your nest egg. Please. Once it’s fixed up, you can live here or not. You can take piles of equity out of it to keep you flush. You can sell it for market value at fifteen times what you put into it, be completely done with it, and get a nice little place in the ‘burbs if that’s what you want and retire on the rest. It’s up to you to take it, all I’m doing is laying it out for you.” 

Tony looks around at the charred wreck. He can hear Gibbs and Ziva joking about something. They sound happy.

“Gibbs!” They rematerialize. “One seventy-five a good price for this place?”

Gibbs nods, then looks at Senior, “If he doesn’t take it, I will.”

Senior smiles.

“How long to get it livable?”

Gibbs keeps looking around, thinking, working out what sort of man power he’s got for this. “You’re helping, right?”

Senior nods, smiling.

“Start working after you close… Baby’s due in April; we’ll get you home by Valentine’s. Probably still be a bit rough, doubt we’ll have done anything with the top floor, but everything that’ll need to work will work and the nursery’ll ready to go.”

“Ziva?”

She heads over to Senior, eyes warm and happy. “Make the deal!”  

Senior’s grinning! “Wonderful. Lunch is at my place. Delphine’s making crepes, and we’re all invited!”

After Tony and Ziva are in their car, out of earshot, Gibbs says to Senior, “You realize, when you die, and he’s going through your things, he’s going to find out that one of your companies bought this thing full price, sold it to another one, held it, and then put it on the market again, holding out for him.”

Senior smiles. “Technically, one of Delphine’s grandson’s companies bought it full price as a tax write off, then sold it at a loss to a shell corporation out of the Bahamas that I have _nothing_ to do with. Unfortunately when that corporation was looking to fix it up, they got some bad news, _black mold._ Black mold meant this dump was so expensive to fix up that they decided to give it to a charitable trust a friend of mine runs, for another tax write off, and that trust held it until they could get the credits for rehabbing the place. Last week they got the certification showing that they had taken care of the _black mold_ problem and received the tax credits for both the historical rehabbing and OSHA compliant toxic fungus clean up, and then,” Senior snaps his fingers and makes a frowny face, “the place caught fire, right after they’d paid out enough of their rehabbing budget that it’s now too expensive to finish the rehab, and now _they_ are selling it to him and only him as the terms of being given it in the first place.”

Senior smiles at Gibbs. “I’ve only had since Christmas, so this is as fast as I possibly could pull it off. And no, he won’t find out, because not only is that end of the deal in the keeping of the trust, but he’s also not the executor of my will. I’ve got too many irons in the fire these days, and the Reaper’s too close to leave Tony with that mess.”

Gibbs is mildly surprised to see Senior’s got that many levels going on.

Senior smiles. “Like I said to him, I’m actually good at this.” Then he looks more serious, touching the brick wall behind him again. “Reaper is getting closer. I still feel good, but I know it’s coming, sooner or later, and I’m starting to run out of later, you know?”

Gibbs nods. He’s got days where he can feel that, too.

“And he won’t take money from me. They didn’t cash the wedding gift I gave them. I know I’m the one who set that pattern in motion, and for the most part, I think that’s the only thing I ever did for him that worked out well. But, hour’s getting late, and I’d like to make sure he can do what he loves and be secure. And I know, if I leave him a pile of money in my will he’ll give it away or refuse it or something. But I could do this. Shift a good chunk of what he would, should have gotten to him like this. And, tomorrow, I’ll have a trust set up for Junior’s Juniors, education money, something like that. I’m sure he, or at least Ziva, won’t turn down money to pay for college or start a business.”

Gibbs nods at that. It’s pretty much what Penny and Ducky are doing by building the house by the river. “So, when’s closing?”

“They’re usually six weeks out, so we’ll do it that way. I’ll have some sort of minor hiccough pop up about a month from now, so it doesn’t look too slick. But, come September, we’ll be ready to start up.”

Gibbs smiles.

“You’ll take it if he won’t?”

“You’ve seen my place. It was in better condition than this one, but not by a whole lot when I got it. I like doing this. It’s good. It’s useful. And if he wouldn’t buy it on your say so, he might have bought it from me after putting a ton of work into it. And if not, he might have bought Abbi’s place from her.”

Senior smiles at that. “Looking to consolidate homes?”

Gibbs shrugs. Yes, eventually, he is, but they’re pretty happy with how things are, and his goal of slow the hell down is still firmly in place. But, in a year or so…

“You ever think about getting into project managing? If you like doing this, I know people who need good managers.”

Gibbs shakes his head. “Already working on two houses, got a rocking chair and two cribs to make…”

“Not feeling so post-retired-adrift?”

“Yeah. You busy tonight?”

“Nope.”

“Our place, dinner, booze, celebrating grandbabies. Just the guys.”

Senior grins at that. “I’ve got cigars that have been waiting for something like this.”

Gibbs shakes his head. “Normally, great, but Tim’s asthmatic and with as bad as his lungs got hurt… Don’t want him sitting around with five guys smoking, even if we are outside.”

Senior nods at that. He hasn’t seen Tim since before the fight (and he doesn’t have the real version of what happened, to the best of his knowledge Tim got hit by a truck). “How’s he doing?”

“Healing. Starting to walk around again. Couple more weeks he’ll be out of all of the casts and probably done with the wheelchair.”

“Junior said they didn’t catch the other driver.”

Gibbs didn’t know that Senior didn’t have the real story, but rapidly comes to the conclusion that between Tony not wanting his Dad thinking about how dangerous their job is, and him not exactly being a paragon of silence, he’s better off with the official story.

“No. Hit and run. He was driving some sort of little rental. They’re pretty sure the guy who hit him had a truck, or an RV or something like that. Spun him out, flipped him off an embankment, and his car stopped rolling when it hit a tree, and that’s where most of the damage came from.”

Senior winces. “Nasty.”

“Yeah. Fortunately someone saw it and called it in, fast, otherwise… Don’t like to think about otherwise.”

Senior shakes his head, then shifts the topic. “Celebrating our boys with us, and the children they’ll raise.”

“Amen to that.”

From lunch, Gibbs and Tony head back to the other house they’re working on. (Senior’ll meet them later. Gibbs was fairly sure that, having been given a shopping list for tonight, that he could handle getting celebratory stuff with not just skill, but style as well.) The other guys, Tim, Jimmy, and Ducky are already there, working (or in Tim’s case, planning) away.

It does look like maybe, if they really push, they’ll get the siding done today. Which means that they finally have something, that from the outside, looks like a functional house.

It also means, likely on Monday, they start the job that makes him really nervous, which is roofing with Ducky and Penny. He knows a fall off the roof isn’t going to do him any good, but he’s also sure that these days neither of them will bounce.

Gibbs shakes his head and buckles on his tool belt. One way or another, that roof has to get on. And he’s thinking that it’s extremely unlikely that Ducky or Penny is going to be easily told, ‘It’s too dangerous for you up on the roof, so how about you sit this out?’

News of a house for the DiNozzo family sets off much in the way of happy congratulations. Tony gets a chance to wax nervous about this ‘deal’ his dad has set up, and Gibbs is pleased to see both Tim and Jimmy backing him on being nervous about it, and Ducky suggests that he makes sure his own lawyers read through everything before he actually signs his name to it.

But for the most part there’s a general sense of pleasure and anticipation at the idea of the last of the nests being purchased and set to go.

“All grown up!” as Jimmy said.

“How do we intend to balance working on both homes?” Ducky asks, watching Gibbs, their majordomo for these projects.

“Should be done on all the outside stuff here before you get to closing on your place. After that?” Gibbs shrugs. “Try to get ready to get working as soon as you take possession. Get the heavy work out of the way fast… Gotta figure out what all we’re doing, first. Meantime, try to get the heavy work done here before moving onto your place.”

“When’s the lease on your current place up?” Jimmy asks.

“Later than we need to be ready to move. Have to have the new place ready by the end of March.”

Gibbs is taking the uncut siding from the pile and laying it next to Tim. (In addition to planning, he can measure and mark.) “Was hoping to have this one functional, probably not done, won’t be _done_ for years, but all the main parts livable, by Christmas,” Gibbs adds. “Kind of like to have the party here, this year. Got a lot to celebrate.”

“So, if we’re ready to roll here by the beginning of December… How rough is this place you’re getting?” Tim asks Tony.

“It’s a death trap,” Tony says, deadpan, then gets his phone out and starts sharing pictures.

Tim’s looking through the pictures and… “Tony, much as I hate to say it, but… you’re right. How are we going to get this livable?”

Gibbs just smiles. “Trust me. You and Ziva figure out what you want the finished project to look like, and we’ll get it there.”

They spend the afternoon working. That’s part of what Gibbs wants for this. Them, together, building a house, for their family. With the guys, he’s happy to admit that there’s a certain way he thinks of this: men build the houses, and women make them into homes. (Granted, this is not something he will admit to with the _girls_ around, the fact that he feels this way hasn’t made him stupid.) So that’s what they’re working on today, building the house that their girls and children will make a home.

He gets a text from Senior about an hour into it. _Can Tim drink?_

Gibbs thinks about that… Yeah, he had a glass of sangria last night. _Yes, not a whole lot, though. Why?_

The shopping list he’d sent Senior off with involved male bonding ritual staples, steak, potatoes, charcoal, alcohol.

_If I’m bringing good stuff for a celebration, want to make sure he can have some._

_What’s good stuff?_

_You’ll see. Be there in an hour. What are you guys doing?_

_Siding. Hope to get done today._

_No problem._

And, an hour later, Senior does pull up. His Mercedes looks just as out of place as Ducky’s Morgan. To some degree Gibbs wonders what the neighbors (if they had any close enough to see) would think about all these high end cars in this lot, but the guys doing the work themselves.

Oh well, there aren’t any neighbors close enough to gawk.

And Senior gets out wearing, and Gibbs approves, though he’s shocked to see Senior actually owns this sort of clothing, a pair of well-worn jeans, real work boots, a t-shirt, and a tool belt with the correct tools for the job.

Old tools, well-used and cared for tools, and for that matter so is the tool belt. Gibbs would be unshocked to find out that tool belt’s older than he is.

But it’s obviously been cared for, and it was very obviously well-used.

Senior sidles over, eyes the house, along with the siding, nods, and says, “You got electricity?” Then he hears the band saw. “I’ll take that as a yes. I’ve got the stuff in a cooler.”

“There’s a fridge in the kitchen.” Gibbs eyes the sky. “Got about five hours until quitting time. They cook best at room temp…”

“Two inch thick prime aged porterhouses.”

Gibbs grins at that. Yes, Senior was definitely the guy to send on this shopping trip. Not a lot of stuff, but that stuff would be beyond top of the line. “So, probably just set them on the counter. Chill’ll be off by the time I’m ready to set ‘em on the coals.”  

Tony D. DiNozzo Junior was born in 1968, when his father was thirty-five.

By that point Tony D. DiNozzo Senior had been in charge of DiNozzo Properties for six years. By that point, he was moving out of real estate into bigger and better deals. By that point, it had been more than ten year since he’d lifted a tool, more than three since he’d been on a building site to personally inspect the work.

By the time Tony D. DiNozzo was ten, DiNozzo Properties had been incorporated and sold off, merged into a larger building empire and Tony DiNozzo Senior had moved entirely into full on business deals of a significantly less tangible nature, and in those days he was usually working with arbitrage, credit/default swaps, tax shelters, and combos thereof.

Which is why, today, at the age of forty-eight, is the first time Tony DiNozzo Junior has ever seen his father pick up, let alone _use_ a tool.

Because Tim can’t stand for more than a few minutes or use his right hand for anything beyond keeping something steady, he’s been on very light duty. This is the first weekend he’s even been able to move up to measuring. So, right now, he’s marking out the lengths on the “logs” they’re using for siding, and Jimmy’s running the band saw, cutting them.

It’s not a bad division of labor, but it is a bit clunky, and it’s also more time intensive than they’d like.

The “logs” are light. Tim can move them around one-handed. Awkwardly, but he can do it. Mostly he gets them up on the arms of his wheelchair, makes sure it’s stable, measures, marks, and Jimmy snags it from him for sawing.

Senior watches the two of them for a moment. “You want to get this done, today, right?” he asks Gibbs, who is up on a ladder, working with Ducky, putting up the cut “logs.”

“Be nice.”

“Got some scrap lumber and two extra ten foot two by fours?”

Gibbs points to the pile behind the house. Senior heads off, scrounging around, and Tony’s watching, curious.

“You helping?” Jimmy asks.

“Yeah.” He looks away from his dad, and grabs the log from Jimmy, taking it up to Gibbs and Ducky.

“Junior, can you give me a hand?”

He looks up at Gibbs, wondering what his Dad could have possibly screwed up already, and Gibbs smiles a little and nods, sending him off to help Senior.

“What, Dad?”

“Two by fours are a bit heavier than I remember. Can you grab?” he points out two long ones, and several shorter ones.

“Sure.” Tony does that. “What are we doing with them?”

“Building a brace for the band saw. We’ll set this up, so it’ll hold the logs steady, then Tim can measure and cut in one move. That’ll free up Jimmy, and all of us can be putting the logs on the house.”

“You can do that?”

“Sure. Kind of surprised Gibbs hasn’t already. How long have Jimmy and Tim been working this together?”

“This is the first week Tim’s been able to measure.”

“Probably why Gibbs hasn’t done it already. Anyway, let’s get this laid out and set up.”

Tony wonders, a bit, as he’s working with Senior, what life would have been like for them if he’d stayed at this. He wonders how they would have gotten on if Senior’s job had been cutting, measuring, building things with his hands, doing things Tony, young Tony could have understood.

He shrugs that off as Senior quickly measures out the lengths he needs, showing Tony what to cut and where, to build the cradle of wood that will let Tim work with just one hand. If Senior had stayed at this, there’s no shot Tony could have ever existed. His parents would have never met if Senior had stayed a carpenter.

Still, as he looks at the way Senior handles his tools, Tony can feel that _this_ more than whatever the next deal was, was something he could have respected.

Twenty minutes later, when they’ve got the brace in place, so all Tim has to do is get the “log” up, measure it, slide it through the saw, then push it off, and grab the next one, Tony’s thinking he would have liked to have known his father when he and his granddad were builders. He’s thinking that it’s really _nice_ to look at the man, and his works, and not see a schemer and screw up.

Gibbs kicks off working as the sun starts to sink. He heads into the house, and is out a few minutes later, nodding at Senior, bags of natural charcoal and mesquite chunks under his arm, and starts to mess around with the grill.

Tim rolls himself over, everything is measured and cut, and he can’t help with getting it attached to the house.

“What can I do?”

Gibbs is slitting open bags, and pouring things that burn into the grill. “Steaks are inside. Little oil on them, and season ‘em up.”

Tim nods and rolls in, hoping they’ve got salt.

They do. Some sort of fancy stuff he’s never heard of before. (It’s black but just tastes like salt to him) And the steaks are beautiful. Thick, perfectly marbled, huge. Probably a heart attack on a plate (though knowing Gibbs plates are likely optional), but one he’ll be happy to have. And, were it not for the fact that the counter is nose high on him right now, this would be great. As it is, he’s levering himself out of the chair, both feet yelling at him (because he already did a lot of stand up/sit down getting the logs up onto the brace Senior built) as he grabs the salt and… _black truffle oil?_ (okay, that’s definitely a Senior touch) and goes to town on the steaks. (He does taste the oil, and yeah… that’s a _lovely_ addition to this. That’s probably going on his shopping list, too.)

He sees potatoes in the bag on the counter, and decides they’d be good rubbed with the oil and some salt, too.

He’s wrapping them in foil when Gibbs comes back in. “Got the potatoes, too. Good.”

Tim nods.  “Anything else?”

Gibbs shakes his head. They’ve got fire, meat, potatoes, alcohol, and each other. What else could they possibly need?

Since they can’t smoke, the good stuff is liquid. And that liquid is cognac. It’s older than Ducky (It was older that Ducky when it was purchased, almost sixty years ago.), smoother than silk, and has been part of the collection of things Senior’s been unwilling to part with through thick and thin.

He didn’t know why he kept holding onto it. It was something he’d bought, on a whim, when he was in his early twenties and really flush for the first time. He kept holding onto it. At first, he was waiting for a good reason to drink it, but years went by, and it still sat there, and eventually it morphed into a totem or sorts.

And by that time, he wouldn’t drink it. He was holding it, for the ‘right time.’ And as long as he didn’t drink it, there was always the possibility of something better coming, something to celebrate. So he didn’t drink it when he got married, or when his son was born, or any of the other big moments in his life. It sat there, in his various offices, behind his desk along with a picture of him and his father in front of the first house they flipped. Waiting for the ‘right time.’

By the time he could tell Tony about it, he called it, “his luck.”

Tony’s eyes just about fall out of his head when he passes it over, and says, “Open it up, Junior.”

“Dad. I… You always said that was your luck…”

“I’m eighty-one, Junior. I think it’s about time I get to enjoy it, right? And I can’t think of a group of people I’d rather share it with.”

Tony can’t believe this is sitting in his hand. This is… this is the next big score. _The score._ The mythical _Deal_ of all deals, the… The Holy Grail. He’s being asked to open the Holy Grail and drink it with his family.

There’s enough cynicism in his mind, enough of decades of dealing with Senior to know that _this,_ grand, sweeping _romantic_ gestures are what he’s best at. Especially in front of other people.

But decades of dealing with Senior means that Tony also knows that as long as he’s in the moment of the grand gesture, he means them. Whether he can keep it going is always going to be a question, but in the moment, he’s, body and soul, fully dedicated to the experience of it.

So, sitting on the back patio of the home they’re working on, by the light of the logs Jethro tossed in the fire pit, the stars, and a moon just starting to peek out, wearing dirty jeans and a t-shirt, sweaty and a little sunburned from a full day of putting up siding that looks like logs, Tony breaks the wax seal and opens up the hundred and sixty year old bottle of Courvoisier.

There’s only one glass, and he supposes that’s symbolic, all of them drinking together.

He pours a good slug of it into the glass, holding it, letting it warm in his hand, faint scent of vanilla and nuts, little tingle of alcohol, and a bit of some sort of wood, worn to a burnished gold, wafting up to him. Gibbs starts passing around plates of steak and potatoes, and for a moment, they’re all quiet, sitting out there.

Tony passes the glass to his father, figuring he should get the first sip. His bottle after all, but Senior shakes his head, so Tony drinks, and it’s amazing. He could spend years at it and not be able to come up with good words for how this tastes. Like vanilla and chocolate and caramel but not sweet. Like complex things roasted perfectly, flavors dancing about catching his tongue and nose and this is something where he feels like he can tell that he’s tasting some of it and smelling some of it, but not sure which is which. It’s the kind of thing that reminds him what he liked about having piles of money, why he misses it sometimes.

This is old. It’s expensive. It’s money and class and proper grammar and old leather and dreams of a future his father could never find because the desire for the chase was worth more to him than actually having what he caught.

The chase’ll take you high and it’ll take you low. And Tony will never be in a situation where he can blow ten grand on a bottle of alcohol (though, that’s probably what it cost when Senior bought it, probably worth a whole lot more now.) but he’s understanding why this is sitting in his hand right now. He looks up at his Dad, and really gets the message, what he’s trying to give Tony with this gift.

The liquid in his hand is a thing. A beautiful thing, a rare, exquisite thing, but a thing none the less. And much of his life Senior’s worshipped the chase for beautiful things. And right now, as the lights are growing dim, he’s handed one of those beautiful things to his son, who took a different path, and filled his life with beautiful _people._

Who could enjoy those things with him.

And suddenly Tony’s feeling a lot more at ease about the house, and all of this.

He hands the glass over to Gibbs, who takes a sip and whistles low at the taste, shaking his head in wonder.

Ducky takes the next sip, savoring it with a pleased expression. “Years ago, I had the opportunity to try a similar vintage of this. In a fine car, luxury exuding from every surface, a charming companion at my side. It was an undercover mission, the likes of which I had not been part of for a very long time. Danger, intrigue, the possibility of being outed at any second mixed with the exquisite flavor of the cognac into the best drink of my life. Until tonight.” He raises his glass. “To the sons I did not raise, and their children, whose ears I shall fill with stories!” He takes one more sip, and then passes the glass to Jimmy.

He too whistles at the flavor exploding on his tongue right now. “Lord,” slips off his tongue in a low prayer. “That’s…” he hands it over to Tim, who takes the time to smell as well as sip. (He’s sure Abby’s going to want a real report on this later.) This is like the perfumes with real sandalwood, lush and full, filling his head with sensations he’s sure he’ll never experience again. (Though he’ll want to.)

Tim rolls, and Senior meets him half-way, taking the glass from him. He holds it in his hands for a long time, looking, smelling, and then takes a small sip. He sighs quietly, and takes another sip, then holds the glass up, “To men wise enough to know they’ve found the gold at the end of the rainbow.” Then he adds two more fingers of congac to the glass, passes it to Tony, and smiles. “Enough heaviness. Steaks are calling, and we shouldn’t let them get cold.” 


	128. At The End Of The Rainbow

When they pull up to Tim’s house, Jimmy stops the car and heads to the back seat for the wheel chair while Tim slowly gets himself out.

“Help?” Jimmy asks.

“Yes, please. Felt okay while I was doing it, but I’m hurting now.” Jimmy nods, and as soon as Tim’s seated, he rolls him up the ramp Jethro built to the front porch.

“Bet that felt good on more than just didn’t hurt.”

“Yeah. Probably why it didn’t hurt so bad.” Tim knows he worked himself too hard, picking the siding up, moving it around, keeping it steady while cutting it. “First time I’ve felt really useful to you guys in months though.”

“I know. Still, take it easy tomorrow. Monday, too.”

Tim sighs. “Don’t think I’ll have a lot of options on that.”

Jimmy opens the front door. “So, Abby up, or you need help getting to bed?”

“Lights are off, twelve weeks pregnant, she’s asleep.”

“I’ll give you a hand.”

“Thanks. I know I can get myself up the steps, but I don’t want to.”

“Not a problem.” Jimmy helps Tim up the stairs. “You good from here?”

Tim nods. He can check in on Kelly and make it to bed on his own. Jimmy gives him a wave and heads off. Tim starts a slow, shuffling, painful, but upright and on his own, walk, to Kelly’s room.

And, just like always, she’s laying on her tummy, mouth slightly open around her pacifier, sleeping away. He leans against her crib and very gently touches her hair, but she doesn’t stir. “’Night, baby.”

By the time he’s in his room, he’s hurting bad enough he decides the world won’t end if he skips out on brushing his teeth, and doing so will save him close to twenty steps, so, straight to bed he goes, sighing as he sits down. It takes a while to get undressed, and his arm’s sore enough he doesn’t want to try to toss his clothing to the hamper. On the floor works well enough. Hopefully tomorrow he’ll feel up to dealing with it.

He pops two of the pain pills that live on his bedside table these days, and lays on his back for a moment, reveling nothing yelling at him about being made to work or support his weight.

He snuggles in next to Abby, and she barely stirs, dead asleep. He kisses her neck, smelling her skin and hair, feeling her against him, and closes his own eyes, very, very content with the world right now.

* * *

“How was your stag night?” Breena asks as Jimmy heads into their bedroom.

“Not nearly sexy enough for that name,” he says with a smile, sitting next to her. She’s already in bed, laying on her side, propped on one arm, reading from the looks of it. Naked, under the cool, summer-cotton sheets and light blanket, traditional, ready for bed, not quiet sleeping time routine for them. “Thanks for letting me go.”

“Let?” She looks deeply amused by that idea.

He rolls his eyes a little. They don’t ‘let’ each other do things, but it’s the best word he can think of. “Thanks for taking the girls, going solo for a night when I should have been home, and giving me time out for something fun. I appreciate it.”

She reaches up, pulls his face to hers, and kisses him. “And I appreciate you not taking it for granted. So besides not very sexy, good time?”

Jimmy nods, and starts pulling off his t-shirt. “Yeah. Siding’s all up. Senior not only knows which end of the hammer means business, but how to actually solve problems, too. He set up a brace so Tim could measure and saw, which sped everything up. That was a surprise…” He tells her about his day as he strips off his work clothing, and then heads into the bathroom for a quick shower.

Almost traditional Saturday bedtime when he’s out.

She looks up from her kindle, eyes drifting over him, following the drops of water slipping over his body as he’s toweling off. “So, how tired are you?”

“Not feeling particularly energetic, but I’m not dead on my feet either.”

“Good.”

“Really? Got something you want me to do tonight?”

She licks her lips, reaches up for his hand, and tugs him to the bed. “Yeah, I’ve got _something_ I want you to _do_ tonight.”  

“Take out the trash?”

She giggles a bit. “That’ll hold ‘til morning.”

They’ve changed in seven years since they met. Of course they have. Couldn’t not change. It’s easier to feel on Jimmy, he, gray hairs aside, looks pretty much the same. But he doesn’t feel the same, most of his goofiness has burned off. Almost all of his uncertainty. They last vestiges of the boy he was vanished long ago. But the face that looks back at him in the mirror is, in most ways, pretty much the same.

Breena’s more the woman she was. Her personality, her sweetness and kindness, her playfulness, they may have tamped down some, but they aren’t gone, not by a long shot. For her the differences are clearer on her body. Her face is rounder, body larger, stretch marks line her hips and tummy now. Her breasts are no longer sky high, and they too have some stretch marks.

“You’re staring.” She gets a little self-conscious of how much she’s changed. Especially when he’s really looking at her, like he is now.

He nods, “I like staring at you,” lying next to her, fingers drifting from hip to belly to breast, then cupping her cheek. He kisses her soft and gentle.

“Thinking about something Senior said to us. There was some amazing booze, and toasts, and his last one was, ‘To the men who know they’ve found the gold at the end of the rainbow.’” Jimmy smiles again, stroking her face and shoulder. “He’s right. You’re the gold at the end of the rainbow.”

She laughs a little at that, looking away from him, but he pulls her face back to his for another kiss.

“No. Don’t laugh at that. You and the girls are all the treasure I’ve ever wanted or needed.”

* * *

Gibbs stayed at the house, sitting on the back porch, relaxing, watching the fire burn low. Mona’s at his feet, also relaxing, and it’s _almost_ perfect.

He reaches over to the little table next to him and grabs his phone. _Working?_ He sends to Abbi.

Smoke on the air, a few quiet crackles and pops as the logs give up their last little pockets of moisture to the fire, the fireflies have gone to sleep, but the frogs are still singing.

_Almost done. Good time with your boys?_

_Yeah. Very. Working tomorrow?_ He checks the time. _Later today?_

_Hope not. My place?_

_Maybe? Let me check something._

_Check away. I’ve got about an hour left to do._

So he checks. And checks a little more. He thinks about how late it is, and who’ll be around and… It should work.

_You know Jensen’s Docks?_

_I can find them._

_Feel like a late night sail? Wake up on the bay?_

_Sounds good. See you in an hour and a half?_

_Yeah._

Gibbs stands up, douses what’s left of the fire, and cleans up the remains of dinner. A quick run to the car, and he’s ready to go. “C’mon, Mona, we’re going sailing!” And with those words, Mona’s up and ready to go.

‘There’s an ap for that,’ and there really is. He’s got his phone set, telling him where he is on the water, and where he’s going, and what to watch out for. So, this isn’t as easy as daytime sailing, it’s a lot easier than he expects it to be.

Shortly after he docks, he sees car lights, then the car turns so he can make out details. He smiles, Abbi’s car. She parks, locks up, and comes toward him. He smiles wider, she’s got coffee in each hand.

“Hi.”

“Hey.” She hands up the coffees, and then climbs aboard. For a moment, she looks around, first time she’s been on _Semper_ with her in the water. “She’s got a good feel to her.”

Gibbs nods. “Yeah. She’s awful sweet.” He hands the coffee back to Abby, unties _Semper_ , and hops on himself.

Abbi sighs, rolling her shoulders, tossing off her jacket and shoes, taking a long drink of her coffee.

“Long day?” He steps closer, hands resting on her shoulders.

She turns her face and kisses him. “Aren’t they all?”

He inclines an eyebrow. “Seems like it.”

Abbi shakes her head. “They didn’t used to be. Some days I think I went too high. Long days in the field, too, but different kind of long. Making a difference, making things better, long. This is just hours of bullshit.” She rubs her eyes, and leans into Gibbs, taking comfort from him. “Think Leon’d give me a team?”

Right now, they’re just drifting on the current. Gibbs hasn’t set the sail yet, though he does give the rudder a nudge to help get them further out into the water.  

“Tony’s gonna be looking for a new second-in-command, soon.”

She laughs at that and sighs. “Tempting.” Then she shakes her head again. “But if don’t do the bullshit, no one else will either, and my guys’ll hurt.”

Gibbs nods at that. “Do what you can with what you have.”

“Yeah. And I can, so I will, because the guy who replaces me won’t be as good at it as I am. A lot of the time I envy Tim though. Looks like his move up actually suits him.”

Gibbs nods at that, too. They’re about fifty feet into the current. He sets the sail. “How about this? This suit you?”

“Get rescued from office drudging by my very own sailor who shows up to sweep me off my feet with a midnight cruise? Yeah,” she smiles bright at him, “I’m good with this.”

He kisses her shoulder. “Make it a long weekend? Take Monday and Tuesday off, too. It’s not going to fall apart without you, and no one’s dead right now.”

“All I’ve got is the clothing on my back.”

“Me, too. We can take it off. I’ve got sunblock.” He grins at her. “Mona doesn’t care, and we can get far enough out we’ll be the only ones around.”

She laughs at that. “I know a really great little seafood place in North Carolina.”

“Early dinner, tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

* * *

Penny’s still awake when Ducky gets home. She’s at her desk, typing away, she doesn’t look up, nor do her fingers slow down, but she says, “Hello,” as he heads in.

He walks over to her, reading over her shoulder as he kisses her cheek. “It looks like you have some good news.”

“Maybe.” She wraps up her sentence, and hits enter. “Maybe not. Obviously everyone is cagy about putting anything in writing, but…”

“But, yes… Lunch with your Pakistani friend to discuss her nieces’ current domestic troubles seems like a fine idea.”

Penny smiles up at him. “Yes it does. Well, you know my big news. How was your day?”

Ducky checks the clock, almost their usual bedtime. “Come upstairs and we’ll talk about it?”

“Certainly.”

Bedtime is a familiar rhythm, conversation interspersed with actions designed to sooth minds and bodies. He’s in the shower, she’s brushing her teeth, as he says, “Senior has taken the news of impending grandfather-hood well.”

Penny chuckles. “That’s going to be the most spoiled little baby on Earth. He’s going to be trying to make up for everything he messed up with Tony with that child.”

“Probably. Though I suppose all children should have someone utterly devoted to their joy.”

“As long as there are others devoted to making sure they grow into well-rounded, functional adults, yes.”

Ducky steps out of the shower, and reaches for a towel. “Somehow, I do not think Tony and Ziva’s child will lack for that.”

“No. No she won’t.”

“Senior’s found a house for them, too.”

“Oh.” She’s giving him a look that indicates _details please_ but in that he doesn’t have his glasses on, and is drying himself off, he can’t see it. “Nice?”

“Not in the slightest. Not now. It probably was before someone set fire to it.”

“Ew. I take it your adventures in carpentry are unlikely to end anytime soon.”

Ducky shakes his head. “I have the feeling that for as long as I can lift a hammer, I shall be lifting hammers.” He smiles at that.  

She steps closer, wrapping her arms around him. “Feels good?”

“It’s not putting killers away, but it’s good.”

* * *

Gibbs drove Tony to the house. Senior’s giving him a ride home.

“I’m glad you’re going to take the house.”

Tony shrugs. “It’s too good to be true, Dad, so… I know there’s something up with it, but… Ziva wants it. And you’re right, if it’s a problem, we can sell it, so…”

Senior nods. “I want to do something… History doesn’t change. It can’t be redone. And you’ve got every right to not trust in me, but…”

“I get it, Dad. I do. I know you’re trying.”

“Too little, too late, I know that, too. But I’d rather it be too little than didn’t do anything at all.”

Tony nods at that. “I appreciate it. I do. Ziva does. You saw her and Delphine, so many ideas bouncing around. She’s really happy with this, can’t wait to get to work on it.”

Senior smiles at that. “She’s nesting.”

“Probably. First time in a long while that she’s had the chance to build a real nest.”

“Good for her. And good for you in supporting her in wanting it.”

“Yeah, well…”

“Scares the shit out of you, doesn’t it?”

Tony rolls his eyes, and then quietly says, “Yes.”

Senior smiles at that. “Good. Means you’re sane. Means you know who you are. But you’re still doing it, and that’s where your joy lies.”

“I know.” They pull up to Tony’s building, and Tony leans over to give his Dad a hug. “Today was a good day. I’m looking forward to more of them.”

“Me, too, Junior. Go give Ziva a kiss for me, too.”

“Okay, Dad.”

* * *

Tony closes the door to his apartment quietly. He’s about to call out, ‘Hello,’ but he sees Ziva curled up on the oversized chair in their living room. She’s got a book in her hands, and her head is drooped onto her shoulder.

He grins, and she lets loose with an extremely undignified snore, the sort she’s firmly convinced she doesn’t do. (It’s a positional thing. Once she’s on her side, it’ll go away.)

Tony’s time sense says it’s not that late, not for a week where they weren’t pulling all-nighters. And it’s not. Bit before midnight. They’re normally up this time of night on a Saturday.  

But his little boy? Girl? (He smiles at both ideas, but he’s thinking Little D is a boy.) Is making himself known, so Ziva is sleeping.

He creeps over and before touching her, says, “Ziva…” (He found out the hard way that it’s a very bad plan to try to wake Ziva up by touching her.) She murmurs a little, but doesn’t really wake up.

“Okay. It’s me, not some stranger. I’m picking you up and taking us to bed, okay?”

No response, but she also doesn’t try to cut his head off when he reaches under her and picks her up. She does snuggle in close to him, and he’d have to admit that having his Ninja soft and sleeping in his arms is awfully nice. He carries her to their bed, laying her down carefully, and heads to the bathroom to take care of his bedtime routine.

In a few minutes he’s lying down, scooting her around a bit, so she’s on her side, head on his shoulder, their normal sleeping position.

Tony kisses her, holds her tight, and lets himself fall asleep.   


	129. Bad Shoot

For a split second, Tony glances at Ziva, shooting her the, _I really wish these assholes would stop running_ look, before they break into a run after their suspect.

Where the hell does moron think he’s going to run? He’s in a tenth floor apartment. What’s he going to do, fly?

Ziva tacks right, through the living room. Tony takes left, into the kitchen.

The perp is cornered in the dining room. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Two ways in, and each of them has an armed Federal Agent pointing a gun at him standing in the middle of it. He puts his hands behind his neck without being asked and smiles at Tony and Ziva.

* * *

It’s automatic. They’ve done this so many times they barely have to think about it. He keeps his gun on the Perp. She lowers hers, grabbing her cuffs, heading (wide) to cuff the perp. They’ll take him to the car, toss him in the back, then down to the Navy Yard, Processing, Holding, and Interrogation.

It’s textbook.

He’s looking at Tony, and something’s wrong. He’s still smiling. He’s _looking_ at Ziva. He’s not acting caught.

Something is wrong. Tony feels it all through him. _Something_ is wrong.

Tony fires before anything other than _wrong_ can form in his head.

* * *

“Oh God!” _Oh godohgodohgodohgodohgod please, please, please pleasepleasepleaseplease._ Tony feels like he’s going to shit his pants, puke, and pass out all at once, and the only thing stopping that is that he’s got to see if the man he just killed has a gun.

He’s never… He’s shot people before, but never… SHIT. Ziva’s just staring at him, stunned, and he can’t move, can’t do anything but stand there, too awash in too much everything to even see if his life is about to end, too.

Bad shoots happen. That’s just part of being a cop. You get twitchy and someone moves wrong and FUCK! He can feel the tears starting. He didn’t wait. He didn’t see. He didn’t say stop, or freeze, or hands where I can see them, or anything. He just fired, three shots, all in the chest.

Ziva finally moves, to the body, not bothering to check if he’s still alive, they can tell by the smell and the puddle of urine to go with the blood that he’s gone. She reaches behind his neck, guessing that’s got to be what Tony saw, and then says to him, “He had a gun. It’s taped up between his shoulder blades.”

Tony nods once, exhales long and shaky, and then his knees go out, and he hits the floor, shaking.

* * *

When he’s got control of himself, he notices Ziva’s moved something. Their perp (victim) had been standing behind the dining table in his home. Behind that table was a painting of a woodland scene. Ziva’s moved it, swapped it out. Now there’s a mirror over the table, and he guesses the woodland scene is wherever the mirror was.

She’s calling it in, officer involved shooting, no need for an ambulance. AI will be here soon. He’ll give them his statement. Perp had a gun and went for it. Cut and dried…

“Tell me what happened,” Ziva says, crouching on the floor next to him.

“I don’t know.” Because he doesn’t. Not really. That’s not true, he does know. He knows exactly what happened. Someone made a threatening… something… not exactly a move, but something, toward his wife and child, and he killed the man for it.

“Wrong answer.” Ziva’s cool, and in control right now. She’s in clean up mode, and he wonders, vaguely, how many times she’s done things like this. Made a bad kill look good.

He rubs his forehead, takes a deep breath, lets it out, swallows, and then says, voice calm, “We chased Darner in here. I pulled my gun and told him to stop. He looked around, saw there wasn’t an exit, then turned to face us, hands up. He put his hands behind his neck. I nodded at you, and you holstered your weapon and proceeded to take your cuffs out. I kept my gun on him. You were going through his rights. I…” He doesn’t know. He’s not sure if he saw it, felt it, sensed it, or just knew, but somehow, something, maybe a twitch, maybe his arm tightened slightly, maybe it was a little move ( _maybe he was just going to scratch an itch_ , the little, and not very helpful, voice in the back of Tony’s mind says) but whatever it was, Tony read it as a threat, to Ziva, and he open fired without warning. Tony’s eyes flick to the mirror, and what Ziva’s given him with that. “…saw him reach for his gun. I told him to stop. He didn’t. I fired three times.”

Ziva looks at him, eyes steady. “Exactly.”

* * *

AI takes hours. Jimmy and Allan have come, taken care of the body, and gone while they’re still talking. Warner’s team has come, cordoned off the building, and processed the scene, and he and Ziva are still talking to AI.

Their stories match, but not perfectly. They know how this works. They’re pros. The main details are all the same, but Ziva remembers him saying ‘Freeze’ he remembers it as, ‘Stop.’ Little details that get muddled when you look at real eye-witness statements are different, instead of rehearsed, prepped statements you get from people who don’t know how to do this.

Ziva claims she saw Darden shift his left hand toward the gun. Tony claims right. Tony was watching in the mirror. Ziva saw it from in front of him. Just little things like that, easily explained by people being people.

It’s not a fun six hours, but when it’s done, it’s done. Tony’s a good cop, with sixteen years at NCIS and a clean record. The wrong guy tried to see if he could get the drop on the wrong cop.

* * *

“You gonna yell at me for this, too?” Tony asks Jimmy as he steps into Autopsy. (He’d gotten a text saying, _Come down._ ) “Gonna wake up and find you’ve pulled some cruel shit to go with another bad decision?”

Jimmy raises one eyebrow, and Dr. Allan decides now is a very good time to dematerialize. Two seconds later, he’s vanished, and Jimmy says, “Guy draws on your pregnant wife, you can shoot him as many times as you want and then cut his balls off and wear ‘em for earrings, and I won’t say boo.”

Jimmy takes two steps over and gives Tony a hug. Tony stands there, stiff, not letting himself be comforted. Jimmy sighs, so much for trying that. He steps back.

“I called you down so you can run me through it. If anything doesn’t match your version, it’s not going to make the report.”

“You don’t need to--”

“You’re right, I don’t. But I will. Because you did the right thing, and I see no reason for you or Ziva or your child to suffer for it.”

That gets through where the hug didn’t.

“I don’t know that I did.”

“He’s dead. She’s not. You did the right thing.”

“I shot before he reached for it. I think he was thinking about it, but…” Tony shakes his head, leaning heavily against one of the autopsy tables, staring at Darden, who is lying on the other table. “I didn’t see him move.”

“Shit.”

“He was looking at her, and…” Tony’s replaying it, again, trying to find the trigger, what made him move. “It felt bad. Something was wrong, but… I didn’t know about the gun until after he was dead.”

“Ah fuck.” Jimmy bites his lip and says, “All the more reason to make sure everything’s clean then.”

Tony narrows his eyes. “You ream me out for Jeanne but give me a free pass on this one? This one is dead because I fucked up.”

“You’re a good cop. No one has ever doubted that. It felt bad or wrong… So you got him before he went for it? You don’t spend half your life training your gut to scream when something’s wrong to ignore it. You don’t have to let him take a shot at Ziva, not for me.”

Tony’s eyes are narrow, and he’s not looking relaxed or comforted.

“I didn’t ream you out on Jeanne for making a mistake. Jeanne wasn’t a mistake. It was wrong and you knew it and you did it anyway. This, _at worst_ , is a mistake. People make mistakes. It happens. Place a credible threat against Breena, and I’ll attack, too. Tim’d do the same for Abby. Anyone who tries to mess with Abbi Borin better be ready to have so many holes in him he’ll work as a sieve. And that’ll be before Gibbs even gets to him…” Tony flinches. “What?”

“Gibbs’d have to get in line, because Abbi can take care of herself and she’s got all of those years of training and a gut that yells when there’s danger.”

Jimmy nods.

“Ziva didn’t feel it. She was relaxed enough in it that _she_ was looking down and getting her cuffs.”

Jimmy winces, too. “Nothing?”

“After, she looked at me, and she was surprised. That I remember.”

“Then you made a mistake. It happens. And this wasn’t some unarmed, innocent bystander, and it’s not like you were gunning for him because he wasn’t paying taxes or had a joint on him. He’s wanted for…” Jimmy waits, letting Tony fill in the blank, hoping that saying it out loud will help.

“A few bombings, believed to have killed three cops in the UK, mostly he’s a courier. Gets things from point A to point B.”   

“So, this,” Jimmy points to him, “was not a good guy. This is not Mr. Wrong Place Wrong Time, and he’s sure as hell not Mr. Even If He Is Guilty of What You’re Saying He Did, That Doesn’t Deserve the Death Penalty. If you brought him in, and he didn’t deal, we’d have fried him.

“And, here… haven’t sent them over to Abby and trace yet, but…” Jimmy grabs the bag that has Darden’s belt in it. It looks like a plain, black leather belt with a silver tip on the tongue. Jimmy tugs on that tip, and out slides an inch long knife. “Razor sharp. Can’t stab with it, but it slashes just fine.” He places Darden’s boots on the table next to Tony, flips one of them over, and turns the heel. There are lock picks in there. “God knows what else he’s got hiding that I haven’t found, yet. What else he may have had in that room. Take me through the shooting.”

Tony shakes his head. “Don’t need to. It’ll all match up right. Everything in the story happened the way it really did. Only difference was I saw him go for the gun in the story and told him to stop.”

“Okay. AI done with you?”

“For now.”

* * *

Two days later, his gun is back in his holster, and the case is behind him.

* * *

Professionally.

Personally… Not even close.

He can’t talk about it. Not yet. Not to Ziva, not to anyone. He can give the route answers as to “what happened,” but they’re lies.

He fucked up. That’s what happened. Doesn’t matter what he had tucked away. Doesn’t matter that Darden wasn’t a good guy and the world is better off without him. He _fucked_ up. There are procedures. There are steps in play to make sure you take the guy, and all of the information in his head (which was why they wanted him) into custody, alive.

He and Ziva were out there. A man, who he didn’t know was armed, made a move (probably, _something_ had to set his threat sensor off) and he took him out. All of it happened before the part of his brain that actually _thinks_ got into the act.

On a sub-thought level, he knows they were chasing Darden because he was part of a trafficking ring. He ended up on their radar as a link to a link that Bishop pulled out of their data feed. He was, of all covers, pretending to be a Petty Officer working for the Quartermaster out of Norfolk. Not a bad way to get things from here to there. He could find a ship, add an extra box of, something, and whoever else he had in his circle could pick it up later. He was wanted for moving humans, drugs, guns, money, anything that anyone might want, into and out of the country. According to Interpol, ‘he was a person of interest’ in two bombings (thought to have been the guy who got the explosives from point a to point b). He had successfully escaped capture three times, and killed cops twice to do it.

When Tony thinks about that, he feels better about jumping the gun. (Literally.) Obviously this guy had some sort of ace in the hole. (A plastic derringer taped to his back. And lock picks in the heel of his boot. And a tiny knife hidden in his belt. But he didn’t know that until after.) Tony likes to think all of that was processing in the back of his mind, and that, plus that move (that he doesn’t know if he actually saw or not) made his body fired before Darden could get the drop on him.

When he thinks about the fact that there are no good reports on how Darden had killed those cops, (bodies were found burned to skeletons and parts were missing) that there was no way for Tony to have known he had a gun, that he shot on blind panic, that he does not, in fact, remember seeing a move, he feels terrible.

* * *

Bad shoots happen. They just do. The cop who’s never screwed up is like the surgeon who’s never lost a patient, one who’s been on the job for such a short time the opportunity just hasn’t arisen.

If you’re lucky, like Tony, you’ve got cover, you guessed right, and the next day you go back, promising to do a better job.

If you’re not, that’s the end of the perp, and it’s the end of you, too.

But the fact that it happens. That everyone has one… That’s not making it easier to deal with the little voices in his head.  

* * *

It’s been a week. It’s well after midnight, and he’s not sleeping.

He rolls out of bed and grabs his phone. _You up?_

Five minutes later, when he’s decided that Gibbs probably is sleeping, or might be at Borin’s or something, he gets back. _Door’s open._

* * *

Gibbs is in his basement, working on Little D’s rocking chair. He’s actually been up all night working on it. After dinner he hit his groove and has been happily crafting away. The only reason it took him so long to respond was he didn’t hear his phone buzz. He’d been sketching out the shapes he wants each piece to be on the wood he’s using and decided his pencil was a bit duller than he likes for this kind of work. When he turned to the bench to sharpen it, he saw the text icon on his phone, and replied.

He knows that Tony killed someone last week. They talked about it a bit at Shabbos, but he blew it off, and Ziva gave them that little headshake that said, ‘Sensitive, don’t poke.’ So they didn’t poke.

But Gibbs knows that look. He’s worn it himself. He’s seen it on Tim. He’s seen it on Fornell. And he’s seen it on Mike. No matter what actually happened, Tony thinks it’s a bad shoot.

And he knew, when he saw Ziva’s headshake, that Tony’d be here, sooner or later, when he’s ready to talk.

* * *

By the time Tony gets there, Gibbs has two more slats sketched out, and the bourbon poured.

“She had to move the mirror,” Tony says in lieu of Hello.

Gibbs would have to admit that that’s a tad more cryptic than he’d like, but he can pretty much figure out what Tony has to be saying by it. Only one she he could be talking about, and only a few reasons to move a mirror.

Gibbs hands over the drink, and pretty much puts Tony onto a stool. “Start at the beginning.”

So he does.

Tony gets to the part about seeing or not seeing or whatever it was, and Gibbs interjects, “The gut knows.”

“Try telling AI that.”

Gibbs inclines his head. “I know.” Then he looks at Tony, waiting for the rest of the story. And, finally, the mirror comment makes sense.

“She gave you cover, something you could explain to AI.”

“Yeah. She knew it was a bad shoot—“

“Stop that. Your wife and child are breathing. Any shoot that accomplishes that is a good shoot.”

“Jimmy said that, too, but I didn’t know Gibbs, I panicked.”

“You knew. You knew he was dangerous. You knew he was in his own home. Why run into the room with no exit in his own home? Not like he got lost. You knew he’d killed other cops. You didn’t know how, but you knew he’d done it. He puts his hands behind his neck, not his head, why? Without being told, why? You knew.”

“Felt like panic. I’ve made good shots, besides the first one, I never almost pissed myself or hit the floor. Never didn’t sleep for a week after a good shot.”

“But all of those things did happen the last time you almost lost Ziva.”

“Yeah. That’s why I panicked. That’s why I didn’t say stop. I shot before anything…”

“And it was a good thing you did. He had lock picks in his boot, a hidden knife in his belt. You yell stop. He stops. Ziva grabs the gun, cuffs him, hands behind his back. Into the car you go. Call it in. On the road, he picks the lock, pulls the knife, holds it to Ziva’s throat until you stop the car and let him out. Maybe he takes your gun, too. Maybe he slits her throat before he runs, knowing that calling for help and trying to keep her from bleeding out means you won’t follow. _The gut knows_. You knew.  

“As a husband and father, as the man guarding my daughter and grandchild, you did the right thing. As your father-in-law, friend, mentor, whatever it is we are to each other, I am proud of you. Your family comes first, above and beyond everything else.”

“As your ex-boss, as a cop, you fucked up, and not because of the shot, but because you had the person you’d take a blind shot for on your team. That’s why you were ready to piss yourself, not because it was a bad shoot, but because Ziva was the one next to you. You wouldn’t have taken that shot if Bishop had been there, and knowing how close to FUBAR you could have gotten wouldn’t have hurt so bad if Draga had been in that car with you.

“There are a lot of good reasons for 12, and that’s one of them. I have been _exactly_ where you are, and the only reason I was even around to ever be your Boss is when Jen and I finally got the shit cleaned up, enough people had stopped breathing that no one besides us knew what had happened.

“Jen and I split after that. Lots of reasons, but one of them was I’d made it clear I couldn’t work with her. Same for you. You’re done. You can’t work with Ziva. Since you’re the problem and she isn’t, normally I’d say you need to hand in your badge, but you know she’s planning on leaving soon, and there’s no one else you’d make that mistake for.”

Tony nods, feeling absolved.

“But don’t put that gun back on if you go out with her. Better yet, don’t go out with her. I know it’s early days, but it might be time for her to leave, or go on desk work, or whatever it is she wants to do.”

Tony shrugs. “She’d been talking a bit about working with you on the houses.”

Gibbs smiles at that. He'd like having Ziva working with them. 


	130. Solution

Tony supposes there has to be a better way to start this conversation than, “I fucked up, but you’ve got to quit,” but he doesn’t know what it is.

He supposes he can offer to go, she’ll tell him no, she’ll go, and that’ll be that, but… That’s a show, and supposedly they’re past that, by now.

He can admit, to her, that he fucked up. That’s a start. He hasn’t said that, not to her, not yet. Of course, he hasn’t felt like he’s had to say it, either. She’s the one who moved the mirror. She knew. He saw it in her eyes when she was looking at him.

* * *

Sun’s not up yet. Will be soon.

Normally, that’d mean that Ziva’d be up soon, too, but she’s sleeping hard now. Sacks out as soon as she hits the pillow and stays that way until he pokes her up in the morning. It’s the first time, since they’ve been sleeping together, that he’s had to use his alarm clock.

Not today though.

He gets into their place, takes his phone out of his pocket and sends a _not coming in today_ text to Bishop and Draga. They’re still working on unraveling who Darden was working with, so another day in front of the computers matching staff names to bank accounts to potential points where they could have come in contact with each other isn’t something they need him for.

(Yet another reason he’s pissed about killing Darden. The man ran, from what they can tell, at least 200 contacts through Navy bases all over the world, entirely in his head. They know what got shipped to where, but not who handled it.)

Tomorrow will be soon enough for that.

He strips out of his clothing, dropping it quietly into the hamper, and then slides into bed next to Ziva.

She stirs very slightly, but doesn’t wake.

* * *

He lays on his side, propped on one elbow, watching her sleep as their room slowly grows brighter.

It’s ironic, he guesses, but, since he hired Bishop, he actually _read_ the sexual harassment and discrimination guidelines, and more importantly, internalized them, so, for once he’s about to break them knowingly, and without any sense of naughty thrill.

Three quarters of the fun of messing with the rules is _messing with the rules,_ but not today.

As Ziva’s Boss, as long as she can do the job, he cannot, in any way, suggest that her being pregnant is an issue. Not like she’d sue them, but that’s still there, in the regs. Hell, technically, he’s not even allowed to ask if a female employee is pregnant or intends to become so.

He sighs. More reason for twelve. Won’t be nearly as worried about that little bun in the oven if it isn’t yours, and it won’t be yours if you never even get to the dating phase. He supposes, at this point, with all of them but Draga married, maybe it’s time to retire twelve. Of course, new team member soon… Maybe not.

He supposes he should be relieved that Draga and Bishop get on well, but in a brother/sister like to prank each other and snark sort of way. Reminds him a lot of him and Kate, but with Draga having the good sense to not sexually harass Bishop.

He wonders how Gibbs felt when he saw him and Ziva together at first. Or, Lord… (He feels embarrassed remembering it.) Him swanning around with his dick out on that undercover mission. _What was I thinking?_ He knows what he was thinking, hoping Ziva’d see and decide she wanted to do more than look. Hoping Tim’d see and assume they were doing more than playing a role.

He sighs at that. There are a few strands of hair across Ziva’s face, so he gently brushes them aside.

She sniffs at that, shifting her face toward the warmth of his palm. He cups her cheek and she murmurs something, sighs, and burrows a little further into the warmth of blankets and pillows.

* * *

He strokes her face with his left hand. For a moment he lays there, looking, seeing the gold band around his ring finger, remembering the words, the promise, hidden under it.

_I will live._

He doesn’t remember what day that was, but the case was the beginning of August, so about a year.

A year of a lot of talking, and counseling, and more talking with each other. A year of trying to manage fear in constructive ways.

They’re better, maybe not great, but better. He did not immediately demand that Ziva go on desk duty the second the pregnancy test turned up positive. And he didn’t do it because of how last year turned out. They’d already been through that. They’ve had that fight, and he knows that she cannot stand him issuing one-sided ultimatums.

And above and beyond all of that, he knows that he wants to issue them because he’s scared. Scared stupid. Pure, irrational, balls in charge, brain checked out, fear.

Their counselor even went over the relative danger of their job versus getting in the car and driving to work. Turns out the drive into work is _a lot_ more dangerous than the job. (He made a joke about Ziva’s driving skills at that, and then the counselor decided _that_ was worth a good long talk about, too. Which he thought was stupid until they got to the meat of it, namely that work was scary because it’s out of his control, while driving, which not only is Ziva bad at, but is actually more dangerous than being a cop, isn’t scary because of the illusion of control.) So, his brain knows that… His balls, not so much. But right now, they aren’t making the decisions.

And that’s his promise to her, that he’d do a better job managing it. He thinks he has. Mostly. They’ve got a baby on the way. That’s been his biggest fear for decades, and he’s mastered it. He didn’t completely melt down at the idea of her not working. He kept himself in check when she decided to shift the fear from child entirely dependent on him to her and child dependent on him.

He knows he’s a work in progress, but he feels like he is making that progress.

And, over the course of the year, she’s done her part, too. She hasn’t taken any unnecessary risks. She’s even, twice, run away from danger when her running into it wouldn’t have helped.

And part of the shift to more terror related cases means they’ve been spending more time digging through the data and less time running around, chasing bad guys. The bad guys they do chase now are generally much _worse_ guys than the ones they used to go after, but they are spending a lot less time in the field.

So, better. But doing better with it doesn’t mean it goes away.

Obviously. Darden is dead because the fear is still there, still sharp, still _real._

* * *

She wakes with a jerk about an hour later. He can see that first rush of _slept too late, gotta run now_ on her face, followed, almost instantly, by the realization that the sun is full up, and he’s just lying there next to her.

She relaxes into the pillows, and the moment of _gotta run_ bleeds off.

“I take it we are talking?” she says, watching him.

“Yeah.” He nods at her, and strokes her face, followed by a soft kiss. “I can’t do this. We’ve been at it a year. I’m doing better, but… I can’t. Not anymore.”

“Which this?” He thinks she knows, but it’s also two seconds since she woke up, so maybe not.

“I can’t watch you be in danger. I think about it, see it in my head over and over, and best I can tell, best I can tease it out, I killed a man for looking at you.”

“A dangerous man.”

“You didn’t think so. Your danger sensor didn’t go off, and yours is sharper than mine.”

She shrugs. “He was armed, he was dangerous, and mine didn’t fire. That worries me. Makes me think I’ve been at it too long. That I’m getting sloppy.”

That’s an olive branch. He knows for a fact that if she thought she was getting slow or sloppy she’d have handed in her resignation that day. “Makes me think that whatever he had planned, it wasn’t for right that second.”

Ziva shrugs. “Maybe. Maybe I am slowing down.”

Tony shakes his head. He doesn’t think that, at all. He thinks he got ahead of himself.

“What do you want to do?” Ziva asks him.

He sighs, looking away for a moment, and then looks back at her. “You to resign. Now. Not… two or four or whenever months from now. I know I’m the problem, but…”

Ziva nods at that. Like she told Penny, she’s done. A few more months would be good, and, with what she’s about to say next, she’s trying to keep her options open. Just because the pregnancy test turned positive doesn’t mean it will stay that way, as she knows all too well from both Breena and Abby, and she’d really rather not quit her job today just to start her period tomorrow. But, all in all, she’s fine with getting out of the line of fire. Fine in a way she wasn’t last year.

“Keep me on a desk until you have a replacement?” They both know things run better with four than three. And that will give Tony time to find the right person for the job, rather than settling for the best of the bunch he can find right this second.

“Will you be okay on desk duty?”

She shrugs. “Bored. But more field time for Draga and Bishop is good, especially if the behind the scenes work doesn’t get put on hold.”

“And… resigning… is that…” he looks nervous asking, “okay?”

Ziva nods and pets his face. “Yes. Sooner than I would have gone on my own, but, yes, it is okay. I don’t want or need you scared, and I don’t need the job. Not the way I used to.” She smiles at him. “I have new jobs I’m looking forward to.”

* * *

Twenty-four(ish) hours later, the team takes it well. Congrats from both Bishop and Draga. (And a ten dollar bill going from Bishop to Draga, along with a very smug look on Draga’s face.)

* * *

Draga’s actually looking at Tony with something that could be called respect. Real, genuine, _you did the right thing and it was hard but I’m proud of you_ , respect.

They’re in the car, heading toward the NCIS deep storage warehouse. Apparently, two guys they (not them personally, but NCIS) busted for drug smuggling last year, may have been part of Darden’s ring, and since they’ve got them in custody, and would be happy to get more information, they’re off to pick up more files.

This newfound respect irks Tony. Because, while it’s true that Draga no longer looks at him like the man who got promoted to team leader because everyone else who could do the job vanished, he’s never really gotten the sense that Draga feels the way he did about Gibbs.

No sense of _this is the kind of man I want to be._ Not that, back in the beginning, he really wanted to be Gibbs, but… He appreciated and needed that sense of certainty and rightness. Everything else was in flux, but if he was standing next to Gibbs doing what Gibbs told him to, he was doing the right thing, and especially with the Wendy thing going sideways and the way Baltimore ended up, he really did need that bastion of certainty.

And he knows Draga doesn’t feel that way about him. His Draga’s Boss, not his mentor.

“I’m sure she’s not loving being on a desk, but that was the right call.”

Tony just eyes Draga, and then looks back to the road.

“She’s good at hunting down leads, she’s good in interrogation, and I know how I felt about my ex when she was pregnant, and we weren’t even together then. And for as much flack as I’m sure you’ll take for sidelining her, you’re going to do your job better, she’s going to do her job fine, and everyone is going to be better off.”

Tony raises an eyebrow. “You think I’m taking flack for this?”

“You aren’t?” Draga looks startled. “I have yet to meet a pregnant woman who thought the ‘I’m going to make you stop doing what you love because I’m scared line’ made any sense.”

“Keep working on your deduction skills, Draga.”

Now Draga looks surprised. “You didn’t just boot her out because you shot Darden?”

Tony closes his eyes, and then opens them slowly, looking at Draga. “You think anyone can force Ziva to do anything she doesn’t want to?”

Draga nods at that. “Okay, not, forced, but… Looks like you flipped, and she’s paying for it. I get it. I _really_ get it. Ever since you started strutting around, and she switched to decaf, I’ve been keeping a close eye on her, and being extra twitchy when we’re out, too, because that’s just what you do. It could have been me just as easy as you. We, and anyone out there, are better off if she’s riding a desk while pregnant.

“And look, you don’t say it to them. God, not if you want your balls to stay attached to your body. Lisa could go from normal to bumblefuck-full-on-insane in three words if they were the wrong words, but you feel it, and she feels you feel it and everything goes sideways, so… Thanks.”

Tony has no idea what to do with that, so he nods.

* * *

Bishop does not look impressed with him. All four of them are reading through files, finding out who else they thought might have been involved in this, and if they can find anything useful to tie these guys to Darden. He keeps getting side-eye glances from her. So, later, as they’re heading off to snag coffee, he takes her along.

“Just say it.”

“She’s pregnant, not crippled. And she’s not far enough along for it to affect how she does her job.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you punishing her?” He’s got all 109 pounds of self-righteous blonde staring up at him, getting ready to defend his wife. He sighs, glad to see the solidarity and that Bishop’s got Ziva’s back, but… it’s misplaced. “Not like she got pregnant on her own!” Bishop glares up at him.   

Interesting word choice. _Punishing_ he wonders, idly, what’s going on with her and Mr. Bishop these days. “You think I’m punishing her?”

“You’re pulling her off of everything she likes doing about this job. She doesn’t love computers. Hunting down a lead through gigs and gigs of data isn’t her idea of fun. You’re _punishing_ her because you’re scared!” _Grow a pair and get over it_ goes unspoken, but is staring up at him intently from Bishops very brown eyes.

Tony rubs his eyes. “Was she looking punished when we talked to you?”

“No, but…”

He looks down at her. (Has she always been this tiny?) “No.” To him that’s the self-evident, trumping argument for anything that might be going on.

“She’d cover it if she felt it was unfair. She does that. If she’s annoyed at you, or thinks you’ve made a bad call, she doesn’t want us to see it. Draga’s mentioned that.”

Tony’s mentally cursing the fact that Draga sees every damn thing that happens in front of or near him. Then he puts two and two together and decides he needs to talk to Ziva again and make sure she really is cool about this and his own fear isn’t blinding him to what the two investigators working for him are picking up.

“You think I’m being unfair to her?”

“Yes! As long as she can do the job, she should do it.”

“Noted.”

“Noted?” Now Bishop looks surprised. She’s expecting some sort of argument beyond Tony just calmly telling her that he’s aware of her issues.

“Noted. Anything else?”

Bishop, looking wary, like something’s about to jump out and bite her, shakes her head. Tony hands her her coffee and Draga’s Red Bull/smoothie combo. “Back to work.”

* * *

He takes Ziva’s green tea, and his own coffee (not decaf, he’s fairly sure that at his age if he tried to go cold turkey it’d kill him) and flashes Ziva a text. _Observation?_

 _Why?_ comes back a second later.

_Wanna talk alone._

_Okay…_

* * *

“What is going on?” Ziva asks as she steps into the observation bay.

“Are you really okay with this?” He’s staring at her, watching, all of his investigator sensors on high.

“Yes,” her eyebrows are furrowed, and she’s looking perplexed.

“Really?”

She nods again. And he feels pretty satisfied. He knows she’s a great liar, but that feels real to him.

“Okay. Just double checking. Draga’s assuming you’re yelling at me at home, and Bishop thinks I’m punishing you, so I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss something.”

Ziva laughs at that. “And I think you now know all you need to about why Draga is no longer with his ex, and what Bishop fears will happen if she gets pregnant.”

“So, they’re seeing their own pasts/present.”

Ziva smiles at him. “I think so. I also know we’ve got a few free minutes and Vance does, too. Shall we go up and tell him?”

“Yes.”

* * *

On the stairs on the way up, he almost wants to say, ‘You can change your mind.’ There’s a second where the fear of her not on his team, of not seeing her in that desk across from him every day hits, and hits hard.

But it fades after a few more steps.

Things change. They have to. And this… this is the change that’ll let him sleep at night.

* * *

It doesn’t take being a cop to figure out that if both Agent DiNozzos want to have a chat with him, that there’s a small DiNozzo on the way.

Okay, there could be other options. Could be lots of other options, but paired with yesterday’s day off and last week’s shoot, and Leon’s awfully sure why the DiNozzos want to chat with him.

They walk in, smiling. Tony’s got that walk he remembers from when Jackie was pregnant with Jared. And Leon knows.

He’s not sure what he’s feeling.

Happy for them, of course, but part of him is dreading that Ziva’s staying on. He knows he is not, in any way, able to suggest, hint, or provide any level of unspoken context that indicates he thinks pregnant women don’t belong in the field. He’ll have his ass booted out of his chair so fast the chair’ll spin if he tries to violate that rule and gets caught on it.

And he’s rather fond of that chair.

But, especially since Jackie died, he hates seeing his female employees at risk, and the pregnant ones are worse. He can’t act on it. He knows it’s irrational. But it’s real.

So, after he’s made the correct congratulations, after he’s asked the right questions, he feels a massive wash of relief when Ziva says, “I would like to formally give sixty days’ notice.”

“Until you start your maternity leave?”

“No Director. Until I resign.”

Leon nods at her. That’s a step further than he was hoping for. And then looks to Tony. “May we have a few minutes alone?”

Tony nods and heads off.

“Agent DiNozzo, as happy as I am for you and your husband, I’m sad to hear that this makes you want to leave us.” And that’s true, too. He might not want pregnant agents in the field, but he doesn’t want to lose Ziva, either.

Ziva nods. “It has been a very good eleven years, Director, and I’ve enjoyed being here, but it’s time for something new.”

“Any idea what these new things are,” he smiles at her, and for a moment, they’re Leon and Ziva, not Director and Agent DiNozzo.

She smiles back, touching her stomach. “Beyond the obvious, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I never got to go to college. That’s one thing. I’d like to take some classes, explore the things I never did. We’re buying a house that is going to take a lot of fixing up—“

“And Jethro’s on top of that.” Leon’s smiling at that image.

“Yes. Senior has offered to help, as well as Ed Slater...” She’s not entirely sure if Vance knows who that is, but he nods, and smiles in a way that suggests he finds the idea of the three of them working together especially amusing, so apparently he does. “Ducky and Penny have been working on the house, too, and will likely give a hand with ours. So, for as long as I’m able, I’ll work on that. After that… I do not know. Maybe I’ll do that thing, with the yarn and sticks.”

“Knitting?” Vance asks with a little laugh.

She shrugs. “It could be fun. Fat and round and making tiny little booties? That is the idea, right?”

Vance smiles, feels his eyes burn slightly, and then says, “That’s one of my favorite memories of Jackie. Jared was born in January, and in September she started working on a blanket for him. Crochet, I think. She knew he was going to be a boy, so it was green and blue and brown. She made twelve little squares, sewed them together, and he was wrapped in that blanket when he came home. He loved that thing as a baby, slept with it, chewed on it, wore it ragged.” Leon stands up, takes a few steps over to his bookshelf, and finds the shot he wants, and then hands it to Ziva. “That’s it in his hands.”

“He’s adorable. How old…”

“That’s his first day of preschool. There are still a few squares of it left, in a box, up in the attic.”

“Did she make one for Kayla, too?” Ziva hands the picture back to Vance, and he carefully puts it back.

“Yes. She was sure Kayla was a boy, too. So, Kayla’s is blue and lighter blue and purple. She was born in June, and it was too hot for the first few months of her life to wrap her up much. She didn’t get attached to it. I think it’s up in her baby box, too, but it’s in perfect condition.”

Ziva smiles at that.  

Vance steps closer to Ziva. He gives her a hug, and kisses her cheek. “Enjoy it, Ziva, you’ve more than earned it.”

She grins back at him, hugs back, and says, “I intend to.”

Then the Boss comes back. “And if you ever change your mind, if you ever want to come back… I will stick you on any team with an opening, or make one if there isn’t one.”

“Tony’s?”

Vance shakes his head at that. “No. I can read between the lines on the report, and I understand your timing on this. Not his team. Anyone else, anywhere else. If I’ve got the budget for it, I’ll give you your own team. You will always be welcome at NCIS, but just like Gibbs, you only get to come back to Tony’s team for 10 days a year, and they better be days that you’ve got a connection to.”

“Yes, sir.”

Vance smiles again. “I want pictures of you fat and happy and knitting.”

“I’m sure Tony will have them up, but if he doesn’t, Abby will share them.”

"I’m sure they will.”


	131. Service

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick reminder, the last two chapters got DiNozzo to almost the end of Aug 2016. We're back to Tim, and back to the middle of August 2016.

Tim’s working his way through an attack on NCIS. They’ve (supposedly) got the mirror site up, and he wants to put it through its paces, see if it really does what it’s supposed to.

So far, it’s doing well. He’s coding as fast as he can with only seven fingers that type. (Once he started really doing it again, he was surprised at how fast he could go without his thumb, index, and middle finger.) His accuracy isn’t nearly as good as he’d like, but it’s still faster than trying to speak code into Dragon.

His last two hits didn’t get into the mirror site, and he’s hoping this one will fail, too. He wants their defenses difficult to breach, but not impossible. Anyone trying to hack his playground is going to have to work for it, but he still wants some of them to get in, and then get to play with the fun that’s the mirror site, while his guys hack them right back.

Once he’s gone through the code, and once again, making sure he’s cleaned up the typos, he notices that someone is watching him.

He jerks slightly when he notices that someone is Jarvis. Apparently, he had time to come in, shut the door, and is sitting in one of his chairs looking really amused.

Tim pulls his earbuds out, and says, “Clayt?”

“Do you know how refreshing it is to see someone who does that because they’re actually working as opposed to making themselves feel important by making you wait?”

“No.” Best of his knowledge no one's ever pulled that on him because they were really so into it they didn't notice him. Of course, 6’ 1” guy standing in front of you with a gun and badge who's there to ask you questions isn't exactly subtle. “My guys know to poke me if I’m into it and they need my attention. What can I do for you?”

“I finally got the time to read all the way through your report.”

Tim stares at him, waiting for the next bit.

“I’ll admit, after what happened, I didn’t expect you to write it.”

Tim looks confused by that. Given how things worked out with The Admiral, if he hadn't written that report the whole thing would have been a complete waste.

Jarvis reads people well enough to understand the look on Tim’s face, so he elaborates, “Thought it might be traumatic.”

Tim chooses not to comment on that, because writing it was, but he doesn’t want Jarvis to get that deep into his head, so instead he says, “Not much point to going through all of that if the report never got written.”

Jarvis nods at him. He’s thinking something, but Tim doesn’t know what. Then he says, “It’s solid. I liked what I saw. I’ve sent copies to Admiral Finnegan and General Meade, heads of Cybersecurity for both the Navy and Marines. From here they’re going to work with what you’ve set up. I’d like to know if I can volunteer you for an oversight position for building the official protocol.”

“You can. But part of the point of this was not to have an official protocol. They’ll start to get a feel for it if you’ve got a set protocol.”

“Taken into account. Mixing things up regularly will be part of it. And if they aren’t modifying things often enough, you’d be in a position to point that out.”

“Okay. That’s fine by me.” Tim thinks for a second about that. “You’ve already checked with Leon, right?”

Jarvis nods.

“Then, sure. I’ll send off an introductory email to the General when I get a chance.”

“Thank you.” While he waited, Jarvis had been looking around McGee’s office, seeing what he surrounded himself with and what he chose to represent himself with. His degrees are on the wall. The books he wrote are on the shelves. The target is a clear sign of who this man is. He’s got things he’s earned all around him. “You never responded to my letter about the Distinguished Civilian Service Award.”

Tim licks his lips. He had been hoping, on some level, that if he just ignored it, it would go away. “Didn’t know what to say.”

“Thanks?”

“Thanks,” he says it dry and flat, inclining his head slightly. “Don’t want it.”

Now, it’s Jarvis’ turn to look curiously.

Tim’s eye flick to his door, making sure it’s closed. “Feels like being bought off.”

Jarvis is untroubled by that. Tim gets the sense that the number of people willing to talk to Jarvis as frankly as he is now is very small. “You more than qualified for it. One possible route for this is scientific advances of significant value, which this test represents. Another is innovative leadership and successful programs that are felt well beyond your own command. I'd say you qualified on that level, as well.”

Tim inclines his head. Yes, that’s true. But he’s a Navy brat from an Officer’s family. He knows how these things work. You get the medal because you go above and beyond _while the right guys are watching_. He did the right thing, at the right time, and almost died for it. He sincerely doubts that if his test had gone off without a hitch that Jarvis would be here offering him this. That would have been just doing his job. Getting almost killed and then not making a huge screaming fuss about it is the above and beyond bit.

Tim shrugs again. Not saying anything.

“Can I get you to agree to some sort of medal ceremony? Or will this just be a brief write up in Stars and Stripes?”

“Just the write up. I don’t want a fuss.”

“Leon suggested that’d be true. He tells me DiNozzo has a drawer full of Gibbs’ medals, and that he expected you to follow the same pattern.”

Tim smiles dryly at that. “You’re welcome to ask Tony if he wants to have a big celebration that I’ll skip out on.”

Jarvis shakes his head. “He’s not my biggest fan.”

“Ah.” Tim’s not sure what to do with that. He knows that Jarvis and Tony did,  _something_ , a while back, and that Tony didn’t like it, but not the details of it.

Jarvis scoots over a few feet, so he’s got a better view of Tim behind his desk. “So, you’re typing… I can see skin that isn’t covered in bruises. I see a crutch in addition to your wheelchair. I take it you’re healing?”

“Yeah. Mostly. The last five minutes I was erasing mistakes because I’ve only got seven working fingers, but, yeah, more than two months on, and I’m down to one cast, I can walk, kind of, but not as far as I’d like or as fast. I can get coffee for myself again, and I’m down to non-narcotic pain medication. I can breathe okay, most of the time. I’ve got maybe fifty percent of my range of motion in my right arm back. Little eyeliner…” He touches his eyebrow. Most of the time at work, he covers the scar. “And the most visible scar vanishes. Probably another month before I can really walk again. Ortho’s saying it’ll probably be a year before I’ve got full function in my right hand back. Jimmy’s thinking it’ll be at least another two months before I’ve got full range of motion in my right arm, and probably about that long before I can start trying to run again. It’s slow.”

Jarvis nods at that. “I know it’s probably not useful, but you’re looking a whole lot better, a whole lot faster, than I expected the last time I saw you.”

Tim knows that means when Jarvis was pulling those seamen off of him, he wasn’t expecting Tim to ever heal all the way up. “That’s something, I guess. Othro thinks I’m healing up in leaps and bounds, too. Still too slow from my side of it.”

“I know that.” Jarvis stands up. “I won’t keep you any longer. It looks like you were doing something useful.”

“Thanks.” Tim starts to stand, and Jarvis shakes his head.

“No need to see me out.”

Tim nods, and looks back to his computer, but catches Jarvis laying a small box on his desk. As he walks out, Tim pulls it closer. Small, navy blue velvet box, with the Navy Crest on it. Looks like it’d hold jewelry, and he guesses, to some extent, it does.

He opens it up and a gold disk with the Navy crest, eagle over an anchor, rimmed in navy blue, Department of the Navy, Distinguished Civilian Service circling it, on a navy blue ribbon with three, vertical gold stripes, stares up at him.   

He supposes he should feel  _something_  with it staring up at him, but… It’s just a thing. And not a thing he needs or wants.

He snaps the lid back down, and tosses it into his “junk” drawer. He’s got more important things to do than musing about this.

 

* * *

 

More important or not, he can feel it in there. So, after an hour, he pulls it out and looks at it again.

Still looks exactly the same. Still a little chunk of gold on a bit of silk resting on a velvet pillow.

Just a thing.

It’s not the test, or what went into making it, or what went into surviving it. Just a little bit of metal representing a few words on a page that shifted from one desk to the next. The right guy saw the right thing at the right time, and voila, he’s got a medal.

There was a time when he used to wonder how Gibbs could just not care about his medals. How they didn’t mean anything to him.

But this… It’s almost less than nothing. He almost resents it. The Admiral lived for little bits of metal like this one. He shaped everything he did around making sure the right guy saw the right thing and wrote it up and sent it to the other right guys and they all petted each other for how spiffy and brave they were.

He doesn’t want this.

He wants his arm and legs working again. He wants to run, and pick up his daughter, and make love to his wife. Hell, he wants to wake up in the morning and not have the first thing he does be pop a pain pill. He wants to take a deep breath and not feel his rib pop out of joint and then crunch back in.

He wants…

A lot of things, and this little bit of metal isn’t among them.

He grabs his phone and text Abby. _Can we leave a little early today?_

_How early?_

_Hour?_

_Yeah, I can swing that, why? Feeling off?_

_Kind of. Not physically. I’ll tell you about it when we head out._

_We can go now._

_I’m good. Got a few things to finish. Nothing too big, just… want some time with you._

_Okay. I’ll be down at 5:00._

 

* * *

 

On the way home, he directs Abby to a detour, when she asks where they are going, and he says, “Closest thing I can find to a cliff.”

It isn’t a cliff. More like a small overlook. It’s a bank over the Potomac, maybe eight feet tall. But it’s the nearest thing he’s got to tossing it out to sea.

She’s staring at him, as he very slowly, with his crutch, walks to the edge of the river and sits down, gesturing for her to join him.

“You remember me saying that if I’d had a Ferris in my life I’d have tossed his medals off a cliff?”

She thinks for a moment, placing that, remembering years ago, talking about him and his Dad for the first time, and how Tim resented the Admiral’s shrine to the McGee family medals.

“Yeah. Tim?” She sits down next to him, both of their feet dangling over the edge.

He pulls out the box and shows it to her. “Jarvis stopped by today. Wanted me to have this.”

Abby’s eyes go wide. She takes the box from him and stares at the medal inside. “That’s your Distinguished Civilian Service Medal?”

“Yeah.” He takes it back from her. “All he ever cared about was little pieces of metal like this.” And he throws the box as hard and as far as he can. Far enough out that he doesn’t hear it splash, though he can see the ripples break the glassy sheen of slow moving late summer browned water.

She rubs his back, and for a long time they both sit there, watching the water flow by.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "Ferris" conversation happens in Chapter 42 of STAW.


	132. Wheels Turning

It feels odd to Tim to be so far out of it. They’re at Shabbos, and Tim is listening to Ziva, Jimmy, and Abby talk about the case. (Tony’s not saying anything about it, and he knows that  _don’t wanna talk look_  on Tony’s face.)

They’ve got leads, and suspects, and puzzle pieces that all fit together.

And, these days, Tim’s outside of that. He’s working his own puzzles.

He’s sure that Gibbs and Ducky feel it, too. The outside-looking-in sensation. He doesn’t feel it when Abbi’s talking about her newest adventures in forensic accounting, though he’s just as much outside of that, but he was never in, so that’s probably why it doesn’t feel weird.

“Okay, really, your computer needs to come over to my house tomorrow,” Tim says as she winds down about how her boss is giving her a lot of running around on getting someone else to audit everything.

Abbi nods at that. “Yeah. Bright and early tomorrow?”

Tim looks at Abby, makes sure he’s free, she gently squeezes his hand. “Good with me. You think he’s hiding something, or just doesn’t want anything that looks bad to go down on his watch?”

Abbi shakes her head. “Can’t tell. There’s something going on. I don’t know, I’m half-expecting that any day now I’ll walk in and find that I’ve been reassigned to run the North Pacific Office or something.”

“They’re not allowed to retaliate against you for doing your job,” Penny says.

Abbi snorts at that. Allowed and reality are things that overlap in some places, but often don’t. “Technically a move to the North Pacific Region would be a promotion. More territory, better pay. But everyone knows that’s a punishment post.” For a second, Abbi can see they don’t get it, so she adds, “North Pacific Region is Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. You’re stationed out of Juneau, but you’re never there. It’s 300 days a year of hopping from tiny island to tiny island to tiny costal village, and most of the job is making sure the locals aren’t violating anti-whaling treaties. No one’s lasted more than two years out there. It’s the “promotion” they give you when they want you to resign.”

Jethro looks a bit alarmed at that, and she gently squeezes his hand. “No one’s saying anything about it, just… You know how it works, you can feel when the perps are nervous, and my boss is  _nervous._ And I’m wondering if he’s nervous enough to try and get rid of me. I’m also, apparently, the only person ever to contact the GAO and ask if we can move the audit up. Boss isn’t thrilled about that, either. GAO Auditor is, though. I’ve got a new best buddy who sees this as the making of her career.”

“That’s good, for you, right?” Breena asks.

Abbi shrugs. “I hope so. Tune in next week for the next thrilling installment of CGIS: Where Did The Money Go! How about you, McGee, is that less cast than you had last week?”

Tim holds up his right hand. His current web of black plastic now just covers the last third of his forearm to just below his knuckles. He’s got, once he gets the stiffness worked out, all ten of his fingers back. “Yes. Down to just the wrist cast now. Two-three more weeks, and I’ll be cast-free.”

“Feels good?” Penny asks.

“Sure.” He wiggles his fingers and seven of them move. His thumb, forefinger, and middle finger twitch a little. “Be better when I can really type again.”

“We’ll get working on that later tonight,” Jimmy says, and Tim nods at him. More fun with PT. They do this every week, and it helps, but it also _really_ hurts. He’s looking forward to the mobility, but not to having Jimmy strip his scar tissue.

“Anything interesting at American, Penny?” Tim asks.

Penny shakes her head. “Gearing up for the end of summer session. I can already feel the excuses coming. ‘But I didn’t know they were due…’ Only have the due date in nine places on the syllabus and have reminded them every week for the last month.” She sighs at that. “For as much as I love the students I’m researching with, the ones in my classes are irksome.”

“The joys of academia. Every week you remind me why I was happy to have only one student,” Ducky says with a smile at Jimmy. “How is your protégé getting along now that he’s been on the job for a few months?”

“Learning. Keeping me on my toes. He seems to enjoy the work, and will probably be qualified to be on his own in a few years… He’s on a quest to learn his way around DC, so every week I get to hear about where he’s been exploring over the weekends. Kind of amazing how much of the city I’ve missed since I got here in 2000. Adding places to the ‘we’ve got to get there someday’ list.”

“And does ‘we’ mean you and I?” Breena asks.

“Sorry, forgot to mention this week’s. Been kind of distracted. Apparently, if you head south there’s this cool little neighborhood…” And from there Jimmy tells them about a bit of DC none of them had managed to find, yet.

 

* * *

 

 

Jethro puts the key in the ignition, and as soon as they’re moving he says to Abbi, “Juneau?”

She shrugs. “Probably not.” She shakes her head. “This feels wrong. Hinky. Really hinky. You remember, right when we started dating, I was telling you about how my HR department was embezzling money?”

He nods, sort of remembering that. He doesn’t think he ever heard how that turned out. “Yes. Don’t remember how it worked out.”

“He was union, so couldn't just flat-out fire him. I got everything together, kicked the proof over to IA, figuring they’d do something, and then put him on administrative leave. Just checked in again last week. He’s been on paid leave for six months. Nothing’s happened with it. I asked why he wasn’t prosecuted or fired or  _something_ , and they acted like they didn’t know who I was talking about. It’s a mess, Jethro.”

“Sounds like it.” He thinks a bit about the files Mike Franks left him. All the people he was bribing/blackmailing to get people into the country. Some of them were Coast Guard. “I might have some useful things for you.”

She looks surprised by that. “How?”

He looks away from traffic to her, not saying why he’s got it, but his look indicates this is part of the extra-curricular activities he and Duck and Penny are trying to get started. She seems to get what his look is conveying. “Got at least twenty guys who used to be, maybe still are, on your payroll, who were able to be blackmailed or were taking bribes.”

“Am I going to be able to do anything with it?”

Gibbs shrugs. “Chain of evidence is going to be shady as hell, and… I’d prefer you didn’t let everyone know how you found out, but, maybe something useful in there.”

Borin nods at that. “Thanks.”

They drive for a few more miles. “Would you go?” Gibbs asks.

“Hmmm?” She’s watching the street, thinking about what might be in those files, and hadn’t followed what he was asking.

“If you got reassigned to Alaska, or wherever, would you go?”

She exhales, thinking. “Maybe. Depends where and why. A genuine move up? Mid-Atlantic, New England, Pacific, or Gulf? Yeah, I’d take them. Lateral move, or a death post, like North Pacific.” She shakes her head at that. “Say I got offered Pacific, that’s all of California. It’s the largest and most important of our regions. I’d be out of San Francisco. I’d probably take that. Would you come with me?”

Gibbs’ turn to think. “Depends. If it’s like Juneau, you gone 300 days a year, no. We’d skype, and I’d come out to visit, but I wouldn’t move. Not missing my kids for an empty house. If you’d actually be home at the end of the day, most days, yeah, I’d go. Rather stay here, but…”

“I’d rather stay here, too." She looks at him, and smiles a little. 'I'm probably just getting jumpy. Find bad guys, get evidence, charge ‘em, put ‘em away. That’s easy. That’s straightforward. I know how to do that. This is murky. And I’m half afraid I’m giving the bad guys the information they need to hide what they’re up to.”

He squeezes her hand and half-smiles, not sure what, beyond the contents of his files, he’s got that can help.

* * *

  

“You want to just pretend you don’t know where I hide stuff, or would you rather not know?” Gibbs asks after they get in and give Mona a few affectionate pats.

“If it ever comes up, I’ll pretend I don’t know.”

“Good, help me move books.”

Getting to his secret stash of information is a lot faster when he’s not the only one taking the two shelves of books out of the way.

Abbi’s keeping a close eye on the wall behind the books, nodding. “Good work.”

“Thanks. Hid the seams behind the shelves. Got a few cryptic letters tucked into some of the books. Anyone goes through here, they’ll stop before they mess with the wall.” Then Gibbs pops the wall out of place, and pulls out the box of Mike’s files.

He’d burned a lot of what Mike had given him, but this bit, his most recent activities, he’d kept. He also hadn’t really sorted it. “Lot of stuff in here," Gibbs says as he sets the box on his coffee table.

Abbi nods, staring at what has to be at least a thousand pages of information. The first file is an FBI agent. “You tell Fornell about this?”

Gibbs shakes his head. “Just you, Penny, and Duck.” He picks up the file. Since he doesn’t intend to do it the way Mike did, maybe it is time these things find their way to Fornell. If he’s in a position where he needs to bribe the FBI, something’s gone  _really_  wrong.

They spend about twenty minutes just going through, sorting out people who work/ed for the Coast Guard. They’re about halfway through the stack when Abbi, who hadn’t been talking much, goes completely silent.

“What?” Gibbs squints over at her pile, pushes his glasses up, and comes to the conclusion he might need a stronger prescription for reading things up close.

“He’s the head of IA now.”

Gibbs can feel Mike behind him, hears,  _Lord, Probie, he was an obnoxious little weasel. Willing to do anything for the right price. Coast Guard’s in trouble if he’s one of the high ups._

“Mike doesn’t like him.” He wants to bite his tongue as soon as he says it, not sure if Abbi knows that he got these files  _after_  Mike died.

She’s distracted enough she doesn’t seem to have noticed the tense he used, either. “Don’t like him, either.”

And together they start reading.

* * *

 

 

It’s an hour later when they’ve pushed the paperwork back, and are sitting there, staring at the fireplace, wondering what to do next.

Rob Riccerson had a few expensive habits. A wife in Miami, a mistress in Panama City, and a girlfriend in Orlando. None of whom seemed to know about the others. Add in what looked like a taste for cocaine (or a taste for the money cocaine brought in, Mike wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing with the coke that didn’t make it into evidence) and he was easy to manipulate.

A bit of money here, a bit more there, and he was more than willing to turn a blind eye to anyone who needed one.

Finally Abbi says, “He’s married to this one,” she points to the girlfriend, “now. Saw them at last year’s Christmas party.”

“How long has he been at IA?” Mike’s files on him stop in 2009. Gibbs is guessing that’s the last time he used Florida as a way to move someone into the country.

“Since 2010.” Borin looks spit-nails level frustrated. “Come on, let’s see who else is in here.”

* * *

 

On the upside, her boss isn’t in Mike’s pile.

On the downside, he’s the guy who moved Rob (and two others) into positions of authority over the last five years.

So, there’s a chance that this is a coincidence but, as per 39, nope. Neither of them are buying it. Both of them have their cop senses flaring away in brilliant sparks of  _this is wrong, go out and bust the bad guys_.

The problem is, what the hell to do once they start busting people? Not like she can just drop this all nice and tidy in IA’s hands.

He’s almost tempted to call Tim, get Jarvis’ number, and bounce it to him. Though, he’s guessing, that like with John, this is the sort of issue that gets covered up until after the election.

Gibbs tries to think through what he’d do if Leon was going way off the reservation. Hell, better example, what happens when the Director of a Federal Agency decides to run her own little off the books vendetta against someone she’s got no credible jurisdiction on for her own personal reasons.

Nothing. That’s what happens. Nothing at all. Even _he_ didn’t call in the cavalry against Jen.

Gibbs pulls his phone out and starts googling. That lasts about five minutes while Abbi makes notes on who and what information she intends to pull.

“Not finding what I need. Everyone has their version of IA, but nothing on who you call when you think IA’s been compromised. You know anyone in Congress?”

She shakes her head. “Not well enough to take this to them. You?”

He knows people in Congress, but not well, and not who are likely to be interested in doing much with something like this. “Penny might.”

“Maybe. I’m thinking I’ll put it together and see if Zukunft will give me the time of day.”

Gibbs nods, the Commandant of the Coast Guard might indeed be a good place to go.

“Want to have more than just this before I go see him.”

“See what Tim comes up with tomorrow.”

Abbi nods at that. “Yeah. Maybe he’ll find something to go on, or at least build a good plan with.”

He nods at that, too. “Lot of late nights coming up.”

“Yeah.”

Gibbs smiles at her. “Might have to drop by and keep you company.”

She raises an eyebrow at that.

“Always have someone on your six. And…” he smiles, bit of a dirty grin on his face, “if you get caught in the deep storage records with me at midnight, maybe you’re looking for something other than old case work?”

Abbi laughs at that.


	133. Technology Is Wonderful

Bright and early. Lovely. Over to Tim’s they go. He and Abbi’s computer are going to enjoy some quality time together, while they grab Abby and Kelly and head over to the house for fun with roofing.

Gibbs is looking forward to that, at least more than he’s been the last week. He came up with a solution for how to deal with Ducky and Penny being a lot frailer than he’d prefer for someone going up and down and up and down and up and down a ladder with piles and piles of shingles. Namely they went up the ladder, and then nailed shingles down. And he went up and down and up and down and just kept bringing them more shingles.

On the upside, he wasn’t constantly worried about them slipping or falling.

On the downside his calves and quads and back has been yelling at him all week while he’s been mentally cursing himself for deciding that individual shingles would be a much better idea than the rolls of them you just roll into place and nail down.

They do look a lot better than the ones on the rolls, but… Yeah, he should have thought that through better.

Today, however, he’s eagerly enjoying handing off shingle lugging to Jimmy and Tony, and they can spend the day breaking their backs while he gets to sit on the roof and whack at it with a hammer.

 

 

* * *

 

Tim stares at Abbi’s computer for a moment. He actually likes getting to peek at someone else’s set up, especially if they aren’t hovering over his shoulder. It’s very private, without necessarily being invasive.

So, for example, he knows that her set up is functional, almost Spartan, whatever it is she does when she’s not working, it’s not on this computer. Her set up is more sophisticated than he would have expected, though some of her software is frighteningly old.

If he had to guess, the stuff she’s bought for herself is the newer, functional stuff, and the old bits (Windows 2007, wince) is what CGIS is springing for.

Tim’s plan, what has him working away, is to make sure Abbi’s computer is bulletproof. He wants her to have a safe, secure means of communication with them, and if her sense that things are hinky is right, he doesn’t want to be telegraphing to the entire world what they’re up to.

Most of what he’s doing on is basic housekeeping. The sort of stuff anyone might do if they were spending a Saturday morning letting their computer savvy buddy tune up their computer. He’s virus scanning and defragging, and all sorts of little things like that. On her computer.

While the virus scan runs he grabs his own computer, sets it up, and then hooks it into hers. He limps off to get his second cup of coffee of the morning while his system’s going through hers and searching every program, every power feed, looking for stuff that shouldn’t be there. He’s hunting for hidden crap that’s mucking things up or sending information where it doesn’t belong.

He finds something not too long after he’s finished that cup. Something inside Borin’s computer is sucking power. Something that shouldn’t be.

He’s got a few ideas what it might be. Two really. It’s either a bug or a keystroke logger. He’s hoping it’s a keystroke logger.

If it’s a bug, they’re already screwed. He can reroute the keystroke logger, feed it information from any computer. A bug… it’s got to keep producing information. If it suddenly goes silent, then the other side knows it’s caught. And if they want to use it to fool the other side, they need to do a lot more work with it.

Only one way to find out.

He lurches up and limps to his workbench. He’s thinking it’ll be easier to take the tools to the computers rather than the computers to the tools. Still, takes him a few trips to get everything. But, after ten minutes he’s got his magnifying glasses, his micro tools, and is ready to break into Abbi’s computer.

He tells his own to keep watch on what’s going on, make sure it keeps track of any signals her computer might send. He doesn’t think this is going to blow up, this isn’t Kahn’s computer, after all, and even if CGIS has its tech guys working it, he knows no one there is his caliber, let alone better, but he’d rather be over-cautious than under.

He pops the keyboard open, and finds a tiny device that doesn’t belong, and… This makes him happy, it’s a keystroke logger.

He picks up his phone again, thinks about who’s at the house this morning, and this time texts Penny.  _Give Abbi your phone._

_Timothy?_ Penny texts back.

 

Right, he’s texting his grandma, not ordering the Minions around. _She’ll explain why I’m texting you instead of her. Please give her your phone?_

_Better,_ flashes up, followed a minute later by, _Abbi here._

_You’ve got a keystroke logger on your computer. When was the last time you left it alone for… shoddy work, they did a quick job, say fifteen minutes?_

 

He waits a minute.  _It’s in my office, locked, every day I get to have lunch._

_Has your phone been out of your possession?_

_I don’t think so, but I sleep, at work sometimes. One night last week._

_Okay._ He doesn’t have to send a text to tell her to act like her phone is bugged. She knows.  _Have you done anything on this computer with this case?_

_Everything. All of my emails, the requests for outside auditors, the reports I’ve gotten back from our own Accounting guys, what I’ve found when I’ve looked myself._

_Shit. Okay._ He knows he doesn’t have to tell her to assume that everything she’s found, everything she’s send out has been compromised. _Anything about what you suspect is up? Anything about you moving on this on your own?_

_No. Just talking, out loud, with you guys about it._

_Good. Two options for the keystroke logger. This is a lame job, so, either your computer can have a tragic accident involving a short, or we can know it’s there and use it._

_I’ll think. What are you going to do?_

_Right now whoever’s getting information off of this thinks your computer is getting a routine check up. I’m going to see if I can pop the keystroke logger into another computer, if I can, I’ll mess around a bit, and back trace where the information goes. Then “your computer’s” going to get a nap, and I’ll use your access to get into your system and really look at that missing data._

_Won’t they see that_ I’m _getting into the system but nothing is coming up on the keystroke logger?_

_Evil Grin. That’s why you hired me. They won’t know._

 

* * *

 

 

Tim’s eyeing the keystroke logger. It really is a shoddy job, big globs of solder, and given where it is, it should be mucking up the function of the q key. (Though it’s possible Abbi doesn’t type enough to have noticed that.)

Question is, this bad of a job, will there be prints or DNA?

That’s a question for Abby. He pops the keyboard back into place, preserving everything the way he found it, and grabs his own computer. Obviously the logger has to send information out somehow. Time to figure out how it’s doing that, and where the info is going.

Once he’s got that, he can get Abbi’s system free and then start to really use it.

* * *

 

The plan was that he’d be able to join them at the house, get… he’s not sure what he’d do, baby wrangle probably, not like he’s getting up on the roof to put up shingles, but none of that matters because he’s not leaving his house.

It took two hours to work through everything with the keystroke logger, and then, very carefully, without touching it, transfer it over to the little netbook he used to take to crime scenes.

As for Abbi’s computer, as soon as he’s done with it, his Abby’s getting a hold of it and checking for prints and DNA. Whoever installed the keystroke logger wasn’t very good at this sort of stuff. (Okay, not bad on a cosmic scale or anything, decent enough to know how to put one in and get it working, but not _good,_ either.) And if they’re lucky, he left some trace behind.

After he’s got it tidied up, into the CGIS system he goes.

Tim’s not a forensic accountant. He can and has done a basic level of that sort of job, but he’s not great at it. So, he’s not trying to figure out where the money went. The GAO has someone who’s going to be way better at that sort of stuff than him on it.

He’s a forensic computing specialist, which is not a fancy way of saying he’s a damn good hacker. He is, in addition to being a damn good hacker, the guy who specializes in figuring out how other guys try to hide their tracks.

And whoever made those quarters of financial records disappear is… not good at covering his tracks.

Sort of.

There are no tracks. Nada. None. The problem is, since they know something happened, namely there are entire quarters of data missing, there should be some information somewhere as to how and why that data went missing.

All he’s got in front of him is a whirling mass of void.

Which means there is no possible way this is an accident, a crash, or anything else like that. This much nothing can’t be an accident. Someone erased everything.

So, time to go deeper.

* * *

 

 

Tim didn’t hear the doorbell ring. He’s sure it happened, because that’s how Liam always delivers pizza, but he just didn’t hear it.

He did notice when Liam knocked on his window. Tim jerks up from his computer, holds up his finger, letting Liam know he’s not about to set any speed records, and then heads for the door.

“Hey, sorry about that,” Tim says when he gets the door open.

“No problem. You ordered pizza, right?” People usually know he’s on the way, that’s why Liam’s asking.

“I didn’t, but…” Tim pulls his cell out of his pocket, it’s almost six, “but I’ve got at least four people coming back here any minute.”

Liam looks at Tim, and Tim’s crutch, and then heads in and puts the pizzas on the kitchen table for him. “Hungry people,” he says as he heads past Tim back to the front porch.

Liam’s heading away, and Tim’s wondering if he’s forgotten half of the transaction, or if Abby set it all up ahead of time. “I need to pay you?”

“Already covered.”

“Thanks.”

Liam waves and heads back to his car, and Tim begins the long slow trek into the kitchen.

He pokes the boxes, sees that Abby’s psychic vibes are working just fine today, (Ham and pineapple’s on half of one of the pizzas, he knows that’s for him.) and then he heads over to the cabinets to get some plates and glasses.

He’s got the first round of plates (he can only carry two at a time without feeling like he’s in danger of dropping them) when he hears the first car pull in. A minute after that, he’s got hugs and kisses from a slightly sunburned wife and a very toasty toddler he can’t hold if he’s standing up, so he goes to sit down and snuggle his little girl while the big one runs up to grab a shower.

Abbi and Gibbs and Mona aren’t far behind, and they’re also looking hot, tired, a little sunburned, and worn out. Tim nods upstairs, “Still got the guest room set for you. I’ll keep the pizza warm if you want to grab a quick shower.” He looks at Abbi, who unlike Gibbs doesn’t keep a change of clothing or two here, but does appear to be just about as tall as his Abby. “I’m sure Abby’s got something you’d be willing to put on.”

Abbi smiles at that, and lightly touches the bag slung over her shoulder. “Always have my go bag.”

“Or you can just change into your own stuff.”

Gibbs is eyeing the pizza like a wolf with a succulent, young lamb in its view as he grabs bowls for Mona, making sure she’s got lots of water and her dinner. “Ten minutes,” he says.

* * *

 

And maybe Gibbs is ready in ten minutes. The Abbies aren’t.

It’s a lot closer to half an hour later when they’re all downstairs again, pizza on plates, and happily chewing away. For the most part, they’re talking about the house, getting the shingles up, how they did get the most of roof done, and assuming they do any work on it tomorrow, the outside will be done.

Kelly’s babbling about playing with Mona. And Abby passes over her phone to show Tim a shot of his daughter riding Mona like a pony (Ziva’s holding her, too, there’s no shot of Kelly falling off). Mona listens to this from her place on the floor, a very satisfied and chill vibe about her.

“Molly liked that, too.” Abby flips to the shot of Molly on Mona. She’s holding on on her own. Mona looks like she’s having a good time, too. “Ducky grew up in the city, but he had cousins in the country up North, and they’d do that with sheep. He was telling us about it.”

“Sheep riding?” Tim asks. He’s never heard of or imagined such a thing.

“Yeah. They do it here, too. Well, out west, rodeo step one,” Abbi adds. “For the under six set.”

Tim thinks about that for a moment, and comes to the conclusion that his mental image of how big a sheep is must be off. They can’t be as little as he thinks they are if kids can ride them. Then another thought hits, “Wait, you’ve seen kids riding sheep?” he asks Abbi.

“Sure,” she takes a bite of her pizza, “Montana State Fair. It’s a competition sport. My family has livestock, so we couldn’t all go to the fair at once. It’s three weeks long, though. Dad and I would head out. Drive six hours to Great Falls. Spend three days, do everything. Stay up late, eat too much junk food, ride every ride, sleep in. Then home. He’d grab my sister and do three days with her, too.” Abbi’s smiling at that.

“You ever do anything like that?” Abby asks her.

“Nah. We had cattle. Cows and sheep don’t get along. Cows munch the grass, but they leave the roots in place. Sheep rip the grass out. If you want good turf to raise your critters on, you don’t mix cows and sheep. I grew up on horses. I wasn’t one of those kids who could ride before I could walk, but I could certainly ride before I was tall enough get up on the horse myself.” She takes another bite of her pizza as she says that.

“Jethro can ride,” Tim says.   

Gibbs inclines his head. He’s tearing away through his pizza and isn’t saying much.

Abbi thinks about that for a moment. “Where’d you pick that up?”

Gibbs puts the slice down. “Stillwater’s town, but it’s in farm country. Half the kids in my school grew up on farms. Horses were mostly pets by then, but seemed like everyone on a farm had at least one. When I was little, a few of the old timers would ride to Jack’s store to pick a few things up, usually just sit around, drink some coffee, play checkers with each other in the corner. I was probably four or five. I liked the horses, and Jack was fine with me getting to know them. Let me pet them, give ‘em a few slices of apple. Few years later, I’m in Scouts, and we learned how to ride. Horses still liked me; I liked them.” Gibbs shrugs a bit, picking up another slice.

“They feed you at all today?” Tim asks. He’s seen Gibbs hungry, but even hungry he doesn’t usually tear through almost a full pizza on his own.

“Penny was in charge of lunch.” Gibbs winces. “It was healthy.”

Tim laughs. “I’m sure.”

“How about you?” Abbi asks Tim and Abby.

“Besides a few petting zoos, I’ve never actually met a horse,” Abby replies. “Not a big thing where I grew up.”

Tim finishes his last bite, and takes a quick drink. “Nope. I’ve run into a few of them over the years, and just like with dogs, they don’t love me, I don’t love them, and we’re all happy to just leave each other alone.”

“Mona loves you,” Abby says.

Tim looks at her and raises an eyebrow. Mona lifts her head, gives him an _eh, you’re okay_ sort of look.

“Yes, dear.”

Abby swats him gently on the shoulder for being a smartass. Kelly’s poking at her food, looking like she’s getting really tired, and ready for bed.

“I think this one’s done for the day,” Tim says, wishing he could just pick his daughter up and put her to bed.

“I’ve got her,” Abby stands up, grabbing Kelly, who is looking a bit fussy. “You going to get them up to date, or wait for me?”

“Probably wait for you. Found all sorts of good stuff today.”

“Great. I’ll holler down when it’s story time.”

He kisses Kelly. “Stories?”

She gives him a slobbery kiss back. “Stories!”

“All sorts of good stuff?” Abbi asks. “Why do I think you’re being sarcastic?”

“You’ve got functional hearing?”

Abbi nods.

 

* * *

 

After another half hour, dinner is cleaned up, Kelly’s all washed up, and has had stories with daddy, hugs and kisses from Mom and Pop and Abbi, and is nestled into her crib, hopefully down for the night, and Tim’s got the attention of all three of them as he shows off Abbi’s computer, and his little netbook.

“So, first off, you’re right, this is _hinky_. Someone is watching what you’re doing, keeping tabs on you. You’ve got a keystroke logger on your computer. So everything you type into your computer, it stores, and then as soon as it finds a wifi connection, it broadcasts whatever you’ve typed.”

“Do you know where?” Abbi asks.

“Yes. And with any luck, you’ll be able to tell me who it belongs to because this computer’s involved in a lot of this crap.”

“What’s a lot?”

“Okay, so once I got your computer cleaned up, I got into your system, checked up on your financials, you remember saying that you’ve got no data?”

“Yeah. My Accounting guy said it was just gone.”

“He’s right. It’s gone. The records are gone. You know what metadata is?”

Abbi nods. “The information you leave when you make records.”

“Basically. It’s gone, too. You’ve got to have it. People got paid, money moved around, every time that happened, records got made. If you’d had a crash, or if something had organically happened to your system, you’d still have metadata.” Abbi nodding along. “You don’t. Everything’s been wiped clean.”

“So, nothing?”

“Not exactly. Everything that’s gone has been gone since before you took over. I was able to get in deeper and find out who wiped everything.”

Abbi’s reaching for her phone, ready to get calling for a warrant.

“Not that sort of who.”

She stops, and stares at Tim.

“I can tell you what computer it came from.”

Gibbs knows what the answer to this is. “Same one the bug’s reporting back to?”

Tim nods. “So, as of two and a half years ago, this computer did some shady things. It’s still doing shady things. I can’t tell you who it belongs to. I can tell you where it is.”

Abbi’s staring at him _get to it!_ on her face.

“Your building. By messing around with the keystroke logger I could get it down to which specific computer. It’s in room 415, soooo?

He sees Abbi bite back a hot word and shake her head.

“What?”

“Conference room. Everyone has access to that computer.”

“Great.”

“Can you… See who’s grabbing information off of it?”

Tim wiggles his hand in a _sort of_ gesture. “There’s a web cam on it. It appears to be working. Something’s blocking the camera though. So… if you can get whatever’s blocking it out of the way, I can turn it on, keep watch, and find out who’s messing around with the data your keystroke logger is putting out.”

“Time for some hands on work.” Gibbs says, looking very happy.

Tim can see Gibbs is already getting ready to go in and start messing around. What the hell it is he thinks he’s going to do on this mission, in that he can’t even identify which thing on the monitor is the camera, Tim isn’t sure, but he’s certainly looking pleased at the idea of being part of it.

“Which brings us to the next part of this. Right now, whoever’s getting that data thinks you don’t know about the keystroke logger.” Tim hands over his netbook. “Right now, it’s hanging out on this computer. So, every time you do something that anyone can trace, that you want them to trace, it’s got to get typed into this first. And, to make this even more fun, you’ve got to get a new computer, and likely phone.”

Abbi nods on that. She heads to her purse and holds up a phone. “When you called on Penny’s phone I headed into town for an hour. Number’s already ported over. Old one’s swimming in the Potomac. If anyone was listening they heard him toss me in after I was complaining about being too hot.”

Tim smiles at that, wishing he had seen it.

Abby’s looking at him. “And she’s getting a new computer because I’m getting the old one?”

“That’s what I’m hoping. Whoever put the keystroke logger in did a lame job. Big lumps of solder, and if we’re lucky there’re prints or DNA, too.”

Abby grins. “If there’s so much as a micro-drop of blood in there, I’ll find it.”

“We’ve got enough to know something’s going on and it’s coming from inside CGIS, I’ve got it all written up and waiting for you to take it to your AI department,” Tim says.

Abbi shakes her head. “Not gonna happen.” She and Gibbs start to explain what they found out as they went through his stuff last night.

Abbi wraps up with, “Given all of this, what I want to do is start looking at their cases. See what’s open. What didn’t get the attention it needed. Start looking for bodies.”

Abby gasps. And they’re all staring at her. Abbi’d meant metaphorical bodies, but even if she meant literal, they’re cops, bodies aren’t exactly rare in their line of work.

Abby’s looking back at them, bit of fear starting to hit her. “Your Boss, the dumb one, you said he died, right? That’s why you couldn’t ask him any questions about the missing quarters.”

All four of them are looking cold at that.

“Shit,” Abbi says. “Yeah. Died about a year after I moved up. Car accident. We handled the investigation.”

Gibbs looks at Abbi. “Warrants.”

She nods. “Yeah. We’re going to need some.”

“Can you…” Tim’s not sure how to ask this. “I mean, if they’re Mike’s files…”

Gibbs nods. “It’ll be okay. Between that and what you’ve got—“

“And a friendly judge,” Abbi adds. Then she looks at Tim. “If I can get them, how about this time tomorrow you and I have lunch and ‘bump into Leon.’”

Tim nods along with that. “That sounds like a good plan.”


	134. Bleach

Abbi and Jethro are heading toward her judge friend’s house, a large box filled with everything Mike had on any member of the Coast Guard in the backseat of her car.

“Good friend?” Jethro asks.

Abbi nods. “Was a drill instructor when I went through Lejeune.”

Gibbs nods. That’s part of what he’s asking. “How’d he become a judge?”

“Got too close and personal with an IED in Iraq. They don’t let guys with above the knee amputations back into active service.”

Gibbs thinks about that. She enlisted in ’94, so he’d have had to been hurt in the second run at Iraq. “Fast rise.”

“In Virginia judges get elected by the Legislature. When Daddy and Dad-In-Law are part of the legislature, and Grandpa was part of it, and you’re a wounded vet, it’s easy to get elected. He’s been a judge since 2010.”

Now Gibbs is squinting at Borin as she drives. A guy who plays like that doesn’t sound like he’d be much of a friend. Not for Borin, at least.

“He’s okay. Not what you’re thinking. He had some things he wanted to do, and when the opportunity arose, he took advantage of it.”

Gibbs doesn’t say anything to that. “Emergency back-up judge?”

“Yeah, he’s the one who’ll let me have some wiggle room as long as I don’t ask to often and I don’t bring him crap. He’s stuck his neck out for me, and so far, no one’s tried to chop it off, so we’re good.”

Gibbs nods at that, too. He’s got a few judge buddies like that, too. “He got a name?”

“Sure. Murray Harlan.”

Gibbs smiles, laughs quietly, then shakes his head. “Small damn world. Tall guy, white-blond hair, brown eyes?”

Abbi nods.

Gibbs smirks. “Bleach.”

“ _Bleach?”_

“Bleach, Hickory, Speedy,” Gibbs points to himself, “and Grave. My first team. Called him Bleach because no one believed his hair naturally grew that color.” 

Abbi laughs at that. “Grave?”

“’Silent as the.’”

She smiles at that.

“You have one?”

“Nickname?”

“Yeah?

“Same one every other redhead has, ‘Red.’”

He inclines his head in agreement at that. He’d run into some creative nicknames over the years, but no one with ginger hair got one.

 

* * *

 

They wait at the door, Gibbs holding the box, Abbi knocking.

“Come on in,” rolls out from a nearby room. So, she opens the door and in they go.

Bleach is behind his desk, working on his computer. It’s a Saturday night, getting onto late, so he’s in a golf shirt, what Gibbs assumes is his laying around clothing these days.

Gibbs is shocked by how _old_ Bleach is. Okay, sure, obviously getting your legs blown off isn’t going to be good for keeping up a youthful appearance, and the last time they saw each other it was 1980, so his mental image of Bleach is well out of date. But, well, he’s not Bleach anymore. Mr. Clean maybe, not a trace of hair on him save for his eyebrows. But this is very much not them man he’s got as Bleach in his mind.

He hits something on his keyboard, looks up at Abbi, smiles at her, and starts rolling in her direction before stopping dead, staring at Gibbs, probably the same, _how the hell did you get so old_ look on his face that Gibbs has on his.

“Grave?”

Gibbs nods, slowly, puts the box down, and steps toward Bleach for a hug. “Bleach.”

As he pulls back, Bleach is staring up at him. “Damn man, you got _old_! Gonna start calling you Bleach now, you’re whiter than I ever was.”

Gibbs snorts at that.

Abbi steps over and also gives him a hug. “You told me you had a new pet Marine, I didn’t expect you to bring this fossil to my house. Good, Lord…” He’s looking at Gibbs. “Last I heard you were in… God…” Bleach is thinking. “Nicaragua?”

Gibbs nods, as Bleach points to the sofa. “Sit down. You still with the Corp?”

Gibbs shakes his head at that. “Abbi says you’re a judge now?”

“You know I always liked to argue.” That was one of the in jokes. Bleach talked enough for himself and Grave, who never talked at all. “When I got back here, Dad suggested law school, and…” he spreads his hands in a, _and here I am_ gesture. “How about you? Never thought you’d leave. They finally boot you out for hanging around too long?”

“Nah. Explosion back in ’91. Vision’s still good but wasn’t good enough. No use for a sniper with bad eyes.” Gibbs doesn’t want to go into why he’s really not a Marine any longer, and he’s very much hoping Bleach, who was there for his courtship and marriage to Shannon (he’s one of the guys in the wedding pictures), doesn’t ask why he’s got a new redhead.

Bleach shakes his head. “That’s hard.”

“Long time ago. Joined NCIS. Was with them until January.”

“And now you’re… moonlighting with the Coast Guard?”

Gibbs smiles wryly. “Something like that.” Abbi’s been sitting next to him, and he’s thinking that if he’s her ‘pet Marine’ then what they are to each other has been made clear, but, just in case, he takes her hand in his and asks her, “You want to tell it?”

“I can start, at least. The GAO showed up a few weeks ago. They want to audit my division. I’m not thrilled because it’s a lot of hassle, and I’d rather be doing my job than jumping through hoops for them. But, I’ve been staring at my budget sheets for the whole time I’ve been here, wondering why we’re so strapped for cash, so, instead of dragging my feet, I start trying to get the information together for them. They want five years. That’s twenty quarters. The first twelve of which, I wasn’t in charge for, and of those twelve, five are missing.”

“Missing how?” Bleach asks. The mask of the kindly, old southern grandpa that he’d been wearing slips away and a very sharp, very interested look comes to the fore. Hair’s gone, eyes are lined and deep set, and the hands resting on the arms of his wheel chair are veiny and spotted, but that look, that caught interest and laser focus, that’s the Bleach Gibbs remembers.

“There’s nothing to report. At all. No numbers. No records. No nothing. I had someone who’s discrete and very good with a computer look into it, and he tells me they’ve been deleted. Someone went in and got rid of the files, and the data that gets made when you make the files.”

Bleach is nodding. “But the story doesn’t end there, does it?” Because if it did, she wouldn’t be here.

“No. This whole thing has been off. My own, boss, Norman Brandis, the Director of CGIS, he’s been acting squirrelly. Doesn’t want me bringing in a forensic accountant, is telling me to just put the GAO off, stall, and kick the problem down the road.”

“Did you bring in a forensic accountant?”

“Not yet. It’s my division. I can bring in who I want. Not sure how I’m going to pay him, budget is tight—“

“Because your HR guy was embezzling,” Gibbs adds.

Borin sighs, and backtracks. “That’s the first thing I ran into that didn’t seem right. I had way less money than I thought I should. So, eventually I track down where the leak is, and I’ve got this guy in my HR department. He’s the guy who makes sure that everyone gets their reimbursement checks. He’s been skimming for years. I couldn’t fire him, so I put him on leave, bounce everything to IA, and… nothing happens. They don’t know who he is. There’s no case on him. I put him on leave in February, and didn’t think to check in on him until now. And now, there’s no case against him. He’s been on paid leave for six months and we’ve done nothing about him.”

Bleach is looking worried by this.  “That why you’re not immediately bringing this to your IA head.”

“Partly,” Abbi looks over to Gibbs.

Gibbs sees it and takes over, because this is where his part of the story starts. “When I left the service, I started up with NCIS. My first partner was… not well known for playing by the rules.” He figures that’s a good way of putting it. “We were always close. You remember Shannon?”

Bleach nods. Gibbs can see he’s been wondering about this.

“Mike Franks, my first partner. He’s the man who investigated her murder.” He doesn’t mention Kelly. She was born after the last time they saw each other.

Bleach winces. “God, Grave, I’m sorry.”

Gibbs shrugs. “I am, too. Anyway, he pulled me out of the dark when I was eyeball deep in it.”

Bleach understands that, he’s been more than eyeball deep in the dark, he nods.

“Few years ago, Franks died, and he left me all of his stuff. This weekend I was clearing out my attic. I started to go through his boxes, figuring out what I’d want to keep. He wasn’t just playing fast and loose with the rules… You ever get to Iraq? Tribal areas?”

Bleach nods and looks at where his legs used to be.

Gibbs nods minutely back. “Remember the shit they put the women through?”

He nods.

“Mike was getting them out of Iraq and bringing them here, illegally. Mostly young girls. Child brides. To do it, he was bribing or blackmailing anyone and everyone he could dig up a secret on.”

“And this is when you tell me that you’ve got something on her people?” Bleach says, dryly.

Abbi jumps back in, opening the box, “This file is on Bob Riccerson, head of IA. This one is Tyler Adama, our Chief Compliance Officer.” She hands over another huge file, and then one more. “This last one is Chase Seth, the guy who runs our Accounting department. Gibbs, or Franks, didn’t have anything on Brandis, but he’s the guy who promoted all of them, and he’s the one who’s giving me the run around on getting into it.”

Bleach nods, slowly, looking at the files in front of him, and the more in the box. “What do you need?”

“Warrants for everything, and to make sure no one knows I’ve got them until I’m at their door with the cuffs in hand.”

Another slow nod as Bleach starts paging through the files. “Let’s get working on what, precisely, everything is.”   

 


	135. Plans Solidify

Fornell steps into the diner, takes one look at what’s sitting across from Gibbs, namely Diane, and an untouched plate with banana pancakes and a whole lot of bacon, and his shoulders slump.

“I take it you weren’t just missing my company?” he asks Gibbs as he slides in next to Diane, kissing her cheek.

“Morning, Tobias,” she says, sneaking a piece of his bacon.

He glares at her as she does it, but doesn’t say anything. If she’s eating it, too, there won’t be _any too much fat_ lectures.

Gibbs nods at him as he sips his coffee. “Stick around for an hour, and this’ll be a social call.”

“Rest of the crew due in then?” Fornell knows about Sunday breakfast at the diner.

Gibbs nods, “You’re both welcome to join in. Might not want to when you see what I’ve got.”

“How bad is it?” Fornell asks.

“You both remember Mike Franks.” It’s not a question. Between working together on a few cases (how he actually met Fornell, back in the day) and two bachelor parties, Mike and Tobias knew each other. Mike was his partner when he and Diane married, but Mike didn’t want to be ‘hip deep in that lovey-dovey crap’ so he didn’t spend a lot of time off the job with Gibbs those days. But they spent at least a few hours together over the years.

He can see by the looks on their faces that, yes, they _remember_ Mike, and they’re sure if he’s bringing him up this is going to be a doozy.

“When he died he left me his ‘insurance policies.’”

Diane and Franks sigh.

“I’m cleaning out my old stuff, and run into his boxes again.”

“Making room for some new things?” Diane asks.

Gibbs shrugs.

“Want space in your home for Borin?” Fornell asks.

“Borin?” Diane sounds like she’s tasting the name. “Do I know her?”

“Nope…” Fornell’s shaking his head. “Wait, you ever work with Coast Guard?”

“Nah. Don’t audit other Feds. So, she’s with the Coast Guard?”

Gibbs knows that look on Diane’s face. If he wants to get anywhere with this conversation, he’s got to give her something about Borin. “She runs the CGIS Chesapeake Division, we started dating in February, and that’s all I’m saying until after I get through this.”

“She was a Marine, too, and has red hair.” Fornell’s enjoying this too much, and Diane looks very amused.

Gibbs is glaring at them.

“Okay! Back to business. Fine.” _We are so talking about this later_ is all over Diane’s face. Then she turns to Fornell _you’re in trouble for not telling me about this sooner_ is clearly aimed at him.

Gibbs waits for the silent conversation to end, and then says, “Best I can piece together, he was smuggling girls into the country.”

Diane’s eyes just about pop out of her head as Fornell says, “Holy mother of God.”

“Why? How could he? You worked with him!” Diane’s sputtering in indignation.

“Not like you’re thinking. His daughter-in-law is Iraqi. Her mother ran one of the tribes. I think… they were getting girls in a bad situation out. She’d find them, and he’d get them into the States.”

That settles Fornell and Diane down. “What’s the problem, then?” Fornell asks. Young girls married to men three times their age is a hot button issue for him. Gibbs’ place has always been Fornell’s haven for days when he needs time to not bring the case home. Last time that was true, Fornell had busted an underage sex trafficking ring. Gibbs knows all about how Fornell feels about not killing the guys running that ring. (To the point where, when Fornell retires, Gibbs has a proposition for him that he’s sure Ducky and Penny will approve of. Assuming they ever manage to find someone to _move._ Penny’s last contact was able to pull enough strings to get legal asylum.)

“The problem is sitting in two boxes in my car. One for each of you. He was bribing or blackmailing a whole lot of people to do it.”

“What’s a whole lot?” Diane asks.

“I’ve given Abbi… Borin,” he says for Diane, who hasn’t heard her first name before, “twenty files on different Coast Guard members. I’ve got thirteen more for you, Tobias, and everyone else, one hundred and twenty-seven files, local LEOs, port officials, customs inspectors, are all in a box for you, Diane.”

Fornell whistles softly. “He didn’t go about this half-assed, did he?”

“No.”

“So, you want us to go after them or look the other way?” Diane asks.

“Case by case? Some of the port guys he was paying a few hundred a month to look the other way. I don’t care about them, but they’re in there. If they’re otherwise clean, forget about them, that’s fine with me. As for the rest…” this isn’t much of a revelation, they both know this about him, and given they are the parents of a teen girl, likely agree, “you ask me to look the other way while he slips a thirteen-year-old away from her ‘husband,’ and I’ll do it for free. I’ll help.” There was a list of guy who did do it for free. Gibbs still has it. At some point he may try to use it. “These guys all had to get paid.”

“Anyone I know?” Tobias asks, chewing a bite of his pancake.

“No one I recognized.”

“Anyone _you_ knew?” Diane asks.

“Yeah, a few. All but one of them is dead. Franks stopped working with NCIS in ’96. Twenty years weeded most of his secrets that I knew out. He didn’t just have stuff on this. He had stuff on _everyone._ ”

“What’s the chain of evidence on this?” Fornell asks.

“Go ahead and tell it like it is. They’re Mike’s. I gave them to you. Don’t need to pretend you’ve got an anonymous source.”

Fornell sighs. “Jethro, did anyone ever tell you the meaning of the word, _weekend_?”

“I’m retired. Every day’s the weekend to me. I’m screwing your Sunday, though.”

Fornell sighs again and takes another bite of his pancakes. “Yeah, but at least my ex-won’t bitch at me for missing out on the day I’m supposed to be with our daughter.”

Diane glares a bit at him on that.  Her Sunday’s gone, too now.

“Emily can come hang with me if she wants. Finishing up the roof on our place today.” Which is true, but unless things go very differently than he’s expecting, he’s not planning on being part of roofing. Still, if they need someone keeping an eye on Emily, it’s the least he can do.

“Almost done? Weren’t you moaning about it taking forever with Duck and Penny carefully, precisely nailing each and every shingle in exactly the right place?”

“Whole crew there yesterday, sped things up.”

“The roof on what? You redoing the house?” Diane asks.

“I’m redoing a house.” Gibbs gets out his phone and shows them the picture of the almost roofed house. “Duck and Penny decided to get a place for all of us.”

Diane’s staring at it, eyes wide. Fornell’s nodding in approval. “Looks good.”

“Thanks. Inside’s a wreck, but now it’s not getting any worse. Today, we finish up roofing stuff, and start tearing down the drywall. Emily’d like that, right?”

“Spend the day on her own with her buddies, unpaid manual labor with a bunch of old people.” Diane shakes her head. “Nope. You’re not winning on that one.”

“And I think she and Wendy have some sort of pre-wedding stuff they were doing today.” Tobias thinks about it. “Hair. They’re doing trial hairdos for the wedding. I think I’m supposed to not be there for that.”

“Speaking of which, Emily tells me you’re the best man.” Diane is grinning way more than is warranted at this idea.

Gibbs nods, looking wary.

“Oh, I can’t wait to see this!”

“So, you are coming?” Fornell asks.

“And miss Jethro give the best man speech? Not a chance. I’m going to get video of it!”

Fornell is also grinning way more than is warranted at that idea.

 

 

* * *

 

Both Fornell and Diane decide to skip out on the Gibbs family breakfast. If what he’s got is good, they’ve got a lot of work to do.

While he’s shifting boxes from his car to Diane’s she says to him, “Dating since February, huh?”

He nods.

“Got an engagement ring, yet?”

He gives her a look, and she holds up her hands, “Just messing with you.” Diane looks him up and down as he closes the trunk of her car. “This one’s good for you.”

He doesn’t ask out loud, but she knows he wants more explanation.

“I can see it on you.” She gives him a hug and kisses his cheek. “I always wondered what you’d look like if you were really happy. This is it.”

“We had some good times.”

She nods. “We did. But you weren’t happy, and I wasn’t, either.”

He nods at that, too.

“She moving in?”

He shakes his head. “Not yet.” He comes up with a quick lie for why he was making room. “Already got a little girls’ nursery at my place, got a little boy on the way now, too. And one more, he feels like a boy to me, too.”

“Decking out the spare room in blue?”

“That’s the plan. Just like Emily, they stay at my place sometimes. Now a days it’s about giving their parents some time off. Fast forward thirteen years, might be about giving _them_ some time off.”

Diane smiles at that, too. “Good to see you being a dad.”

“Good to be a dad.”

She lays her hand on the trunk. “How you doing with handing this off?”

He shrugs. “Abbi’s letting me tag along with her investigation. Good to be in it. Stings to be tagging along, providing back up.”

“Don’t want her running the show?”

He shakes his head. “She knows what she’s doing, she’s good at it, she outranks me. Taking orders isn’t a problem if they’re good orders.” Hell, he’s taken _Diane’s_ orders when they’ve been good ones, and she knows that. “I’m fine with her running her cases. And if the only way I can get a case is to tag along and try to be useful, then I’ll tag and try, but I want my cases back.” He sighs. “Not gonna happen. So, I’m being useful.” He smiles a little, and she can see the edge on that. “And I’m not hovering over her shoulder like an overprotective father.” Diane smiles at that. He sees a car pulling in, Borin’s Taurus. “You want to meet her?”

“You’re going to introduce me?”

“Would have met at the wedding. You’re here, she’s here, why not?”

Diane looks supremely amused. “Lead me to your newest redhead.”

   

* * *

 

“Hey,” Abbi says as she steps out of her car and sees Gibbs and a woman who must be Diane, who is smiling widely at her, waiting in the parking lot of Elaine’s.

Gibbs steps closer, gives her a hug and kiss, his usual hello, not showing off or getting stiff and embarrassed, both of which Abbi appreciates. Then he pulls back, and says, “Abbi Borin, Diane…” He’s looking at Diane. “What are you going by now? Still Sterling?”

She shakes her head. “Anderson.” She offers Borin her hand. “That’s the name I started out with, and these days I’m thinking it’s easier to just hold onto it.”

“Hello. Jethro get you and Fornell up to date on our excitement?”

Diane nods. “Oh yes. So much for my lazy weekend. Anyway, I’m going to head off and get working on it. Have fun!” She waves brightly, squeezes Gibbs’ hand, and heads off to her own car.

Abbi’s staring at Gibbs with her eyebrow raised. “What was that?”

He shrugs, not entirely sure. “Things getting better? How’d your morning go?”

“I got Omagi, Conner, and Jamies together.” Her old team, men she trusts above and beyond anything. “Told them what’s up. When we go in, they’re going to cover deep storage. We’re going to do recent storage. That way we move even faster.”

Gibbs nods at that; he likes the idea of move even faster. He doesn’t have a bad feeling on this one, but he’s also not interested in taking any chances they don’t have to.

   

* * *

 

Tim’s got one main errand this morning. He’s in search of a computer that looks enough like Abbi’s current laptop that it’ll pass a casual glance.

And it’s got to be functional enough so that she can get all of her current stuff up and working on it.

He knows what, ideally, he’d get for her. But he also knows that a lot of the stuff on her computer was older than what he’d get.

So… He pulls his phone out and texts her _So, how far can I upgrade you and still keep you able to run your stuff?_

A minute later he gets _I’m already bucking the trend. Grab whatever you think’ll work best. We’ll make do with the rest._

 _You’re already…_ He’s squinting at his phone, appalled. _What system is the rest of CGIS running?_

_XP_

Tim curses a whole lot less quietly than he should have. A woman a few feet away stares at him. He half smiles and shakes his head. “Bad news. Sorry.” She nods.

_Great. You need to arrest your IT department for that alone._

_I know._

_Okay. I’m getting new stuff. I’ll get it home and up and working, and then Abby’ll take your current system in and find if whoever’s watching you left us a calling card. How’d getting warrants go?_

_Good. I’ve got papers for everything. Just got to find ‘em and get ‘em._

_Great. See you at lunch._

_See you._

 

* * *

 

 

The plan is that he and Abbi are meeting for lunch. Why? To chat about his paperwork software. At least, that’s the answer if anyone asks. (And having spent a morning up close and personal with CGIS’s computer systems, Tim wants to kiss Leon, and he’s firmly convinced that CGIS needs all the help it can get.)

Leon is, a few minutes later, ‘going to bump into them.’ He rolled with the ruse without asking too many questions when they set it up, knowing that he couldn’t and that they’d answer him when he got there, but he wasn’t sounding ecstatic about getting dragged into whatever CGIS drama this was, let alone Gibbs’ personal life. But he knows the people asking him are pros, and if they need his help, something is up.

Farlane’s on Sunday during the middle of the brunch crowd is a very good place to do this. It’s completely packed. Loud enough to cover voices and confuse a bug, and were you to see someone you knew who was already seated, you would go sit with them, because otherwise you’re not sitting down anytime soon.

Tim gets in early, eyes scanning, turning down the first two tables offered him because they had clear line of sight from the windows. No, he’s not particularly worried about a sniper, but he is worried about a directional mic.

He’s sure he’s being too cautious. The computer they’re talking with is clean. Abbi’s phone is brand new. He and Leon have been on the case for less than two days, but… But they already had a keystroke logger on Abbi’s computer, so whoever’s doing this is connected and paranoid.

So he might as well be too cautious rather than not cautious enough.

* * *

 

Because Tim skipped the first two tables, he’d only been sitting down for a minute when Abbi and Gibbs get there. (The waitress is going to hate him. He asked for a table for two, it’s supposed to be him and Abbi, turned down the first two, now he’s got an extra person, and in ten minutes, he’ll have one more. She’s getting tipped very well.)

They go through the usual hugs and hellos and whatnot. Gibbs steals a seat from the table next to theirs, and for a moment they chat pleasantly about nothing much while the waitress watches them.

She comes over, gets drink orders, and goes about doing her job. She’s only just setting the drinks down when Leon steps by and smiles at them. “May I join you?”

And once again they go through the happy friends bumping into each other charade, and once more Jethro snags a chair from another table, and as she puts drinks on the table, the waitress gets an order from Leon, and given how they’re just buddies having lunch, both Leon and Gibbs have beer. No on duty cops at this table, Oh NO!

On the upside, four people at a two person table means they are _close._ They don’t have to huddle in to talk quietly, they already are huddled.

“So, I know I’m getting to the dance late. What have I missed?” Leon says quietly. They’ve all got the hang of talking under the buzz of many conversations around them.

Abbi nods. “Let me start at the beginning.” So she does, Gibbs and Tim filling in bits and pieces as they have them. (Tim’s pleased to hear that Bleach has offered to have a chat with him later today about what sort of warrant he’s going to need for what he wants to do with his hacking plan.)

Leon sits back, sipping his drink, looking like he wishes he had a toothpick to play with. “And you’re telling me…”

“Because I ask for permission before using NCIS resources to help run a full investigation on a friendly Federal Agency,” Tim replies.

“How many resources are you thinking?” Leon asks.

“We haven’t had the chance to full out plan, yet,” Abbi says.

“But I’m going to go in and raid their files, and then she and Gibbs—“

“And my team.”

“And her team, are going in to their storage to retrieve those files. So, I’d like eyes on them when they do it. Pretty much I’m going to hack the hell out of their systems, find out what they need to lay hands on so they can grab hard proof.”

“Want tactical support on the file raids,” Gibbs adds. “Gonna ask Tony and Ziva to keep eyes on us. Make sure no one else is sneaking up.”

Tim adds. “We’re going to need to borrow Jimmy, at least to look over Swissin’s autopsy files, maybe more if he needs to be dug up.”

Leon nods, thinking. “You think this is necessary?”

“I hope not,” Abbi says. “I’d really like to be wrong about this. But… if three of your top five guys were on the take, is there any possible way you wouldn’t be in on it, too?”

Leon nods. “When do you want to move?”

“I’ll be ready to get the file information by Tuesday. Spend most of the day grabbing it and finding what they’re going to need,” Tim says.

“So, early Wednesday, we want to move,” Abbi adds.

“Maybe, you still want to get into that computer and get the web cam working. That might take time.”

“How long?” Abbi wasn’t expecting that.

“Probably two minutes, but you’re going to have to have a reason to go in there, right?”

Abbi nods. “Might be a bit longer.”

“Web cam?” Leon asks.

“Sorry, left that out. The computer we’re tracking everything to,” Tim knows he and Abbi mentioned that, “has a webcam, but it’s not working. Get it functional, and I’ll have footage of whoever accesses the information from her computer.”

“Nice,” Leon says.

“Yeah, just need to get it up and running,” Tim says. “With any luck it’s just something physically blocking the camera. If not, this may take a bit longer to get fixed up.”

“Ah. But once you’ve got it…”

“We can move on the files without it.” Abbi says. “As soon as I know what they’ve got to get, they can go for it. But having that footage would be one more nail in the coffin. And after we get the files, there’s no shot of whoever it is going back to that computer, so, probably a good idea to wait until we’ve got that to get the files.”

Leon nods. “Then I’ll look forward to enjoying the show with Director McGee in MTAC once you’ve got that footage.”

“What’s the next step?” Gibbs asks.

Tim starts, “I’m thinking you guys come home with—“

They hear Abbi’s phone buzz. She picks it up. “Borin. Uh huh… Okay… Yeah… Text me the address.” She listens, nods, and hangs up. A second later, the phone buzzes again, and there’s a text with a location that Tim puts into his phone.

He checks it out, and nods. “It’s a real case. There’s a police report of a skiff found with two bodies in it.”

Leon’s staring at her. “You’re still in the field?”

“On call one week a month. Told you, our budget is _tight._ ”

“That’s too tight.”

Abbi nods. “Duty calls.” And then they do the buddies saying goodbye routine.

Gibbs goes with her to the parking lot, seeing her to her car. “Be careful.”

She smiles at him, and gives him a quick kiss. “I am.”

He stares at her for a long minute, eyes on hers, worry on his face, and then kisses her again. “You better be.”

She kisses his cheek, quick peck, and gets into her car.

 

* * *

 

When Gibbs gets back in there, Leon asks as he sits down. “She trust the guys she’s with?”

Gibbs nods. “Her old team. They’re at full strength, but she takes on call time to make sure they each get some guaranteed down time.”

“Do you know Brandis?” Tim asks.

Leon shakes his head. “I’ve met him. Don’t think I could pick him out of a lineup, though.” Then he shifts focus, “So, going through Mike Franks’ things and you found some stuff?”

Gibbs nods.

Leon glances at McGee, looking like he’s not sure if he should say this, but not wanting to not say it. “Anything from our branch?”

Gibbs nods at that, too. “Nothing from after he left, though.”

“Ah…” Tim can see something that almost looks like a frantic bit of non-verbal communication going on between Vance and Gibbs. He knows Vance is _very_ nervous about something, and Gibbs isn’t.

“Yeah. Most of it was about dead men. Just burned that.” That must be the right word, because Leon relaxes at that, and Tim can see that Gibbs wants him to. “Lot of it was on dead cases, burned those, too. Got a few bits on cases where the perps are still in jail, I’ll give ‘em to Tony. But I didn’t see any reason to pile shit on dead men, Leon.”

Leon nods. “Different time back then, Jethro.”

“I know. Even more different when Franks came on in the late ‘70s.”

 

* * *

 

“What was Leon nervous about?” Tim asks as he’s driving Gibbs back to his place.

Gibbs shakes his head.

“Look, if Mike dug up something on him, there’s probably other copies of it somewhere, and I’m in position to make sure they beyond vanish.”

Gibbs shrugs. “I don’t know. Never opened the file. But when Franks showed up, Leon let him work, and he probably shouldn’t have.”

“Never?”

“Few times I was tempted, but… never needed to, and by now. I don’t care who or what he was. I trust who he is. Burned his file along with all the other insurance Franks had on dead men.”

“Lots of it?”

“Enough. Like Leon said, different age. Only one rule, don’t get caught, and they weren’t being very careful about following that one, either.”

Tim watches the road for a moment. “But we are.”

Gibbs nods at that, too.

 

* * *

 

One of the things about being the Boss is that Gibbs really didn’t have any idea of what the hell it was Tim or Abby did when they were down in the basement mucking about with the tech stuff.

He’d bark some questions at them, they’d go do their thing, and a few hours later, he’d bark some more and they’d have some answers for him.

Pretty much for all he knew, Abby was some sort of information vending machine that took evidence in one side, and spit out information from the other upon receipt of Caf-Pow, and as for how Tim does his stuff, he’s got that titled in his mind as “magic.”

But, right now, he’s in Tim and Abby’s home, while they’re working away, so he’s actually seeing what they’re doing.

Tim’s dong something with his computer. Every now and again he mumbles something extremely profane, deletes a whole lot of what he’s doing, and then goes back to it grumbling about his fingers. But, even with three of them not typing as fast as he thinks they should, he appears to type faster than Gibbs does with all ten of his.

He’s trying to be useful to Abby, because unlike Tim’s magic, he can at least follow what she’s doing by watching it.

Mostly, right now, she’s got Abbi’s computer open along with the netbook Tim put the keylogger in, and is staring at it. Glaring really.

“Can I help?”

Abby shakes her head. She almost touches the keylogger with the point of a pen. “It would take me maybe two minutes to pull this out, log into my database at work and find out who made this, who sells them, all the rest of those goodies. Then I can swab around for blood. Then into the chamber for prints. The problem is, this’ll be a brick if I do it. And if she wants to be able to use the keylogger to send messages back or throw whoever is watching off her trail…”

“It’s got to work.”

“Right.”

She looks over at Tim. “If I get you a new keystroke logger, can you set it up to send whatever it finds where it needs to go.”

Tim grunts at Abbi’s new computer, and nods at her. Then he looks up. “God, yes, please. Give me a job that requires some real skill. Right now I’m trying to make the CGIS software work with a computer built this century.” He’s glaring at the new computer. “The last time I was this frustrated with a computer, I was looking at that dinosaur in your basement.”

Gibbs smiles at that.

 

 

* * *

 

While Abby packs everything up for a trip to the lab, Gibbs snags Abby’s cell and texts his Abbi about what they’re doing.

 _Sounds good. Let me know what you find._ She sends back.

_As soon as we know. Any shot of you getting home tonight?_

_Still got hours of processing. Then paperwork. Be at least one before I’m home. Don’t wait up._

_I’ll leave the lights on._

“You sticking around to get Kelly when she’s up from her nap?” Abby asks Gibbs, nodding in the direction of Tim’s office, with what he’s doing he’s pretty much useless on Dad duty.

Gibbs nods. “Got her.”

Abby nods and smiles at him. “Good. I’ll let you know what I find!”

 

* * *

 

“Bleach?” Tim asks. Once they’re in the car, heading to meet the judge who’s in giving them permission to do all of this, he’s able to pull his mind far enough away from his coding to realize that might not be the guy’s last name.

“In Basic you get sorted into Teams. Two teams to a squad. He was one of the guys on my first team.”

Tim shakes his head. “Small world. And he knows Abbi?”

“One of her instructors when she went through.”

“Of course. You’ve got heroic stories of saving each other’s lives and the like?”

“Eh…” No not really. The late ’70s were actually kind of quiet. Vietnam was finally over and Carter wasn’t sending them all over the place willy-nilly. “Stories of bitching with each other about how much we hated the drill instructors. Only served together for eighteen months. Then I went to sniper school and he ended up in Germany. We’d meet up a bit every now and again. Kept close until the early eighties. Lost track of each other.”

Tim thinks about that, driving a few more miles in comfortable quiet. “Does he know about Shannon and Kelly?”

“He was part of my wedding. One of the guys holding the swords we walked under at the end. When I explained who Franks was, I mentioned Shannon had been murdered. That covered why I knew him, how I got to NCIS, and why I had a girlfriend all in one sentence.”

Tim nods. “He doesn’t know about Kelly?”

“Lost track of him before she was in the works.”

Tim nods again. “Okay. One of the guys? What happened to the rest of them?”

Gibbs shrugs. “Don’t know about two of them. Marsh, my best man, died in Lebanon not long after we got married.”

Tim winces. Then he says, “Marsh?” He’s curious and a little appalled at the idea of how someone gets that as a nickname.

“His last name. Bill Marsh. He was a hell of a scrounger and deal maker. Anything you wanted or needed, he could get. Survival training in the desert. 100 degrees out. Miles from anything. We’re passing out right and left from heat stroke, desperate for water, let alone anything cold, and he comes up with ice cream.”

Tim stares at Gibbs for a second before jerking his gaze back to the road. “Do I even want to know how that happened?”

“Even if you did, I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that we’re all half dead, and he wanders into camp with a box of popsicles and a box of ice cream sandwiches. ‘Eat fast, they won’t last long,’ then he’s tossing them around to everyone.” Gibbs shakes his head a little. He hasn’t thought of that in years. “Sometimes they’d call him the Wizard, because of the things he could come up with, but he’d just say, ‘God provides for those who ask,’ then some other asshole would go asking for a beautiful blonde, and Bleach would bat his eyes at him and say, ‘Right here, lover’ then they’d all laugh it off.”

Tim’s turning into Bleach’s driveway. (Starting to understand why he may be called _Bleach._ ) “I like hearing those stories. I mean, if you like telling them, or ever want to, I’d like to hear them. Abby would, too. Probably all of us, really.” 

Gibbs nods. Some of them are good stories. But telling them means remembering lives that are gone. Though, as he told Rachel, there’s nothing wrong with memories.   

 

* * *

 

Gibbs knocks on the door. He’s got Kelly on his hip, and she’s watching everything eagerly. Tim’s got his computer in his go bag, slung over his shoulder, walking (sore) with his crutch. Feels good to be on the move with his equipment, even if it is only to go over the particulars to get a good warrant. Feels odd to be doing this with Kelly in tow, but Abby’s still in the lab, so Kelly’s coming along for the ride.

This time, instead of a ‘Come on in’ a tall woman with dark hair and warm brown eyes opens the door. She greets them with a smile. “You must be Grave, and…

“My son, Tim,” Gibbs says as he’s offering his hand. He kisses Kelly’s head. “Sleepy girl here is, Kelly. You must be Linda?”

She nods. “Oh, you are so darling!” She coos over Kelly. Kelly, being extra super darling, smiles big at her, says, “Hi,” and then ducks her head, all shy, under Gibbs’ chin. Linda coos some more at her, coaxing another smile out of Kelly. Then she seems to realize they’re just standing on the front porch. “Come in, come in.” She ushers them in. “Murray was so excited to hear from you. He was telling me all about it when I got home. He’s on the patio.” She leads them through a tasteful and expensively decorated one floor home. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Coffee, if you’ve got it?” Gibbs says.

“Sure. How do you like it?”

“Black as sin and strong enough to chew through the spoon,” Tim says.

Linda chuckles at that. “Must be a Marine thing. That’s how Murray likes his, too. Tim?”

“Coffee’d be great. Even better if it’s got milk, sugar, and if we’re going outside, a lot of ice in it.”

“Not a problem. For your girl?”

Tim shakes his head. “I’ve got apple juice in my bag.”

She leads them to a screened in back patio overlooking a lush green yard. “Your buddies are here.”

Murray/Bleach looks up from the paperwork on his desk and smiles at his wife, and Gibbs.

“Hello.” Tim rapidly notices why he didn’t come to the door to let them in. Right now he’s got a lot of sympathy for not being wildly mobile, and is once again thanking any and all higher powers that he and his wheelchair aren’t going to be together for the rest of his life.  Gibbs heads over to sit next to Bleach, and Tim does, too, offering his hand in hello.

“You’re Grave’s boy?” Bleach is looking him over, and Tim wonders what he’s seeing. Wonders if he’s trying to see how much of Gibbs and Shannon there is in him.

“One of them. There’s three of us. Little girl in his lap is my daughter. Kelly, you wanna say ‘Hi?’”

She shakes her head and cuddles against Gibbs.

“Apparently she’s feeling shy right now.”

Bleach nods at that. “Know all about that. Got two of these little guys of my own. Though mine are a bit bigger now.” He spends another moment looking over Tim. “So, how many kids did you end up with?”

Gibbs shrugs. “By the time the weddings were all done, I got seven of ‘em.”

Bleach shakes his head. “Seven… Any other grandbabies?”

Gibbs smiles and nods, then pulls out his phone and finds the shot of him with the three girls.

“They’re all babies! All girls?” Little difficult to tell what Anna is in that picture.

Gibbs nods. “This one’s got a boy on the way. And we’ve got one more in the works but we don’t know what it is, yet.”

“Congratulations.” Bleach says to Tim. “Shocked to see him with a smartphone. Back in the day, this one still had a record player, didn’t want to get involved with those new-fangled cassettes.”

Tim laughs at that, smiling. “Took a while to get him a smart phone, but we got him there.”

“So, what sort of goodies are we getting into today?” Bleach asks.

“I’ve got Abbi’s computer. This morning I got into it, and we found a keystroke logger…” Tim pauses, seeing if he needs to explain to Bleach what that is. He doesn’t. Bleach knows. “My wife is back at our lab getting into it.”

“Are all of your kids Feds?” Bleach asks Gibbs.

“One’s retiring soon. One never was. Most of them work for NCIS.”

Bleach seems to process that. Probably wondering how many of Gibbs kids are adopted/in-laws, or why Tim may not look, at all, like Gibbs or Shannon.

He lets that go and gets back to the case. “So, your wife is checking things out, but at the very least you know someone was keeping tabs on Abbi’s computer?”

“Yeah. And I know it was sending information to the same computer that wiped all of the data for her missing quarters. What I don’t know is who is using that computer.”

“So, you want a warrant specifically for that computer?”

“Right. Technically, ‘I’m Abbi’s computer savvy friend who’s just giving her system a tune up.’ If whoever’s doing this is properly paranoid, seeing her computer do anything out of the ordinary may have sent him scampering. So, it’s possible he won’t touch that computer, but I can hope.”

“So, the keystroke logger still works?”

Tim wiggles his hand.“ Keystroke logger is dead or will be soon. The one Abby… My wife is Abby, his girlfriend is Abbi, and… Anyway, my Abby has his Abbi’s computer, and she’s checking it for prints and DNA along with the keystroke logger, meanwhile I know where the data was going, so she’s going to bring home a new one, and I’ll set it up to send data to the computer. I’m hoping, given how poorly the keystroke logger was installed, that these guys are not the cream of the crop, and they won’t immediately burn their trail.”

“Ah. What else do you need a warrant for? Abbi and Gibbs tried to explain it, but we all got lost.”

Tim nods. “Okay. Obviously you know how when we’ve got suspects we’re allowed to lie to them up and down and left and right to get a confession out of them.”

Bleach nods. That’s boilerplate law. The cops can tell you anything they want to get a confession out of you.

“So, I want to kind of play with that.”

Bleach raises an eyebrow.

“They’re already being audited by the GAO. They also already know where the incriminating evidence is. We know it exists, but not where it is. We also don’t want them immediately burning everything, or going after Abbi. So, what I want to do, and I’ve gotten the okay from my Director for this, is sit down at work on my computers, hack my way into the GAO’s system, then hijack their system to hack into the CGIS. From there I’m going to grab a ton of data. Anything that isn’t nailed down is going to get sucked up. I’m also going to keep watch on what gets the higher ups nervous. I want phone taps on Brandis, Riccerson, Adama, Seth, and Prelu. Abbi tells me their computer system is basically just for filing. All of their hard data and evidence is in lock up. So, what I’m doing is going through that pile of data, and finding out which paper files to send them after.”

“And why are you going after the GAO? Can’t you just do this from your own system?”

“Sure, I can do it from my system. I’m doing it through the GAO because I want to see what they get nervous about, but I don’t want them so nervous they immediately sprint to storage and start torching files. If anyone there has a brain, they’ll see how much information has been touched on, know that most of it is just file numbers and has no intrinsic value on its own, and assume that someone at the GAO is an overactive eager beaver.”

“So, the lie you want to tell is who’s doing the looking.”

“Yeah.”

“Is there a way to do this that just makes it look like you’re the GAO instead of actually hacking through their system?”

“Yes. But if they’re any good… You have to be as good as I am to pull off this hack. You don’t have to be as good as I am to spot a fake. I know they aren’t as good as I am. I don’t know how not as good as I am they are.”

Bleach nods. “So, you want…”

“Blanket permission to do an absolute ton of completely illegal things involving three Federal Agencies.”

Bleach nods slowly, then says to Gibbs. “Well, that one got your b—“ he sees Kelly watching him carefully, “guts.”

Gibbs chuckles.

“Okay. I can’t just give you an open warrant to do whatever it is you want. Let’s see if we can narrow this down?”

“Too much narrower and we’re going to tip our hand.”

Gibbs thinks about that. “Leon says he’s willing to give you tactical support.”

“Yeah.”

“And you were going to hack your way into the security feeds, right?”

“That was the plan. Easier than planting our own cameras.”

“Hack the feed first. Then go in… Abbi said something about anonymous.”

“I can do that… uh…” He’s looking at Bleach.

“What he’s not saying is that if the anonymizer he uses is any good, it’s illegal and he’s legally bound to turn them in.”

Gibbs winces.

“I went temporarily blind, deaf, and dumb a minute ago and won’t regain those senses until I get to the end of this sentence.”

“Thank you.” Tim says. “So you want me to hack the data feed, do it so they don’t know who’s doing it. Go after just the sorts of cases we want, keep guys watching on standby, and if they go running for it, we go after them, and if they don’t, then proceed with you and Abbi and her team retrieving the files that night?”

Gibbs nods.     

“If you can write the warrants. I can do the hacking. Tony’s team should be willing to do standby.”

“Abbi’s will, too.”

Bleach smiles widely. “Then we have a plan.” He’s got a stack of blank warrants on the table next to him. “Let’s get writing.”

 

* * *

 

Bleach is working on the warrants while Tim is half keeping an eye on what he’s writing up, and half watching Kelly as she works on toddling around the patio.

His phone buzzes, and he checks it. Text to him and Abbi.

_And I’ve got prints inside your computer._

_Whose?_ Tim texts back, and a second later sees the same thing pop up from Abbi.

_Million dollar question. I was about to run them then I got thinking. What if they’re there on purpose? We find them. We run them. They’re flagged and whoever they belong to now has a heads up that we know about them._

_Good plan._ Pops up from Abbi while Tim is glaring at his phone. The up (or down) side of being a mystery novelist/married to one, is that you can see about twenty-six steps ahead. Plans within plans within plans, which is great, sometimes. For example, if those prints really are flagged, this is excellent. If they aren’t, they’re losing time and focus worrying about ghosts.

“Bad news?” Bleach asks.

“Ish. Prints on the inside of Abbi’s computer. Not gonna run them until we’re in the thick of this. If they’re flagged, we don’t want to let them know we’ve found the prints. Can you write an arrest warrant for a set of prints?”

Bleach shrugs. “They’ve written warrants for DNA profiles, I don’t see why I can’t do one for a set of prints.”

 _I still need a working computer._ Abbi sends back.

_When you get to his place, Jethro will have a new computer for you. Just don’t send anything out on it until you’ve swung by my office, okay?_

_Okay. First thing tomorrow?_

_Sure. I’ll be in by eight. We’ll go over the fun with your computer and your brand new attached to your keystroke logger computer as well._

_Can’t wait._

Gibbs gestures for the phone, and Tim passes it over. _Jethro here. Might have a change of plans for the attack. How long to wrap the case you’re on?”_

 _Colton._ The man who replaced her on what is now Morrna’s team. _Is off tomorrow and Wednesday too. I’m on until Thursday._

_Then we’ll go after the webcam on Thursday. Give everyone time to get everything in place._

_Okay. See you tonight._

  

* * *

 

He’s in the car, with Kelly, waiting for Gibbs to grab the Chipotle that’s waiting for them. It’s been a long day and his knee and ankle is aching, so he’s moving as little as he can. As he sits there, Tim decides to check in with Abby. _Home?_

_Almost. Took a while to see if there was a way to search AFIS without triggering a red flag on a flagged print._

_Any luck?_

_Maybe. Found a work around. Sort of. Feel like some more hacking tonight?_

Assuming it’s real hacking and not trying to beat outdated, ancient software into working on a newer system, Tim’s game. _Bring on the hack!_

_Good. I can’t get into the prints without triggering the flag. I think you might be able to get into who’s requested a flag._

_Mmmmm… Interesting._ He’s smiling at the phone. That’ll be fun. Dinner, get Kelly down, hack into AFIS, see if he can find out who at CGIS has requested a flag, and what they’ve flagged. Depending on how that goes, he might even get to bed in time to do something other than just collapse. _And here comes Gibbs and dinner. Home soon._

_See you there._

* * *

 

Dinner was good. Burritos and chips and salsa, which went down a treat, and after dinner, Gibbs spent a few minutes watching Tim and Abby hover over his computers doing more magic, and decided he wasn’t really necessary to this endeavor, so he headed home.

Meanwhile, on Tim’s laptop and desktop, he and Abby began the assault on AFIS.

The thing about AFIS is that it’s got to be useable by literally thousands of people making tens of thousands of requests every day.

So, if you’re going into it cold, from the outside, it’s very secure. If you have a log in and password, you suddenly have a very easy way to get in and start mucking around.

Likewise, AFIS is under the impression that the gold in its vault (so to say) is the fingerprints. And that’s not _wrong_ , it’s just a fortunate happenstance for Tim and Abby.

So, while it would be extremely difficult to hack your way into any print you don’t have access to. It’s not that hard to break into the rest of the system. (Especially if you have Tim’s clearance and hacking skills.)

All in all, it takes about an hour and a half to find out that Brandis had put a flag on a set of prints. His own. And on the prints of ten other people, all of whom work for CGIS, five of whom are senior staff and on their radar for this sting. It takes another twenty minutes for Abby to do a quick sight check and decide that she’s got two four point matches. She likes at least six, but warrants have been gotten on single point matches before. Not great, but the prints she lifted are tiny partials.

A little digging into the CGIS website, looking at official Bios tells them all they need to know.

Before Brandis became the Director of CGIS, before he was CGIS management, back in the old days, Brandis ran the tech on the CGIS fleet out of Miami.  

Once upon a time, a long time ago, Brandis was a tech guy. Back in the day, he was probably good at it, but fifteen years in management has made him rusty. His fingerprints are on the inside of Abbi’s computer.  

 

* * *

 

They go to bed stoked. It’s always been that way. Breaking a case feels good. Breaking a case when you aren’t completely exhausted and dead on your feet is even better.

This is victory and working together and a good mystery and all of it wrapped into one tidy package feels great.

Tim knows exactly how he wants to celebrate, and as he’s settling into bed with Abby she seems game for it.

He’s lying on his side, his right side, the side that’s been a ball of ache for months. But yesterday he slept on it and woke up in no more pain than any other day, so tonight, he’s pulling her next to him, and kissing his wife, deep and slow and wet, while he makes love to her.

This is weeknight sex. Plain, vanilla, at least four times a week, just saying good night properly sex. This is close and warm and his whole body against hers without his goddamned arm strapped between them.

This is her belly and breasts against his tummy and chest.

It’s soft, wet kisses while he can feel the rise and fall of her chest against his and the faint tremor of her heart.

It’s having his left hand, the hand with all the dexterity, the hand that isn’t still strapped into a plastic cage, free to pet and stroke and trail and cuddle. It’s his fingers in her hair and on her cheek and tracing her eyelashes and lips and earlobe before slipping along her shoulder blade and spine.

It’s her leg curled over his hip, bodies snug and tight against each other, and being able to reach around from behind and under her leg to stroke her pussy while he thrusts gently against her tummy.

And kisses, and more kisses, and wet, stroke, suck, pulse, face to face, intimate, glorious, so good, missed this so much.

It’s her rolling on top of him and rising up (though they’ve been able to do that since he got home), rocking back and forth, bodies sweet and slick, lovely and sparking joy.

It’s her gasping and shuddering, collapsing onto her hands, still an inch above his chest, and then gently pulling her down the full way, her whole body, whole weight, on his chest, and the exquisite closeness of her breath against his neck and his lips on her forehead as they both come down.

And eventually, much too soon, his ribs send him a none-to-subtle reminder they it hasn’t been _that_ long since they were broken, and she’s got to back off. And for a moment, when she comes back to bed, he’s still lying on his back, and he extends his right arm for her to cuddle in against him, and it also, in no uncertain-terms reminds him that it is sure as hell not extending straight out from his shoulder, yet. But, she gets settled, right where she belongs, neck over his right arm, and he shifts onto his side, exactly where he belongs, and they go to sleep.

For the first time in more than two months, Tim feels whole.


	136. Lay of the Land

“You trust this phone?” That’s the first thing Tim says after hello as Abbi and Gibbs step into his office bright and early on Monday.

Abbi nods. “Only one who’s had a shot at it was Omagi, yesterday. If Omagi is screwing with me, I don’t… It’d be like the sun turned blue.”

“Still…” He looks at the department in front of him and the three people in it. “Connon could check it out and have it back in less than five minutes. If you want it to go boom if someone messes with it, that’d take twenty minutes.”

Abbi hands it over, boom, seems like a good plan, and Tim waves Connon over, telling him what to do with it. A minute later, as Connon heads out, he says to Abbi, “Just remember,  _don’t_  turn it off,  _don’t_  let it run out of power. He’s putting a tiny battery in there that’ll keep it going for three seconds after the power dies. Long enough to send a distress call and fire the explosive.”

Abbi nods. “How big of a boom?”

“If you’re holding it in your hand, it’ll take it off. More than a few feet away, it’ll hurt. More than, say, twenty, and it’ll make a mess and sting, but won’t hurt you unless you get the wrong bit of shrapnel in the wrong place.”

“Strong firecracker level?” Abbi asks.

“Yeah. If you have your hand open, and it’s just resting on your palm, you’ll likely end up with burns and cuts, but everything will still be attached. Close your hand around it…”

“I get it. So, keep it charged.”

Tim nods. “All the time.”

“Unless you want to use it like a tiny grenade,” Gibbs adds, finally saying something.

It hadn’t occurred to Tim, but, by turning the phone off, it would work like a small grenade. “It would work for that, too.” He smiles for a second. “I’m starting to feel like Q in a Bond film.” Even Gibbs gets that reference. “So, computer time.” Tim pulls her new computer out. “It’s all ready to go. All you’ve got to do is turn it on.”

Abbi nods. “Going to spend a bunch of this morning setting it up.”

“You don’t need to. It’s up and running. Were you planning on doing that at work?”

Abbi gets what Tim’s asking with that. “Yes, but not where you’re thinking. Since I got promoted, I work out of our main office. Omagi’s team is still out of Norfolk. I’ll be down there for most of today, working with them.”

Tim smiles at that. “Good. You going, too?”

Gibbs shakes his head. “I’m on recon today. Going to check the deep storage layout and do a double check of her office. Just the outside perimeter, can’t get in, but I can find where the blind spots are and where traps can be set.”

“Let me know where the trouble spots are. Get pictures of any cameras you see. When I get things up on MTAC I can get feeds from them. Give us more line of sight,” Tim says, pulling his netbook out of his desk.

Gibbs nods at that, as Tim puts the netbook in front of Abbi. He flips the top up and turns it on. “And here is your keystroke logger. As long as it’s on and in a wifi spot, like right now, any keystroke you make gets sent out. Turn it off, no more intel. Go out of wifi and the logger stores whatever you’re doing in memory, then uploads it as soon as it hits a hot spot again.”

Abbi’s picking up the tiny computer. “These are really light.”

Tim nods. “Not much memory, and not very fast, but good for quick work with a real keyboard.”

She seems to be thinking about getting one. “So, anything I type in, off it goes.”

“Right.” Tim nods at that. “And just what you type in. It has no idea what else is going on. So, the screen can be blank. It can be set to a word processor. Whatever you want. It can’t tell what you mouse on. It has no idea what programs are running. Just what you type in.”

“When I’m logged into our intranet, they can see what I’m doing?”

“Probably. If they’re looking. It’s a good idea to have someone typing on this one if you do any traceable work on your computer.”

She nods at that, too.

“When will you be back at CGIS headquarters?” Tim asks.

“Not today. Probably not tomorrow. Wednesday? That’s when my coverage on Omagi’s team ends. If the case is really hot, I’ll probably stick around to wrap it up.”

Tim and Gibbs nods. She’s got an active homicide, with real people begging for answers. Even this much time off is asking too much. She’ll work it until it’s done.

“As soon as you can get in, I’ve got a warrant for the computer that’s getting this information. As soon as you’re back in there, getting in and getting that camera working would be good.”

“Not sure how soon I can do that. Can we send someone else…”

Tim inclines his head a bit. “Bleach suggested that if we’re low on manpower to call in the FBI. Apparently they’re the guys you call when you’ve got a massive public corruption case.”

“Called Fornell last night,” Gibbs adds.

Abbi smiles at that. She can work with Fornell. “So, what’s going on on your end?” Abbi asks Tim.

Tim grins at her. “Tracing your keystroke logger as soon as you take it live. Did Gibbs tell you we’re going straight at CGIS?”

Abbi nods. “Last of the red hot lovers over there has an interesting definition of pillow talk.”

Gibbs raises an eyebrow, and Tim smirks. “Breena’s got a few comments along those lines, too.”

Abbi sniggers. “Anyway. You’re going straight in?”

“Yeah. Today I’m on financials. We got warrants for that, so I’m dissecting your guys’ lives. Once I’ve got visual proof of whoever’s downloading the information from your computer, I’ll start going after the files. For the main bit, getting what files we need, I’m going straight in. No finesse, no hiding. I’ve got a warrant for it, so I won’t be sneaky. The sneaky bit is that I’m going to hack your security feeds. That’s going on today, too. If anyone gets hot or bothered and goes skipping off to your storage facilities, I’ll give you the heads up and you swoop in, grab them with the files in hand. Otherwise, I’ll be going through, sorting them out, and sending you the data as I get it. Hopefully, once I’m in, it’ll take less than a day.”

“Then we go in, head to file storage, and start grabbing what we need.”

Tim grabs his phone and fires off a text to Connon. “Gibbs, give me your phone.” Gibbs does, both Abbi and him are staring at Tim, wondering what he’s doing with it. Tim explains as he works on Gibbs’ phone. “I told Connon to set your phone so that if you take pictures with it, it’ll send the picture to the cloud and immediately erase it from your phone. You can’t be caught with the photos on you, and they can’t be erased if someone grabs your phone. Swissin’s file, that’s the first thing you’re grabbing, get shots of it. While you’re going through other stuff, Jimmy can be double checking his file, seeing if anything hinky was overlooked.”

“We’re not just carrying things out?” Gibbs asks.

“More than we can carry,” Abbi replies. “Some of it, sure, but most of it…” She shakes her head. Most of it we’re…” She stops. “We have warrants. We don’t need to cloak and dagger this. We can just go in and take what we need.”

That doesn’t sit right with Gibbs. He’s shaking his head. “No. Yes, we can, but… Feels off.”

Abbi looks at him.  _Looking for an adventure?_

He doesn’t roll his eyes, but looks like he wants to. “I’m not just trying to have some fun. We go in there brandishing warrants, the entire Legal Department is going to be on us, with a pack of other pet judges. You’ve got a pet judge. They do, too. They’ll file injunctions. Bleach’ll do whatever it is he does. Six months from now we’re still in court, the documents have all vanished, they’re still running the place, and you’re off counting the paper clips in Alaska. No.”

That, unfortunately, is much too true. “Then we go in. We take a lot of pictures, grab as much as we can carry. Omagi’s team is lucky. Deep storage is a warehouse in the old complex off of MLK Avenue, with a drive-in loading area. They pull in and fill their van with years’ of files. We’re in the basement, so only what we can carry.”

“Two backpacks’ worth,” Gibbs says.

“Something like that,” Abbi says. “So, less than a day to pull files?” Abbi asks Tim.

“Longer I’m pulling files, the more time they’ll have to catch me. Longer I’m pulling files the more files I can pull. What do you want? Lots of incriminating information, or me in and out fast and clean?”

Abbi thinks about it. “What’s the middle ground look like?”

Tim doesn’t quite answer that question, he’s realizing something. “I get into the security feeds today. If I’m really lucky, there’ll be a camera near that computer, and we won’t have to send someone in to get the camera on the computer working. I’ll get it from the surveillance feed, and that will speed things up.”

Abbi shakes her head.

“No?”

“No. Best you’re going to do is the hallway, and there are three entrances to the conference room.”

That’s disappointing. “Then that’s not going to happen. Okay, middle ground on the files… Say, every file involving your top five, and all of Swissin's stuff that I can locate in four hours.”

Abbi thinks about that, too. She nods curtly. “That’ll work. You get them, then we go in, and if everything goes smooth,” she stops for a second and all three of them share a  _when has everything ever gone smooth?_  look, “we’ll be out in a few hours with all of our files. Then it’s rounding people up, putting them in cuffs, and trying to figure out who handles the prosecution of a case against IA. I’m thinking Bleach is onto something with the FBI. Just hand everything over to them and let them dig through it.”

Connon knocks and pokes his head in. “Phone’s done, Boss.”

Tim smiles at him. “Thanks, Connon.”

Connon’s watching him, staring at his wrist still in the cast and the crutch resting against his desk. “You being careful?”

“Connon, this is Abbi Borin CGIS Director of the Chesapeake Region. We are aiding her in an investigation by providing technical support. You’ve met Gibbs, right?”

Connon nods, looking satisfied by that. “Good to know.” He hands Abbi her phone. “It’s clean and ready to go. Don’t turn it off.”

“We’ve done the safety spiel,” Tim says, dryly.

“Okay. Don’t take any pictures with it you don’t want the rest of the universe able to get a hold of, either, Agent Borin.”

Abbi nods at that, too.

Tim nods at him. “Thanks, Connon.”

“No problem, Boss.” And with that Connon heads off to get back to the case he was working.

“You talk to Tony about back up?” Tim asks.

“Not yet,” Gibbs says.

Tim’s reaching for his phone.

“He’s got enough going on. Let him be until you’re ready for him,” Gibbs says.

Tim raises an eyebrow at that. “The shooting?”

Gibbs nods.

“Oh. I’ll… leave a message on his work email. He’ll get to it whenever.”

“Good plan,” Abbi says. “You going to make sure Fornell can bring in enough cavalry if you can’t?”    

“Part of what I’m doing this afternoon,” Gibbs says with a smile.     

* * *

“So, what are we doing?” Fornell asks as he strides over to Gibbs, who is comfortably leaning against the Metro sign in front of the Coast Guard DC Headquarters.

“Just two old guys chatting.”

“Uh huh. This is your girlfriend’s office, right?”

“Yep.”

“So, they’ve seen you here before, right?”

Gibbs nods.

Fornell eyes the building and the ones around it. “So, you’re what, waiting for her?”

“Something like that.”

“At the bus stop? Didn't think you were that cheap of a date.”

“Best view.” He nods quickly up and to the left. “Don’t like that corner.”

Fornell takes a quick glance. There’s an office building on the next block up. It’s large, at least fifteen stories, filled with shiny windows, and all of them have perfect line of sight to the entry to Abbi’s building. Stick someone in any of those rooms, and they’ve got the whole place covered, along with an invisible exit. No way to tell if anyone is there until it’s too late.

“You really think there’ll be shooters?”

Gibbs shrugs. “Not feeling it. Don’t want to get taken by surprise.” He doesn’t have to say how badly he’s been bitten by a sniper he didn't feel in the past. He’s taking a lot of extra caution on this.

Fornell’s eyeing the block. “Want me to take a look around back?”

“Yes.”

“Got it.”

“Give me a call when you’re back there.”

“Sure.”

Tobias heads off. A few minutes later, Gibbs’ phone rings.

“They’ve got a parking garage entrance in the back. It’s better, but still not good.”

“Okay. Yeah. Tonight then?”

Fornell smirks. “You getting stood up?” Obviously, this is supposed to be the call explaining why Abbi isn’t coming down to meet him.

“Uh huh. I’ll have dinner ready.”

“My my, you are getting domestic.” Fornell can feel the glare Gibbs would be giving him if he wasn’t pretending to talk to Abbi. “My car is six blocks down, and three west.”

“Bye.”

“What, no ‘love you?’”

Gibbs hangs up and starts to amble in the direction of Fornell’s car.

 

* * *

 

“You do know, that if they’ve got the brains to be watching you, they’ve also got the brains to have someone watching her phone and likely yours. If it’s not bugged, they’ll at least be seeing who and when she’s calling,” Fornell says as Gibbs gets into his car.

“Shit.” His team would have live records for his phone and hers. He’d forgotten that. He sends a text to Tim.  _Can you see if anyone is watching my phone and Abbi’s? See who we’re talking to?_

_Sure. Give me a bit._

“Got McGee on it?”

Gibbs nods. “Seeing if anyone’s watching our phones.”

Fornell nods. Nothing else to do for it now. “In the back there are two street level entrances, and the main one that leads to the underground parking garage. Other side of the street is the back of another building, no good line of sight, and the angle from the top is too steep for anyone to get a good shot. Building two down to the south is four stories tall, has good line of sight from the roof, and that’s where I’d put a shooter.”

“Then that’s where we’ll put Ziva.”

Fornell nods at that. She’s his first choice for someone on Tony’s team watching his back with a high powered rifle. Fornell looks at the two cups of coffee in his coffee holder. “One on the right is yours.”

Gibbs nods his thanks, reaching for the coffee. “You get into what I gave you?”

“Just enough to look through and hand it off. I dropped it in IA’s lap.” He nods in the direction of Abbi’s building. “Unlike those guys, mine are on the up and up.”

Gibbs sips his coffee.

Fornell sips his, too. “So, Mike was smuggling abused girls into the country.” Not a question.

“Best I can tell.”

Fornell nods slowly at that, staring at Gibbs. He sips his coffee again, still staring at Gibbs. Gibbs stares back.

“Don’t get caught.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Uh huh,” Fornell says dryly. “And let me guess, for as long as I’ve got a badge, that’ll be true.”

Gibbs inclines his head.

“And when I don’t have one?” Mandatory retirement’s coming up fast on Fornell. May 2017 is his expiration date.

Gibbs sips his coffee again, staring Fornell in the eye.

Fornell shakes his head gently and smiles. “Glad we had this chat.”

“Anytime. Got another job for you or one of yours. There’s a conference room on the fourth floor. It’s got a computer in it that all the data’s being sent to. According to Tim it’s got a camera in it, too. As best he can tell, it works, too. But something’s blocking it. Like to get someone in there to unblock it. Then we’d have visual confirmation of who’s accessing the data.”

“Nice.” Fornell nods at that. He’d love to have a case so easy all he has to do is pick out clear pictures of the suspect breaking the law.

“Yep. Just need to get someone in there, move a bit of tape or something, and we’re set to go.”

“And you’re not doing it because they know who you are?”

“Yeah. And she’s not doing it because there’s no reason for her to be in that room right now.”

“Can McGee make that computer stop working? They call for help, we come in and ‘fix’ it?”

That sounds like a great idea to Gibbs, and he starts texting Tim.

A minute later his phone rings. “Not going to happen,” Tim says.

Gibbs puts it on speaker. “You can’t kill it?”

Tim sounds amused by that. “Or course I can kill it. I can’t make CGIS call out for help. They’ve got their own Tech Support who’ll show up to fix it. Unless you can get the right person into their Tech Support team and get him assigned to fix that computer, that plan won’t work.”

Gibbs and Fornell spend a moment doing something that, if they were anyone else, might have been called pouting, at their plan not working, and then Tim says, “But, I can find out from Abbi how that room gets assigned, and if there’s an online sign-up sheet, I can find a time no one will be in there, I can reserve it, and a ‘vendor’ can come in to get stood up by whomever isn’t actually meeting with him.”

“Do that,” Fornell says. “Let me know when I’m going in and what I’m selling.”

“You’re going in?” Tim asks.

“I’ve spent full years in deep cover with the Mafia, I think I can handle half an hour at CGIS.”

“Great. I’ll let you know if I can do it.” Tim hangs up.

Fornell looks at Gibbs, “I can shift a team here, too. Secure the roof of the other buildings. Keep an eye on those windows. That work for you?”

Gibbs nods.

“How do you think you’re going in and out?”

“Hopefully the garage. Have the car by the door and ready to go. Get out of there, dump all of the evidence in your lap, and then we start arresting people.”

He sips his coffee again. “You always do bring me interesting cases.”

Gibbs smiles. “What are friends for?”

* * *

It’s an hour later, when Tim calls Fornell back saying, “Okay, I got into their system, and that conference room is packed. Friday morning at 8:00. Thomas Ford of Harrington Janitorial has a twenty minute meeting with Cynthia Perkins, she’s in charge of physical plant, and it’s your job to convince her that your company needs to be in charge of her janitorial needs.” 

“You do this kind of deep background for a meeting that’s never going to happen?”

“I’ve got no idea what sort of intel the guy at the desk is going to have. So you’ve got everything you need to get by him and to your meeting.”

“Sounds good. I’ll have my guys make a packet to get me in. I’ll have ID, brochures, cards, the lot of it.”

“Excellent. Okay, I’m off to get into the security feed.”

Fornell hangs up. “Eight on Friday. Lot of time between now and then. You going to be okay?”

Gibbs shrugs. He’s had to wait for ops to go down before. He’ll do it again. “I’ll live.”

“Good.”

* * *

Leon heads down to Tim’s office close to the end of the day. “How’s Operation Clean Beaches going?”

Tim smiles at that, approving of the name.

“Going well. I’ve got live feeds for all of the security footage at CGIS, and a script set that sends me an update if anyone goes into or out of the file storage systems.”

“Nice.”

“Something to be said for having to enter in a key code. Found someone else has a trace on that, too. I quietly dismantled it. Did the same thing with the trace on Abbi's new phone. Someone’s checking to see who she calls. That one won't hold for long. Whoever's setting them will notice he's not getting any data on that and reset it.”

“Who's watching?”

“Same computer that’s done everything else.”

Leon nods. “Abbi’s keystroke logger?”

“Is sending information to a computer in Lexington, Kentucky, which is sending information to another computer in London, to one in—“

Leon’s not looking impressed, and it hits Tim that he doesn’t need to go rattling off quite that much detail. He’s already been promoted as high as he can in this line of work. The guy who needs to know how good is  _knows._  “Do you know where the information ends up?”

Tim smiles. “Yeah, room 406. Apparently that’s a conference room two floors up from Abbi’s office. It’s set with a computer so that whoever’s in there has internet access on the fly.”

“Ah.” Leon looks disappointed, but that’s true for half of the conference rooms at the Navy Yard, too.

“Yes. They’re not complete idiots.”  Tim’s voice lingers on complete, so Leon raises an eyebrow. “That computer has a camera on it. It’s not recording now, but Fornell’s going to take care of that on Friday.”

“Good. Anything interesting in the bank records?”

Tim sighs. _Yeah, they’re interesting._ “First blush, they’re all living  _way_  beyond their paychecks. Adama, the guy running the Compliance Office, his mortgage payment is bigger than what he and his wife are depositing as income. And he’s the one raking in the least of the cash. Beyond that, I’ve handed it off to Fornell’s forensic accounting department. It’d take me days to wade through it enough to find out where all the bodies are buried in there.”

Leon nods at that, too. He prefers that his command team delegate things that they aren’t specialists in.

“So, we’re ready for the show to begin?”

Tim nods. “Once Fornell’s got that camera working, and I’ve got, most likely Brandis, on camera accessing the information he’s pulling off Abbi’s computer. We’ll be ready to go in less than twenty-four hours.  We’ll pop up some popcorn, and settle in at MTAC to watch the fireworks.”

Leon smiles. “That’s what I want to hear.”


	137. Storming The Castle

Four days is a long time to wait. Especially when you’re worried that someone is staring over your shoulder, deleting evidence, and laying a trap for you. But Monday slips to Tuesday and Tuesday to Wednesday and so on and so forth. 

And if Gibbs got a whole lot more work on the house done than normal, well, he’s got to have something to do with all of this nervous and jittery.

He especially hates the fact that he can’t keep checking in with Abbi. She’s back at CGIS HQ, and he can’t be calling in every five minutes to make sure she’s okay. As of Tuesday, the trace is back on her phone records, so they’ve both got to act like everything is normal. 

So they do. She does her work. He does his. And at the end Tuesday they have dinner with Tim and Abby, who get them up to date with the latest news. On Wednesday Leon shows up with brownies to have a chat with them. Thursday he and Fornell decide to have a drink while Abbi works late.

They keep him in the loop, but he still hates being on the outside of it.

Finally, it’s Friday.

Gibbs shows up at Fornell’s doorstep first thing Friday morning. Wendy lets him in, looking amused to see him, dressed, ready to go, two cups of coffee, all but vibrating with the need to do something useful, at 6:00 in the morning.

“He’s in the shower. Sit down, relax. He’ll be out soon enough.”

Gibbs nods at that, sitting on her sofa, very, very still, waiting.

Fornell is out a few minutes later, looking half asleep, and slightly grumpy. “Don’t need a partner on this.”

Gibbs hands over the coffee. “Just keeping an eye on things. Gonna be in the building across the street, want to see how good the view is.”

Fornell shrugs at that. “Fine.” He takes a deep drink. “Let me get dressed. We’ll be there by 7:30.”

“Okay.”

* * *

 

They park a mile away from the CGIS HQ. Partly to eat up some time. Traffic behaved and what should have been a forty minute drive took twenty. Partly to make sure that “Tom Ford” won’t be seen driving Tobias Fornell’s car. And partly because that’s far enough away to give Gibbs an easy trek to the building he wants to go to, and a straight shot to where Fornell’s going.

They take a moment to set up the earwigs before going in. “McGee, you here?” Fornell asks.

“I’ve got you. Should be pretty straightforward, go in, put a hole in whatever's blocking the camera, sit around for twenty minutes, and then head off. Gibbs, you’ve got us?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Off you go,” Tim says.

Fornell’s heading straight to the CGIS HQ as Tim asks, “So, the Forensic Accountants having fun?”

“Tons of it. The last time they had this much fun, I was handing them six years’ worth of accounts for the Carmilio Family out of Baltimore. Even if we get nothing else, we’ve got all five of them for tax evasion. Diane’s going to have a blast with them.”

“You’re bringing her in?” Gibbs asks, he’s a block to the west of Fornell. He remembers telling Rachel that every year, round about fall, they’d end up with a case together. He figures that by the time they get into the tax part of this, it should be September.

“No reason not to. We’ll cover the racketeering charges, and the corruption charges, and the bribery charges, but even if it’s illegal income, you’re supposed to report it, so she’ll add a few decades to their sentences with that.”

Gibbs shakes his head at that.

They continue walking, heading to their targets, not speaking. Gibbs can see the building he’s looking for when he hears Fornell say, “So, they’re expecting me, right?”

“Yeah. I checked with Abbi to see how this works, you’ll go in, security’ll check your appointment, and then call up, I’ll make sure he gets “through,” Abby will tell them to send you up, and then someone will escort you to the conference room. You’ll have twenty minutes to do a thirty second job.”

“Once you get up there, go to the window, let me see you,” Gibbs adds.

“Or you’ll have twenty minutes to do two thirty second jobs,” Tim amends.

“Great. I’m on the front steps. Talk to you in a bit.”

 

* * *

 

Fornell takes a second to get into character. He’s been doing undercover work for more than three decades now, so it’s not difficult to slip on a new personality the way other people put on a sweater or a pair of socks.

Tom’s a salesman, he’s busy, but he never makes anyone feel like they’re wasting his time. He’s affable, pleasant, out to help people find the services they need to do the jobs they’ve got to get done. Tom can charm anyone with a pulse. He’s “fun.”

A smile slips over Fornell’s face and his posture shifts, becomes looser. He swings his arms a bit more with each step, and steps a little bit wider. He winks at the security lady at the door. She’s about his age, probably doesn’t get flirted with much anymore, and she smiles back, appreciating a little positive attention. She’s x-raying his things, making sure he’s not carrying a bomb or gun.

He smiles at her. “Never been here before, so I don’t know the drill. Where to next?”

She smiles at him, and nods behind her and to the left. “Visitors sign in over there.”

He takes his briefcase back. “Thank you.”

Check in goes smoothly. This is always so much easier when you’ve got pros at your back. Fornell doesn’t feel a moment of worry when the desk clerk calls up, and a second later, the clerk is nodding, and another Security officer heads over to escort him up to the conference room.

He glad hands the guard, and, as the guard is standing at the doorway, Fornell’s phone buzzes. It’s a text that does appear to be coming from Cynthia Perkind, the woman he's supposed to be meeting, and it says she’s going to be a few minutes late.

Fornell holds it up, showing it to the guard, who nods at that. “You mind if I head off?”

“I can keep myself occupied for five minutes.”

“Okay.” And off he goes.

Once the door closes, Fornell quietly says, “That text was a nice touch.”

“Thought so. Okay, go check the computer,” Tim says.

“Not yet. If he turns around, I want to look like I’m waiting.” Fornell ambles over to the window, “taking in the view.” “See me?”

He hears Gibbs in his ear. “Got you. You see me?”

Fornell scans the buildings in his line of sight. “Not at all. Where are you?”

“Ninth floor, right corner.”

Fornell checks. “No. It’s a perfect mirror.”

Fornell waits for another minute, and then begins to explore the room he’s in. “No security feed in here, right McGee?”

“If there is, I couldn’t find it. I can tell you, that besides us, nothing is coming out of that room right now.”

“Okay.” He heads straight to the computer, which is on a small table against the back wall. “What am I looking for?”

Tim thinks about how to describe it, and then takes a quick shot of the camera on his computer. “One of those,” he says as soon as he hears Fornell’s phone buzz with the email.

“All right. There’s a small plastic tag with a number on it right over where the camera’s supposed to be.”

“Great, can you put a tiny hole in it?”

“Got it.” He takes the mini drill out of his pocket, (Yes, lock picks are nice and all, especially if you don't want anyone to know you've been in, but a drill is a whole lot faster. Fornell carries both.) and a few seconds later there’s a tiny hole, smaller than the head of a pin, in the middle of the tag.

“How’s it look?” Tim asks.

Fornell sends a shot back.

“Good. You’ve got to be looking for it to see it.” Tiny black hole on a black tag between white numbers. It’s almost invisible. “Okay… not seeing anything, scoot it over a bit.”

Fornell does.

“Right there, stop. Perfect. And we have video of this room. Now all we’ve got to do is wait.”

“Wonderful. Speaking of waiting…”

“You’re going to get a text in the next few minutes asking to reschedule. Then out you go.”

Fornell smiles. “See you at the car.”

“I’ll be there,” Gibbs says back.

  

* * *

 

 

More waiting. Once Fornell heads off to do his actual job, Gibbs drifts back to the Navy Yard. He’s not sure what he’s going to do here, hover around and wait to see if anyone actually uses that computer.

That’s good for a bit less than an hour. Then he’s bugging the hell out of Tim, who also has a real job to do, and doesn’t need a techno-phobic geriatric hovering over his shoulder, glaring at his computer willing it to show them who’s accessing his woman’s computer.

So, back home. He’s got stuff to do at home. Things to build. Cribs and a rocking chair, and maybe, if he’ll let it, the wood will pull him out of this nervous, have to move now, nothing to move on, mindset, and get him into something more useful.

  

* * *

When Gibbs gets home he decides to check in with Abbi. It’s been four hours and he hasn’t heard anything. Granted, she doesn’t usually check in just to let him know she’s okay, but… She’s usually not in the middle of anything this involved.

“Gibbs?” she asks when she picks up on the third ring.

“Just checking. You okay? If you aren’t, say yes.”

“Just dandy.” He hears her say, “Bored out of my mind, got piles of papers to fill out, but just fine.”

“Okay.” He doesn’t say anything else.

“I’m fine.”

“Good.”

“See you tonight. You can send out the Mounties if I’m not back by six.”

“Setting my clock now.”

“Bye, Jethro.”

He’s got a dead line on his hands, and a lot of hours between now and her getting home.

* * *

 

He heads into the basement. Lots of work to do down there. He’s got cribs to make and another rocking chair.

Back when he gave the first chair to Abby and Tim, he wasn’t expecting them to have a nursing baby at the exact same time Tony and Ziva have one, too.

So he’s not yanking the chair from one home to the next, not when they both need one, so, first up, rocking chair.

He’s been messing with ideas for it. Something that feels like Tony and Ziva, fresh, comfortable, classic.

An hour into it, he’s got some sketches he really likes, something that the wood likes, too. He got the wood after Tony told him they had a baby on the way, mostly white oak, but he’s got a few smaller bits, accents in cherry, that he’s got a plan for.

He’s happily sketching away, taking a small drink every now and again, thoughts of the wood in front of him and tomorrow’s case mixing and mingling in his head.

He always liked this. He’d work, he’d focus on the wood, on the feel of it under his hands, or, like now, the feel of his pencil sliding over wood as he marks the lines he wants to cut, and that focus allows him to see the forest for the trees.

Nothing planned. Not yet. Someone’s got to use that computer before Tim’ll move ahead. But then he’ll get a day (or more, he hopes) of work. At his real job.

And for a day, while Abbi does her job, and gets out in the field, asking questions, tracking down leads, he’ll get to do it, too.

That’ll be good.

He’s feeling peace and energy cresting through him. He’s really looking forward to what comes next. Not loving right now, and waiting, but soon…

He takes another drink, finishing the curve he wants on the bit of oak in front of him, and then heads over to his workbench to pour more. He looks up, sees the time, almost five. No more to drink now. He’s got to get showered and dressed and ready for Shabbos.

* * *

 

It’s a good dinner. Tony’s still acting off. Still pulled into himself from the shoot. Gibbs is thinking that he’s got until Sunday, then he’s going to have a talk with him whether he wants that talk or not.

* * *

 

Saturday. Nothing. Apparently, in addition to crooked, the CGIS higher ups don't have any work ethic.

 

* * *

 

Sunday night, Abbi’s working late. Gibbs is still jittery, still feeling that buzz of waiting for action to start.

He’s in his basement, still working on the rocking chair, willing someone at CGIS to get off his ass and check that damn computer.

He’s working so steadily he doesn’t notice anything outside of himself until he heads back to his workbench for a refill. His phone is there, and he sees it’s buzzed.

For a second, he feels a flash of fear. Someone called and he didn’t notice. He whacks it fast to see who called, and it’s a text, from Tony.

Gibbs sighs. _Finally._ He sends back a quick  _Door’s open_ and hopes he’ll be able to help get Tony’s head back where it belongs.

* * *

By the time Tony gets there, Gibbs has two more slats sketched out, and the bourbon poured.

“She had to move the mirror,” Tony says in lieu of ‘Hello.’

Gibbs would have to admit that that’s a tad more cryptic than he’d like, but he can pretty much figure out what Tony has to be saying by it. Only one ‘she’ he could be talking about, and only a few reasons to move a mirror.

Gibbs hands over the drink, and pretty much puts Tony onto a stool. “Start at the beginning.”

So Tony does, explaining how the shoot went wrong. Gibbs sighs at this. He’s been there. Literally. He’s done it, though he was lucky enough to have been in a very dark place, and he got shot, so at the end of the day no one else was asking any questions.

But he knows it was a bad shoot. He knows he panicked. Jen was still new. It was her first undercover mission, and things got beyond sticky, she made a bad move, everything went sideways, and when it was done their asset was dead, he was bleeding, and the only reason they even got out of it was because the guy they were trailing was dead, too.

Throw enough corpses all over the place, swap around the guns, get lucky with the weather (hard rain), and you can tell pretty much any story you like.

Tony gets to the part about seeing or not seeing or whatever it was, and Gibbs interjects, “The gut knows.”

“Try telling IA that.”

Gibbs inclines his head. “I know.” And he does. He really does. He’s been there, too. Trying to get permission based on how he feels about something. That’s finally what brought around eighteen. Get turned down too many times, get proven right when the bodies get found, because the gut does _know_ , and he stopped asking. He’d rather burn for it after than fuck it up by not moving in the first place.

The gut knows. That’s part of what’s going on right now, feeling what’s going on with Borin, what he’s almost afraid of, what’s sending that buzz of jittery through him. Right now he’s sure they’re still under the radar and two steps ahead, but he can feel the thread that’s hanging by, and he’s starting to get nervous about when that snaps.

Tony’s telling him the rest of the story. And, finally, the mirror comment makes sense.

“She gave you cover, something you could explain to IA.” Because that’s what you do. You hope to never be there, but if you are, you take care of it. Nobody’s any better off by crucifying yourself over someone who doesn’t deserve it.

“Yeah. She knew it was a bad shoot—“

“Stop that.” His voice is sharp as he says that. “Your wife and child are breathing.  _Any_  shoot that accomplishes that is a good shoot.” And he means it, but he can see that Tony’s over-thinking it.

“Jimmy said that, too, but I didn’t  _know_ , Gibbs. I panicked.”

“You  _knew_.” He’s starting to get a sense of what’s going on here, what’s deeper than feeling like it was a bad shoot, but bad shoot has to get taken care of first. “You knew he was dangerous. You knew he was in his own home. Why run into the room with no exit in his own home? Not like he got lost. You knew he’d killed other cops. You didn’t know how, but you knew he’d done it. He puts his hands behind his neck, not his head, why? Without being told, why? You  _knew_.”

Tony shakes his head, but it’s half-hearted. He’s thawing. “Felt like panic. I’ve made good shots, besides the first one, I never almost pissed myself or hit the floor. Never didn’t sleep for a week after a good shot.”

“All of those things happened the last time you almost lost Ziva.” Because it’s not about good shoot or bad shoot. It’s about the target.

“Yeah. That’s why I panicked. That’s why I didn’t say stop. I shot before anything…”

“And it was a good thing you did. He had lock picks in his boot, a hidden knife in his belt.” Jimmy’d given him the heads up on what they found. “You yell stop. He stops. Ziva pats him down, grabs the gun, cuffs him, hands behind his back. Into the car you go. Call it in. On the road, he picks the lock, pulls the knife, holds it to Ziva’s throat until you stop the car and let him out. Maybe he takes your gun, too. Maybe he slits her throat before he runs, knowing that calling for help and trying to keep her from bleeding out means you won’t follow.  _The gut knows_. You knew.  

“As a husband and father, as the man guarding my daughter and grandchild, you did the right thing. As your father-in-law, friend, mentor, whatever it is we are to each other, I am proud of you. Your family comes first, above and beyond everything else.” He’s saying it to Tony, and he means it, completely, but he’s hearing it in his own head, too.

“As your ex-boss, as a cop, you fucked up, and not because of the shot, but because you had the person you’d take a blind shot for on your team.” Can’t run a career like that. But Gibbs isn’t the team leader, now not. He doesn’t have a career, not anymore. But for this op, he wants the man who will take a blind shot at Abbi’s back. Because that’s what a husband should do. But that’s not being a cop, that’s being a husband. And the two shouldn’t overlap. “That’s why you were ready to piss yourself, not because it was a bad shoot, but because Ziva was the one next to you. You wouldn’t have taken that shot if Bishop had been there, and knowing how close to FUBAR you could have gotten wouldn’t have hurt so bad if Draga had been in that car with you.”

Tony’s a cop. But he’s not, not anymore. He’s a man, going along with his woman, as back up. And he will be the best damn back up she’s ever seen. Because he’s not a cop, but he might be, wants to be, a husband, and being the man who will, on gut alone, take the blind shot to protect his woman is a husband’s job.

But that’s not useful for Tony. Back to him. “There are a lot of good reasons for 12, and that’s one of them. I have been  _exactly_  where you are, and the only reason I was even around to ever be your Boss is when Jen and I finally got the shit cleaned up, enough people had stopped breathing that no one besides us knew what had happened.

“Jen and I split after that. Lots of reasons, but one of them was I’d made it clear I couldn’t work with her. Same for you. You’re done. You can’t work with Ziva.” Not as a cop. Not anymore. He can be a husband, but the job is more than just protecting your loves. “Since you’re the problem and she isn’t, normally I’d say you need to hand in your badge, but you know she’s planning on leaving soon, and there’s no one else you’d make that mistake for.”

Tony nods, looking like this is helping.

“But don’t put that gun back on if you go out with her. Better yet, don’t go out with her. I know it’s early days, but it might be time for her to leave, or go on desk work, or whatever it is she wants to do.”

Tony shrugs. “She’d been talking a bit about working with you on the houses.”

Gibbs smiles at that. He'd like having Ziva working with them. Be nice to have someone else who can be quiet. Ducky and Penny get going and going and going and never shut up. He likes working with them, but it’s not, by any stretch, restful.

Gibbs thinks about mentioning what they’re working on, bringing him into the loop, readjusting the plans if Ziva won’t be part of it, but he decides not now. They’ve got time before they have to move, even if Tim’s getting the images right now of someone accessing that computer, he’ll be getting files and setting things up for at least a day. Tony's exhausted. He needs rest, and he needs to settle with Ziva, there’ll be time enough for CGIS after.

“Go home. Sleep with your wife. Talk to her.”

Tony rolls his eyes a bit. “Easier to talk to you.”

“Yeah, but I’m less pretty.”

Tony laughs, and they hear the door open along with a friendly bark from Mona. “Oh, I see why you’re booting me out. Got your own pretty you want to be snuggling with.”

Gibbs smiles some at that.

Tony puts his glass down and says, “Thanks.”

* * *

 

Sleeping is good. Tim loves sleeping.

He’s not sleeping. He’s whacking ineffectually at his bedside table, trying to grab his cellphone. It’s demanding his attention, blaring an especially annoying ringtone, and finally, on the third fumble, he gets his hand on it, and shuts it up.

Unfortunately, he didn’t do it fast enough for Abby to sleep through it.

She’s lifting her head and staring at the clock. 5:58. Her head sinks back down, and he knows she’s hoping to grab another half hour before they’ve got to get moving.

He’s up. No shot of getting back to sleep, because he knows he picked that utterly obnoxious ringtone because he wanted to be jolted out of anything he might have been doing when this came through.

Someone’s on the computer, accessing Abbi’s records.

Tim pulls on his PJ pants, and heads downstairs to his computer. A few minutes of loading and turning on and getting into the right programs shows him a man he recognizes. Having the feed up shows him what he’s doing.

He’s got Brandis dead to rights. There he is, on the computer, uploading what Abbi’s been doing.

He sends a quick text to Leon, letting him know Clean Beaches is a go. He knows Abbi’s phone is being watched, but Jethro’s isn’t, so he texts Jethro as well.

_Got him. Brandis just downloaded everything Abbi’s given him with her keystroke logger. Once I get in, I’ll start going after the files. Whenever you want to roll, we’ll be good to go._

He gets a text back a few minutes later: _Abbi here: We go tonight._

_I’ll make sure you know what you need to grab._

He can feel her smile, the look of a top predator with prey in its reach. _Good._

* * *

When Tony and Ziva made an appointment to chat, Leon was expecting them to want to talk about the CGIS mission. He was not expecting this to be Ziva shifting onto desk work, let alone giving notice.

Leon would have to admit, that on the morning of a major investigation starting up, finding out that one of his most trusted Agents won’t be there isn’t making his day.

He’d also have to admit that, given how many different ways this particular mission can go south, that he’s not completely unhappy to have his pregnant agent out of the line of fire.

As Ziva heads out of his office, he sees Tony’s still lingering on outside, waiting for her, and he waves him back in.

“Director?” Tony didn’t think they had anything left to discuss.

“Have you had a chat with McGee today?”

“Saw he sent an email, haven’t gotten into it.”

Leon nods at him. “Might be a good idea to read that as soon as you’re back to your desk.”

Now Tony’s looking disturbed. “What’s going on?”

“Agent Borin’s case has gone hot, and we are providing assistance.”

Tony squints for a moment. He knows something was happening with that, but he’s been so wrapped in his own world of babies and bad shoots and dealing with his dad and the new house and everything else that he wasn’t paying much attention to that.

“What’s the case?”

Now Leon looks surprised because he assumed Clan Gibbs has regular pow-wows and all get together and do family-type stuff regularly. But maybe they don’t talk shop when they do that.

“You don’t know?”

“Been dealing with my own stuff.”

“Oh. Tonight we’re storming the Coast Guard HQ to get documents out of it to confirm the existence of a conspiracy between their Director, Chief Compliance Officer, and the Heads of their IA, Accounting Department, and maybe their ME.”

“Good Lord.” Tony suddenly understands how Han Solo felt when he came out of hibernation and the entire world had shifted. “And what am I doing?”

“Going down to chat with McGee, he’s running point on keeping us in the loop with Borin.”

* * *

When Tony heads down, Tim sees him, pauses in his gathering of file numbers, and says, “Took you long enough.”

“Leon gave me a quick heads up. So, what’s the line, ‘I’m out of it for a little bit, and you all get delusions of grandeur?’”

Tim smiles at him. “Something like that. Pull up a chair, and I’ll get you up to date. Ready to work late tonight?”

“Yeah.”

Tim pulls up the Google Earth version of Abbi’s office. He taps the back parking garage entrance. “Okay, Gibb and Abbi are going in here.”

“Great.”

“Fornell—“

“Fornell’s in on this, too?”

“Yeah. We weren’t sure if you and Ziva were in—“

“I’m in. Draga, too. Not Ziva. Were you just thinking two of us?”

“Why not Ziva? Is she okay? Did something happen? Gibbs said…” Tim’s looking very nervous, wonder if Gibbs was doing some serious glossing over when he was keeping Tony out of the loop.

“Ziva’s fine. Little D’s fine. Ziva’s on a desk for the next two months, then she’s leaving.”

Now Tim’s looking really startled. “Why? Is she feeling sick? Throwing up a lot? They’ve got meds for that.”

Tony doesn't want to get into this with Tim, not now. “Could we maybe have this conversation later, when we’re not planning a full scale invasion of another government agency?”

Tim’s eyes narrow. “She’s really okay?”

“Would I be this calm if she wasn’t? It’ll me and Draga.”

That's a good point. Tim nods curtly. “Okay. Fornell and Gibbs have scouted it out. They want one of you on top of this building here.” He gently touches one of the buildings on the map. “They want another one inside this building, at the window.”

Tony’s nodding, getting the sense of who goes where. “Okay, why are we doing this?”

“It’s probably not going to be an issue, but we want them to have cover and a clean way out. Fornell and Co. are going to be getting the evidence from them, and then they go in or out, or wherever, and start slapping on cuffs.”

“Why aren’t they getting the evidence?” If the FBI is going to run the investigation, it makes sense they'd gather the evidence.

“Because we don’t want to spend the next six months with different dueling judges trying to see which one out-injunction the others.”

Tony nods, good point. FBI does tend to dot all the is and cross all the ts on things like this. Plop the evidence in their laps and they'll move a hell of a lot faster. 

“Gibbs and Borin are going to go in, get it, get out, hand it over, and then the FBI starts the clean-up.”

“Uh huh. And why do I think this is not going to be anywhere near that easy?” Tony says, settling back in his chair, looking at the map.

“Because you’ve done this before?”

“Yeah. Now, why don’t you guys think this’ll be that easy?” That's a better question.

“Remember when Abbi mentioned her old Boss was a twit, and he just left one day?”

“Yeah. Huge holes in her budget and he’s the moron who can’t count to twenty-one unless he’s naked?”

Tim winces a bit. “Maybe he was less of a moron than she thought. He died less than a year after leaving. In a ‘car accident.’”

Tony knows how to put two and two together for this. “Shit.”

“Yeah. So we’re going in fast, we’re going in careful, and loaded for bear.”

Tony nods. “When does the fun start?”

“I’ve got a few more hours of file downloads to go through, then more planning, so, tonight, after dinner.”

* * *

 

Tim’s computer bleats at him. (He’s added some new sound effects. He’s got so many damn alarms on it at this point that all the chirps and buzzes have been used up.)

He clicks on the live security feed from CGIS headquarters, and backtracks by a few seconds.

Yep, someone just walked up to records, keyed in a number, (he’s searching to see who it is) and walked in.

No cameras on the inside of the storage room. But they do have a view of the only door in and out, as well as a key code to get in.

He wonders if that’s a way to save money, or if enough people use it for quickies that it was just better off without any footage on the inside. Either way, his computer is telling him that 33862 belongs to Kyle Severs, and that he’s an Agent out of the Baltimore branch, and currently working on an active case.

He grabs his phone and waits a few beats until he hears, “Fornell.”

“Hey. Kyle Severs just headed into the storage locker at the HQ. Can’t tell what he’s up to in there.”

“Okay. He take anything out?” Fornell and his people are already in place outside the building. For exactly this reason. As soon as Kyle comes out, a discrete FBI Agent will snag him so they can ‘have a word.’

Kyle’s not going back to work today.

“Still in there. You moving someone in?”

“Yes. Should be there soon.”

Tim watches a line of people moving up and down the hall, none of them going in or out, and after a moment, one stops in front of the door.

“He’s in place.”

A minute after that, Kyle walks out of the storage locker. He looks shocked to see an FBI Agent flashing his badge discretely, but after some soothing bullshit about him being needed in an overlapping case, Kyle scoots the bag that’s slung over his shoulder up a bit more, and heads out quietly.

“What’s your guy going to do?”

“Take him down to our HQ. We’ve got our morgue set out as a clean room. Our ME’s in isolation gear. We’re going to tell him that we’ve gotten word of a biological contaminant, and we need to test his belongings now. If he’s fussy about it, we’ll toss a ton of BS at him, including a directive from a non-existant CDC branch, and then ask him for his things again.”

Tim shakes his head. There’s lying to suspect to get permission to rummage through their stuff, and then there’s  _lying_  and Fornell sounds like he’s having way too damn much fun with this.

“Enjoy.”

“Dr. Page,” their ME, “intends to.”

* * *

 

It’s an hour later, as Tim’s pulling file numbers right and left, and sending them off to Abbi and Gibbs to slice and dice and pick which ones they’re going to get that he gets a call back from Fornell.

“Kyle was clean. He’s working a case that they think is involved with another case, and he grabbed the case file for the other case. Nothing to do with your guys, at all.”

“Okay. What happens to him now?”

“He’s in ‘isolation’ for the next twenty-four hours to make sure he doesn’t ‘get sick.’”

Tim smiles, shaking his head. “Way too much fun.”

“It’s that or have him go back and mention how he got scooped up by the FBI,” Fornell says dryly.

“Which none of us want.”

“Yep. Anyone else head in there?”

“Quiet as a church on Tuesday," Tim says.

“Good.”

* * *

 

“You don’t have to come along.” Abbi says as they get into her car.

Gibbs just looks at her. He won’t say,  _Don’t be stupid_  out loud to her, but it’s pretty clear on his face.

“Don’t want you getting hurt on this.”

He shrugs at that. He’d much rather have trouble bite him than her.

She sighs at that. It’s always going to be that way with them. Both of them are the protector, neither is the protected.

He smiles, wryly, catching what she’s thinking, and licks his lips. “Tim’d probably say we’re both trying to be the knight saving the damsel.”

She laughs a bit at that. Then she raises an eyebrow at him and gestures to herself, “Do you see a poofy pink dress, long pointy hat with a train, or a dragon?”

He looks right back at her and dryly asks, “Do you?”

She laughs more at that and then puts her car into reverse. Time to go.

* * *

It’s a few miles later when he says, “Do you even have a pink dress?”

“Do you?” She arches an eyebrow at him.

“DiNozzo tells me I look fabulous in it.” He breaks into a huge grin at that.

She laughs again.

“Might like to see you in a pink dress.”

She laughs at that, too, shaking her head. Then she looks over and realizes he’s serious. “As long as it’s not poofy, that could be arranged.”

He smiles at her.

* * *

 

They hit NCIS first, get briefed by Tim, and, this pleases Gibbs, Leon pulls him aside and hands him his badge back.

“In case you need it.”

Gibbs nods. ID on something like this, supposedly going in on a warrant to retrieve information, looks good.

“Thanks.”

“We’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

“Hopefully it’ll be boring.”

Leon looks at him wryly. “Here’s hoping. When are you going in?”

“20:04.”

“Okay.”

* * *

 

God is testing her. That’s what this has to be. Ziva’s first day on desk work, and it’s a full scale mission with Gibbs, that needs someone who’s got experience and training in high stress missions and is handy with a rifle.

To say that Ziva is a buzzing ball of not happy about this as she’s pacing about the back of MTAC is not an exaggeration.

“How do you do this, McGee?” He’s been in here, watching, doing whatever it is he does, on a lot of their missions. This is the first time it’s been her job to sit, wait, coordinate, and… nothing. This feels like a big pile of nothing.

She knows how Tim does it. He’s actually working. (As evidenced by the fact that he didn’t notice she’d asked something.) He’s getting everything up live. He’s feeding numbers to the Omagi, Abbi’s second in command, who’s running the B-team on their mission to grab files from deep storage.

She’s sitting.

Jimmy comes in a few minutes later and asks, “We ready?”

She shrugs. This does not feel like ready to her. Then they hear Tony’s voice on. “DiNozzo, in place.”

“Draga, in place.”

“Fornell, in place.”

“Hear that, guys?” Tim asks.

Gibbs’ voice and Abbi’s both check in with, “Yes.”

“Good, we’re just waiting for you to pull in, and we’re ready to go.”

* * *

 

20:03. He and Abbi are pulling in. Tobias’ guys are well hidden. Gibbs looked and has no idea where they are. As for Tony and Draga, he knows where they are, but couldn’t see them, either.

“We’re in the lot. Closest empty spot to the entrance is three cars down one row over.”

“Got it,” he hears Draga say. A second passes. “Okay, I can see you from where I am. You’re getting out and heading into the office.”

Gibbs nods, slinging his backpack over his shoulder. Abbi’s got her go bag, because that’s all she would normally have on her. Both of them have vests on under their shirts, and both are carrying.

“They let you just go in a side door?” Tony asks Abbi. At NCIS everyone goes in through the main doors. Everyone gets checked. There aren’t supposed to be any exceptions, though they sometimes play fast and loose with that.

“Car and facial recognition software at the garage entrance. Sensors to tell if the car weighs too much. If you aren’t the right person, driving the right car, you can’t get in. Scans your visitors, too. Gibbs is already on the approved list. If I tried to bring you in, the gate wouldn’t rise, I’d have to park on the street and go around the front.”

“Man, you guys have fancy toys,” Tony says.

“Perks of moving into a new building in the last two years.”

* * *

 

They stop for a second in front of the door. Gibbs hasn’t felt this alive, this  _useful_  since he handed in his badge to Leon.

“Relax Gibbs. In, out, and done.”

“I know.”

“Good.” She scans her keycard and the door opens.

“Where to?”

“Storage is one floor down. Far side of the hallway.”

They’re in a long, narrow hallway, not much of anything around them. “What’s here?”

“There’s a door on the left,” Abbi points way down the hall. “That’s the armory.”

“One way in and underground.”

“Yeah. We don’t take any chances with it. Elevator doesn’t stop on this floor, either. You want to take a ton of stuff out, you’ve got to hump it yourself.”  

* * *

 

Easy enough getting in. Walk down the hall, pretty empty this time of day, but not deserted, Abbi puts her code in, and through the door they go.

It’s huge. The NCIS storage bay is large, this one is  _huge._ Gibbs just stares at it.

“Everything gets shipped here. You’ve got your files somewhere near your hubs right?”

He nods.

“Our only other recent and deep storage facilities are on the West Coast. This is Atlantic, Great Lakes, and Gulf Coast storage.”

Gibbs shakes his head and sighs.

“Abbi, you and I are really going to have a chat about updating this at some point.” They hear Tim say. “That’s appalling.”

“I know. Not now.”

“Nope. Jimmy’s here and waiting. Swissin’s file first.”

* * *

Not much of a show. Right now they can’t see what Jethro and Abbi are doing. Tim’s got the camera on the door to storage up. He’s got views of the hallway where they are up. And then cycling views of the rest of the building.

Then the files start coming through. Jimmy’s putting the shots of Swissin’s files up on the big screen in front of them, reading through as fast as he can.

Leon’s keeping watch on that, too.

Ziva’s pacing around in the back, eyes flitting from one outside feed to the next, looking for anything troubling or suspicious.

“Anything interesting on your ends?” Tim asks.

“Nothing over here,” Tony replies.

“Quiet,” Fornell says.

“Omagi?” Tim asks. For all the focus they’ve got on the A team right now, it’s a good plan to keep the B team in mind.

“We’re the only ones here. Piling the boxes in fast and steady.”

“Good,” they hear Abbi say.

 

* * *

 

“Doctor?” Leon’s asking. Staring at the X-rays on the screen in front of them.

“Yes, that’s what you think it is. Fornell, get your guys moving on David Graham.”

“Which one’s he?”

“The Medical Examiner who certified that a man with a bullet in his spine died in a car accident from blunt force trauma.”

“How do you miss something like that?” Fornell asks.

“You don’t.” Jimmy says, voice flat.

Tim’s looking away from his feeds to check the x-ray. “Why on earth would you put that in the file? If I was running this scam, I’d toss that x-ray.”

Abbi and Jethro can hear what they’re saying as they take pictures of files as fast as they can. “Because you know no one’s ever going to open it back up to look,” Abbi replies.

Jimmy’s shaking his head.

“Why didn’t the family or the funeral home…” Leon’s starting to ask. He’s not as intimately acquainted with how embalming works as Jimmy is, but he figures that just about anyone should notice a bullet wound.

Jimmy’s wondering that, too. Then they get to the next shot, which is a picture of Swissin’s body. And then they both know. The car caught fire. Swissin was so burnt the only way anyone was going to notice anything was with an x-ray. No funeral home would even try to do anything with his body beyond suggest cremation or particularly attractive coffins.

Tim’s used to bodies in bad shape, but that level of bad shape combined with the fact that Jethro and Abbi are in that building with the guys who put Swissin into that shape makes his dinner want to run away. He swallows, hard, and takes a deep breath. “Tony, Fornell, eyes open. They did a number on Swissin to keep him quiet.”

They hear Fornell muttering something indistinct, then he’s back. “Just sent another agent to go talk to his widow. See if he kept anything about what got him killed.”

* * *

 

“Something’s about to go—“ The fire alarm starts blaring and cuts Tim off. “wrong.”

“Ya think?” Gibbs says dryly through the blare of the alarm.

“What’s going on?” Abbi asks.

“Fifth floor. Someone just pulled the fire alarm.”

“Who?” Abbi asks.

“I’m sending you the video.”

A second later Abbi’s phone beeps and she checks. “That’s Adama.”

“Okay, I’m keeping eyes on him. He’s heading one floor up… Damn it… He’s out of camera range. I’m looking for him… Too many people… Um… Okay, got him again. He’s on the sixth floor going into… 643.”

“That’s Brandis’ office.”

“They aren’t leaving. Something’s about to happen, and they’re getting everyone out for it.”

Gibbs and Abbi can feel the question Tim isn’t asking. _Bug out now? Keep going?_

They’ve got all of Swissin’s files, and most of their list. Now would work. “We’re pulling out. Blend into the crowd, go from there,” Abbi makes the decision.

“Everyone got that?” Tim repeats.

“Got it,” Fornell says. “Exit on the southeast corner has the least people coming out of it. Head for there, and we’ll get eyes on you fast.”

“Should be there in less than sixty,” Abbi’s tucking the last files into her bag as they both head to the door.

“Shit.” Gibbs’ voice. That’s not what any of them want to hear. Ziva’s not pacing anymore, she’s standing, fists clenched, wishing she was there. If they can’t get out, she could be getting in.

“Gibbs?”

“Door’s locked.”

Abbi tries it and it won’t budge.

“McGee?”

“I’ve had the camera on your door the whole time, no one’s jammed it.” He shakes his head. “I’m in. It’s got an electronic system for getting in, someone probably used that to lock you in. Hunker down, it’ll take a minute to get it open.”

Tim’s hacking away.

“Is there another exit? Window, something?” Leon asks.

“No.” Abbi says. “We’re in the sub-basement under two floors of parking garage. All of the files, all of the current evidence, and our computer systems are down here. They wanted them secure.”

Leon nods. Cybercrime is in their basement for the same reason. “McGee…”

“If I’m updating you, I’m not focusing on what I’m doing.”

Leon takes that as a back off signal. “What are you seeing, Fornell?”

“People all over the place. Radio’s lit up with first responders. Jethro…”

“Tobias?”

“The guy we grabbed. He didn’t take anything suspicious out, he might have put something in. The files are paper, right?”

“Yeah.” Gibbs says, staring what looks like acres of paper files stacked in cardboard boxes behind them.

“Hurry up, McGee,” Fornell says, voice tense. “If you wanted everything to vanish, a fire, set in the file room, is a good way to do it.”

“Where was he?” Abbi asks, eyeing the files around them, if there is something in here to start a fire, and if they can find it…

“Already out by the time we grabbed him. McGee?”

“No cameras in there. I know he went in, I know he left. He was in there for less than five minutes. He had a bag over his shoulder when he went in and left. Standard looking book bag. So if there’s an incendiary in there, it’s small.”

Abbi’s looking around, scanning the walls and boxes of files, looking for something out of place. Then she sees it, and she nudges Jethro, “The AED is missing.”

He also sees the empty spot on the wall. Federal law mandates that an AED be located on each floor in every Federal Building. They’re small cases, containing a defibrillator, a canister of 02, aspirin, nitroglycerine pills, and assorted first aid materials.

Or, everything you need to make a fire bomb, assuming you’ve got the training for it.

They’re in the basement, thousands of square feet of files that would take hours to search, with a fire alarm that just went off, and a bomb that they’re awfully certain is going to explode the second Brandis decides enough people are out of the building.

“McGee…” Abbi’s asking, wanting to know when they’re getting out.

“God can’t do this faster than-- Shit. SHIT. SHIT!” Tim’s clicking keys fast, right and left, trying to get, anything, up online again. All of his screens just went black. He’s got nothing, no camera feeds, the command codes for the door just vanished. There’s nothing on the other end anymore. “Come on, Gibbs, talk to me. Tony? Draga? Fornell? Come on guys, where the fuck did you all go?”

“McGee?” Leon’s staring at all black, hearing just as much nothing as Tim is.

“Tim?” Jimmy’s been quietly going through Swissin’s file, but now he’s looking very worried, too.

“I’m still here,” they hear from Omagi. “What’s going on?”

“Yeah, Omagi, I know that. Everything’s okay with you guys, but everything’s black with Abbi’s team. Grab what you’ve got and get the hell out of there. Over to your HQ. I need someone on the fucking ground to—“

His phone buzzes.

He grabs it, but it’s with his right hand (left is still typing fast, trying to get communications back up) and fumbles it. “Fuck!” He grabs it off the floor and whacks it onto speaker.

“McGee.”

“Everything just went black inside the building, and all the buildings around it. I had to pull a mile back before my phone would work again.” Fornell’s voice.

“Where’s DiNozzo and Draga?” Leon asks.

“Holding in place.”

“What do you mean, black?” Tim asks.

“ _Black._ All the lights on the damn block went down. The phones, our wifi, everything  _died._ Then the building went into lockdown. The bombproof doors just slid into place.”

“Oh fuck.” Leon's cursing. And that means something  _very_ bad just happened. Leon’s grabbing his phone. “I didn’t think…”

“What’s going on?” Tim asks, voice cold with fear. Jimmy’s not saying anything but he’s standing there, watching Leon, looking very scared. Ziva’s in the back of the room, vibrating with the need to do  _something,_  but she doesn’t know what something is. Even if she runs to Fornell right now, she can’t get into the building.

Leon shakes his head. “I need to talk to Robert Johnson, right now. RIGHT NOW.” He glances back to Tim. “It’s a defense protocol. All of our headquarters have or are getting them. If there’s a terror attack, the Director has a password to shut the building down, put it into full lockdown mode, kill the power to everything, and it sends an immediate SOS call to the FBI Anti-terrorism Task Force to storm the building.” Leon’s eyes flick back to the black screen as he waits. “I know he’s busy. That’s why I’m calling. He’s about to storm my op!” Leon’s glaring at the black screens, and if a machine could be forced to work by the sheer willpower of the person staring at it, Tim would have live video again. “Bob, good. You just got a distress call from Coast Guard, right?... Yeah… Stand down. Do not send anyone in there. Those are my guys in that building… You’re people are already there, keeping watch from the outside. Agent Tobias Fornell. No, I’m not kidding… We’re running a joint sting on the Director of CGIS, he’s making sure that the evidence doesn’t get out of the building and my guys are trapped inside of it.”

“You get that, Fornell?” Tim asks.

“Yeah, McGee, I’ve got it. I’m calling in my own guys, and seeing if we’ve got any sort of override.”

Leon shakes his head. “Gotta break in or wait for Brandis to turn it off.”

“Leon’s saying no on that.”

“Okay. Our own tactical guys are going to see if we can get in. How many people should be in the building?”

Tim shrugs. “Best I could tell, almost everyone left when the fire alarm went off. But all I can see is whoever’s in front of a camera. I know that Adama went up to Brandis’ office after he pulled the fire alarm.”

“There was one man in the south stairwell who was just standing there when the lights went, another lingering outside the Armory,” Ziva adds.

“Assume at least four.” Tim says. He figures there’s no chance Adama was heading up to an empty office.

Leon hangs up his phone. “Shit. Anyone who’s still in the building and on security knows that protocol means head to the armory, load up, night vision goggles, shoot first and ask questions later.”

Now Tim’s staring at Leon. “Why don’t I know this?”

“I didn’t…” He hadn’t remembered it until he’d seen it happen. He didn’t even know CGIS had it. “We’re not getting ours installed for another fifteen months.”

“Oh.” Tim keeps messing with his computers, trying for any live views. “Even killed the street cameras.”

Leon nods. “That’s the point. No one gets in, no one gets out,  _nothing_  gets out, hunker down and wait for the cavalry to come to the rescue.”

“Who else has this?” Ziva asks.

“NSA got it first. Not sure who else has it. Part of why some of us have changed locations over the last five years. Especially for sensitive documents and computers.”

“Great.” Tim rips off his ear piece and stands up. “Come on.”

Leon nods.  Nothing they can do from here. Jimmy’s looking eager to get moving, too. Right now they’re all useless, just standing around.

“Fornell, we’re coming to you.”

“No offence McGee, but I don’t need three more bodies milling around being useless. You’re not storming the building. Stay put. Get communications working again. Leon says it can’t be done. Do it. You’re the wizard hacker. David, you still there?”

“Yes.”

“See you in fifteen.”

Ziva races out of the building getting ready to set the land speed record from the Navy Yard to CGIS HQ.

Tim’s staring at the vast expanse of electronic nothing in front of him. “Even God can’t hack a computer that’s turned off, Fornell.”

“Then turn the fucking things back on again.”

Jimmy seems to think of something and grabs his cell, holding it to his ear, muttering, “Come on. Come on…”

Tim growls to himself, but picks up the ear piece and sits back down. “Okay. Street cameras. Unless they’ve been shut off with a mag pulse?” It’s a question aimed at Leon, and he shrugs. NCIS doesn’t have whatever the hell this thing is yet, so he’s got no idea how it works. “I’ll get on them. Keep talking to me, Fornell.”

“Okay. Bomb blast doors are in place over the main entrance. Fire Department is clearing people out of the way. They’re gonna see if jaws of life can break ‘em, and we’ve got our own breaching team heading in if that doesn’t shift it.”

Tim’s nodding, breaking into the city’s power relays.

“Fornell, where are you? Within a mile right?” Jimmy asks.

“Across the street. Why?”

“How is your phone working? I can’t get Tony or Draga on my phone.”

“It’s not. My end is radio.”

Tim nods at that, too. “Leon, find out where the nearest cell tower is and have a chat with whoever runs it. Get it back up again.” He starts fiddling with his own controls, getting radio up. “Tony?”

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Long story. You talking to Draga?”

“I’m here.”

“Good. What channel are you on, Fornell?”

“87.3”

“Okay,” Tim takes a few more seconds to get everyone switched onto radio. “Everyone talking again?”

They all check in. Fornell, Tony, and Draga, coordinate and replan for what they’re going to be doing. Which is bugger all. Gibbs and Abbi are on the other side of foot thick steel and concrete. Tony makes some unhappy noises about Ziva joining the party, but since the current plan is ‘bugger all,’ it’s not like there’s much danger. The FBI Anti-terror Assault Team is rolling in with their specs for the building, starting to lay out how they’d be getting in if they had to, but right now the quickest plan still seems to be cut through the bomb doors.

Leon’s watching that, listening, and then asks Tim, “The cell tower, how?”

“Ask nicely? I can’t hack the power department and the phones at the same time.” Leon looks relieved to have something to do, and then another idea hits him. “Send out a call on your bat phone.”

Tim sighs. “Thanks.” He’d been so into take charge he’d forgotten that he has  _employees_  who specialize in this sort of stuff. He takes a break from trying to get the cameras back online to write up a fast, All Hands On Deck, and sends it live.

“Okay, in the next five minutes everyone who’s on shift for all of NCIS Cybercrime will be attacking anything even close to where you are working on getting it live again.”

Fornell comes back on the line. “Jaws of life didn’t do it. Arc welder time.”

“Those are hardened doors. They’re supposed to be able to take a bomb blast,” Leon says.

“I know. This is the tool they use to cut through the hull of a battleship. It takes time, but there’s nothing this baby can’t cut.”

* * *

 

“God can’t do th—“ And everything goes silent and dark.

“McGee?” Abbi says, not sure why she’d doing it. He cut off mid word the second the lights went. Not like this is a joke and he’s just screwing with them.

“Power out?” Gibbs asks.

Abbi’s checking her phone. No bars, no wifi. “No. New defense protocol. He’s put the building in lockdown. Nothing gets in or—“

They hear a quiet snick sound, followed by something hissing, and both of them drop to the ground, fast, as flames explode in the far corner of the room and begin the dance through the files.

Gibbs yanks on the door again, and it’s still locked. Apparently power out didn’t effect that lock. He grabs his flashlight, intentionally ignoring the flames that are getting stronger and hotter behind him, and starts really looking at the door.

“Got fifteen bullets.”

“Me, too.”

They both have Sigs.

“Don’t want to waste them on the hinges.”

Abbi nods, digging through her go bag. She doesn’t have tape. She does have Band-Aids. She already knows where Gibbs is going with this. As she’s ripping open the box, and he’s trying to see if he can get his phone wedged in between the door and the door jam.

“Won’t fit,” he reports back.

“Tape it on, hit the power button, and then push stacks of files in close.”

He’s grabbing boxes of files and stacking them up in front of the door as she’s opening band aids. “Hell of a way to make a shape charge.”

“Let’s just hope this works.” She’s got her phone taped to the bottom hinge.

He’s got one stack of boxes right next to the phone.  He’s piling up a second stack that he’ll push into place as soon as she hits the power buttons.

With any luck they’ll be out of the way by the time the phone blows.

She hits the power button, and he shoves the boxes of files in as quick as he can, and they both run for it.

Not very far to run. The smoke is getting thick, and it’s getting hotter by the second in there. The liquid O2 in that canister did a great job as an accelerant for this fire. It’s growing fast.

They hear a much smaller whump sound than either of them wanted, and see the boxes smoldering, files scattered all over. Gibbs is pushing them away, pulling new boxes of files toward them.

They also see a shattered hinge. “It worked!” Abbi’s grinning. “When we get out of this, I’m making sure exploding cell phones are standard procedure for all of my guys.”

Gibbs nods.

She’s taping her phone into place, and he’s grabbing more boxes, trying to stay low, below the smoke level. He’s got the sense they’re going to need good wind for the rest of tonight, and gasping like a fish out of water with burned lungs isn’t going to get them out of this.

Second time works, too. Papers and boxes all over the place, but the top hinge is shattered. Gibbs pulls his knife and wedges it between the door and the frame, while Abbi grabs the handle, a good firm pull from her and a hard push from him, and they pop it out.

New, fresh air sweeps in, feeling good for a second, followed by the hot rush for fresh fuel to the fire behind them.

Gibbs grabs his pack, tosses Abbi hers, and they run.

* * *

 

“Smoke,” Tony says.

“Smoke? What’s burning?” Leon asks.

“Can’t tell. I can smell it, not see it. Fornell?”

“No visual. Draga?”

“Got smoke coming out of one of the southwest air vents on the ground floor.”

“Tell me you’re almost through the blast door,” Leon says as Tim types faster, breaking into the internals of the power company, finding out why the cameras aren’t working.

“Got about three feet done.”

“Not fast enough,” Leon mutters.

“I know.”

* * *

 

Only one way up and out of the basement level. Okay, not true. Only one way they can use. The elevators died as soon as the building went on lock down. Doors shut tight, emergency exit locks. No way into or out of the elevator shafts without a torch.

Which means they’ve got to get up three flights of stairs to get to the lobby. Or one flight of stairs to get to the parking garage, then up through the parking garage to get to their car.

“Armory?” Gibbs asks. It would have night vision goggles. They’ve got flashlights, but they’re almost more trouble than their worth, just highlighting how dark the dark around them is.

“Protocol for this is power goes down, anyone trained in security tries to get to the armory which is on the floor above us, and gears up. Some of us are in charge of defending the civilians in the building. Some are on attack.”

“Which are you?”

“Attack.”

“So what’s the plan?” He doesn’t like staying here. There in a long hall without any real cover besides the smoke-filled dark.

“Shoot anything that’s not wearing a Coast Guard insignia.”

“You mean, like us.”

“Exactly. Come on.”

“Going up?” he asks.

“Yeah. You ever use night vision goggles?” She has. She remembers how the ones they had in Iraq could pick up a cigarette from a klick away.

“Long time ago.”

She clicks her flashlight on and off. “Then you know what happens if you hit someone wearing them with one of these.”

Gibbs turns off his light and grins.

* * *

Down the hall, to the door, door leads into the stairwell. Up and out. Easy as pie, right?

They’re moving quietly, but not quiet enough. Gibbs stops them, pulling off his shoes, and nodding for her to do the same. His eyes may not be a quarter of what they used to be, but his hearing is still as sharp as it ever was. Blind fighting seems like the perfect time to use that to his advantage.

“Those goggles see heat?”

“No. Just night vision.”

He nods. Good to know they can’t see them through the door.

“Armory’s one floor up?”

“Yeah.”

“Flash bangs?”

Abbi likes that plan. If they can get there, they can get into something a lot more troublesome for night vision goggles than a flash light. _That’s_  worth a detour.

“If we get to the garage, can we get out?” Gibbs asks.

“I like my odds against a bomb blast door if I’ve got a truck I can drive into it better than if it’s just me on my own.”

He nods curtly. “Armory, gear up, garage.”

“Good.” She kisses him, fast and hard, and then jerks her head to the door. Three fingers up, two, one. They go.

* * *

Only so many ways you can go through a door. Luck and skill was with them. They go through low and the first shot echos through the stairwell, zipping over their heads by not nearly enough distance. Gibbs went through first, keeping the door open. Abbi’s behind, covering. They hear a strangled yelp when she hits the gunman full in the face with her flash light, followed by a low gurgling curse as she shoots him.

She’s first up the stairs, Gibbs covering. He grabs the man’s gun, frisking him for weapons. He’s alive, knee shot, crying and yelling. Abbi cuffs him to the railing. “Why would you do this?”

Gibbs yanks off the goggles, stuffing them into his bag. It’s Adama. “Better this than jail.”

Abbi snorts at that. “Looks like you’ll get to enjoy both.” She ties off his leg efficiently, slowing the blood loss. “FBI’ll be here sooner or later.”

Adama’s looking at the bags. She can see in his face that he knows what’s in those files. “You’re not getting out with those.”

“Try us,” Gibbs says as Abbi clicks off the flash light, getting ready for the next flight of stairs.

“Anyone in the hall above?”

“No.”

Abbi wishes she had a clear view of Gibbs face. She’s sure Adama is lying, but it’d be nice to know what Gibbs is thinking, too.

Doesn’t matter, they’re going up, carefully, covering each other, quiet. They get to the door to the next floor up, the armory and parking garage, and Gibbs points up, Abbi thinks she knows what he’s thinking. If they go a few more floors up, and then cross the building, and then go down, they can come in from the side everyone isn’t watching.

Ten floors in this building, and they don’t think there are enough guys to watch all of them.

* * *

“Okay. Uh huh. Thanks.” They hear Fornell say.

“What?” Tim asks.

“Doc’s not at home. According to his wife he’s ‘working late’ tonight.”

“Fuck.” Jimmy mutters it. He’s going through as many medical files as he can find in the mass of pictures Gibbs and Abbi uploaded. “Got at least three cases where he’s slapped the wrong cause of death on a body. How about his assistant?”

“I’ll get someone on it,” Fornell says.

* * *

 

Abbi’s office is on the third floor. So, that’s not a good floor. Fourth floor has the computer they want to get their hands on, which means it’s likely got someone on it. Brandis’ office is on the sixth floor, so there’s probably someone, maybe Brandis, on that floor.

Second floor, Accounting and HR, it is. Once again, they go in low and quiet, flash light out to blind anyone, but no one makes a noise as they move in. No sound. No sight. They’re above ground now, so tiny bits of outside light are filtering in. It’s dark but not the inky, smoky black of the basement.

Everything is dead. Computers are silent. No glow from any lights. Not even the tiny green glow of the on button on a phone. Nothing.

It never occurred to Abbi how loud an office building is, even when it’s quiet. But right now, there’s nothing. Not the hum of the AC, or the computer fans, or anything. Just the sounds of them breathing, and quiet, steady footfalls as they cross the floor as quickly as they can.

There’s a conference room to their left. Abbi nods into it. Gibbs follows, wondering what’s going on.

She touches the window. “Bullet proof, bomb proof glass. But, they can look out and see everything. At least two hundred people, fire trucks… Tony!

Gibbs starts flashing his light. Basic distress call SOS.

* * *

 

“I’ve got ‘em!” They hear Tony’s voice over the radio. “Goddamn it. It’s Morse code. I don’t…”

“Can he see me from where he is?” Fornell asks.

“No. No LOS on you or Draga.”

Tim’s all over this. “Okay, listen up, Tony. Dot’s a quick burst, dash is longer. Where are you cutting through?” Tim asks Fornell.

“Front lobby door. If they can get there, we can get them out. Maybe five more minutes of cutting.”

Tim starts telling Tony a long list of dots and dashes.

“What’s that?” Tony asks when he’s done.

“Front lobby, five minutes. What’s he sending back?”

Another string of dots and dashes.

“Got it,” Tim says.

“Yeah, I know," Tony replies.

“No, that’s what he’s telling you.”

“Getting more.” And Tony rattles off more dots and dashes.

Tim writes them down. “Adama’s taken care of. Cuffed to the banister in a stairwell.” He hits Tony with another long string of dots and dashes. “Letting him know the Doc and his assistant are in there somewhere.”

“Dash, dash, dash, pause, dash, dot, dash," Tony says. 

“Means OK.”

More dots follow and by now Tony’s figured out what means what. “He wants to know if we’ve got sight of anyone else?” Tony flashes back “No.”

One more series of flashed dots and dashes that translates into, “Got it. Lobby in five,” comes from Gibbs.

* * *

“Five minutes. We can just hole up, wait, and then make a run for it,” Abbi says.

Gibbs nods, looking at their current position.

“Not right here, though.” Abbi’s agreeing with what he’s not saying. With the light from the windows they can see well in here, and it’s not a great place. One door. Glass walls. No real protection. They want walls that can’t be shot through around them.

“If anyone is watching from the outside…” Or the inside. Anyone who knew Morse code could see the flashes flying about. Even if you only got sight of half of the conversation, you’d know where they’re going. And even if you don't know Morse code, you know where they are. 

“First floor, stairwell. Make a run for it as soon as they’re through.” Abbi knows they can see the lobby doors from the stairs.

“Okay. You first out the door, I’ve got you?”

“Sure.”

They shift their weight, ready to move. Abbi holds up three fingers again. Three, two, one.

* * *

Through the door. Left, right. Check the hall. Check the flanks.

Gibbs doesn’t see it. Couldn’t have. Too dark, too far away, but he did hear it. Sound of a rifle bolt. He heard it, and knew, and before anything other than his gut could check in he’s turning to face Abby, grabbing her, dragging them down.

He felt the hit, the silent, dull splat of a bullet to his back, felt one more, higher further out, burning tearing holy shit fuck pain through his arm and then numb, then his hearing went because Abbi, wrist over his shoulder, gun an inch from his ear, is returning fire.

Then they hit the floor.

He’s not getting off of her. He’s covering her body with his, ears ringing from the close up shot. She can see (as well as anyone can in this dark). He’s got a view of the floor under them. She’s saying something, trying to move, but he’s not going anywhere, and his ears are too fucked to make out what she’s saying.

Finally, she physically tilts his head, and his body, which is not interested, at all, in moving, flops over enough to see the man who shot is lying on the floor, not moving. Abbi gets up, tentative, gun trained on him, flashlight scouring the floor they’re on, and begins to move toward the man.

She stops two steps into that, noticing that Gibbs hasn’t moved.

He tries to sit up, but that doesn’t work on the first, and then the second, or the third try, which is when they both realize that he’s hit a hell of a lot worse than he thinks he is.

“Fuck.” She quickly sprints over to… Brandis, or what’s left of him. She thinks he’s dead, but she’s not sure and doesn’t want to waste too much time on it. She kicks the rifle away from him and frisks him fast, finding two pistols. She grabs them, and then runs back to Gibbs.

“Dead?”

“Or close enough.” She doesn’t like how Gibbs’ voice sounds. There’s a wet, sloppy tone to it that makes her blood run cold.

She’s messing with his vest, trying to get him sitting up, trying to find where he’s hit. Something got through, and it’s not just that shoulder wound. That would hurt like a motherfucker, but it wouldn’t make him sound like this.

She gets the back pack off of him, and wrestles with the vest, finally feeling hot, sticky mess on his back.

Gibbs is groaning. Everything hurts now, hurts really, really bad, hurts all over waves of red nauseous bloody hot pain.

She’s talking to him, but he’s not tracking it, not really.

He’s having a difficult time focusing on that. On anything really.

There’s just pain, and wet… Oh…

That’s when it hits. The shot in his… back? Under his shoulder blade? this hot, red, blinding white ball of pain, that’s where the bullet went through his vest. And from the feel of it, because he’s getting bits and pieces into place, so he can tell his front isn’t wet, it didn’t go all the way through him.

He knows where he was. He knows how much of himself he got in front of her. After some chunk of time it occurs to him, that if he’s shot in the back, it also means he was shot through the evidence in the back pack he’s wearing.

He thinks, assuming she can get the bleeding stopped, that this won’t kill him. (Though given how detached he’s feeling about that right now, there’s probably too much blood coming out.) He knows, given where he was in relation to her, that if that bullet had hit her, it would have been a dead center chest shot through one side of the vest and maybe out the other.

He’s smiling up at her as she’s stuffing her jacket between his vest and back, pulling the vest extra tight, using it as a makeshift pressure bandage. “I saved you.”

She looks up at him. “And if you survive this, I’m reaming your ass out so hard you won’t walk for a fucking week for doing that. I’m the cop, you’re the backup, you do not go throwing yourself in front of a bullet for me.”

He smiles again. “Too damn stubborn to die here.”

Her hands are shaking, and he’s getting cold. “You damn well better not.” She puts his gun in his hand, and he drops it, fingers aren't doing a good job of holding tight. “I’ve still got to get us out of this. And we’ve got at least two unaccounted for. You stay put. You stay awake. That is an order, Marine.”

He nods, very slow, very tired. He can taste blood. That’s not good. And there’s a burbling sensation when he breathes, which is worse. “I’m bleeding on the evidence.” She’s got him propped up on the back pack he’s got filled with files. The back pack that was on his back when he got shot. “He had a rifle.”

“I know, Gibbs, big one.” His eyes are sliding closed.

She slaps him, hard, and his eyes jerk open again. “Stay the fuck awake. You do not fall asleep and you sure as fucking hell do not die on me, you hear?”

“Yes, Ma’am.” His eyes are drooping.

* * *

Abbi runs, as fast as she has ever run before, for the doors. How long did it take to get Gibbs patched up? How long do they have?

She stops, skidding, in front of the doors. Sparks, welding sparks, and a long, red hot on one side and cold black on the other, cut through the door. Soon. Just gotta hold tight. Her back is to the wall, no one can get her from that side, and she’s watching for any movement.

Clank. The cut bit of door crashes into the floor. She’s sprinting again as Fornell’s coming in. “Abbi.”

“Ambulance. Now!”

He’s barking orders, and she’s heading back to Gibbs.

* * *

“Is he alive?” Tim feels the fear high and tight through his whole body.

“I don’t know, McGee. Abbi’s in one piece, but bloody. We heard shots fired. The EMTs are fifteen feet behind me. What’s Gibbs’ blood type?”

“I don’t…” He’s getting into the HR database as fast as he can. But Gibbs isn’t there anymore because he’s not an active employee.

“Pump him full of O,” Jimmy says.

The EMTs know that. Tim knows they know that. Hell, it’s likely the only blood they stock. More hunting, service records, have to be here somewhere. “A positive.”

He hears Fornell say that to someone else.

He can hear feet pounding, and Fornell breathing hard.

“You see him?”

“No, just stepped over a body, but it’s not his.” More running and rasping breath. He hears EMTs saying something indistinct, and gets the sense that they just passed Fornell.

“They’re putting him on a backboard, and running an IV line. Picking him up, he’s holding Abbi’s hand, won’t let her go.”

Tim feel the vice around his heart relax. “He’s alive.”

He can hear the relief in Fornell’s voice, too. “He’s alive.”

“What hospital are they taking him to?”

Fornell asks, and a second later says, “Mercy General.”

“Abby and I are his next of kin,” Leon nods at him. The FBI’s got control of the investigation now. Tim’s running out, Jimmy close behind. They get to the parking garage, and Jimmy says, “You go to him, I’ll get the girls.”

“Thanks.”

 


	138. I Saved You

Tim rarely drives like a maniac. Which doesn’t mean that he can’t do it. He just doesn’t like it. But, between Gibbs and Ziva he’s learned from the best when it comes to driving like Mario Andretti on speed, so flashers going, he races to Mercy, and manages to beat the ambulance there.

Flashing his ID all over the place gets him a prime place to wait, and when the ambulance does come in, EMTs rush Gibbs past, shooing Abbi and Ziva away. He gets a glimpse of Gibbs, unconscious, blood everywhere.

Abbi’s standing next to him, vibrating with scared and angry and too much everything, and then she turns, punches the wall, hard, denting the drywall, and collapses into Ziva, sobbing.

 

* * *

 

Roughly twenty million years go by before the first of the surgeons come out (though it’s before the rest of the family has gotten there, so realistically it’s been less than twenty minutes). “Are you Tim McGee?”

Tim nods. Abbi and Ziva also staring at the surgeon, all three of them quivering with nerves. “Yeah. How is he?”

“Insanely lucky and very hurt. The bullet entered below his lung through the right shoulder blade and chewed the bottom lobe to bits.” The surgeon shakes his head. “Never seen a bullet that big in someone still alive. We’re prepping him for surgery. The right lung has three lobes. The bottom one can’t be saved, and we’re not sure about the middle one, either. Top one’s taken minimal damage, we know we can save it.”

“What does that mean? Will he survive this?” Abbi asks.

“Barring unforeseen complications, yes.”

Tim feels himself, Abbi and Ziva relax a hair. But there’s survive and then there’s  _living._ "Will he be on oxygen for the rest of his life?” Tim asks.

“Depends on how much of his lung we have to take out. If it’s just the bottom lobe, he’ll be more or less okay. Once he heals up, he won’t notice it except if he’s working hard. Take two thirds of a lung out, and it’ll start to slow him down in day to day life.”

“But he’ll live?” Abbi asks again, needing to hear it again.

“He should. We’re pumping him full of blood, and the faster we can get everything tied off the better his chances are. People have survived with only one lobe. He’ll have at least three of them when we’re done.” The surgeon checks his watch. “He should be ready to go by now, which means I’ve got to go. We’ll send a nurse out when he’s done.”

* * *

 

 

Another million years before Ducky and Penny get there.

Penny sees Abbi, so tense, so angry, so afraid, and so hurt. She swings into comforter mode. “Come on, Abbi, let’s get you washed up,” she says gently.

Abbi looks at her hands and arms, her shirt and pants, and sees she’s covered in Jethro’s blood.

She nods, slowly.

Ducky sends a text to Abby, telling her that Ziva and Abbi need clean clothing. She’s bloody from Jethro, and Ziva’s (less) bloody from holding her.

Eventually, everyone arrives.

 

* * *

 

Ducky tells them that the amount of waiting they’re doing is a good thing. It means they can likely save the second third of the lung. A straight lobectomy is a quick thing. In, and tie it off, and done. In Korea, he'd seen surgeons do it in less than twenty minutes.

Five hours in means they’re patching things up, tying off bleeders, and getting him into shape to heal up.

Tim hopes that’s true and not just soothing bullshit.

 

* * *

 

Eventually a nurse does come in. He’s tall, with a deep, gentle voice, an accent that sounds tropical, and smiling. “Gibbs family?”

The fact that they all sprang up the second he entered the waiting room is likely a hint that he’s in the right spot.

“He’s going to be fine. They’ve got him in recovery right now, and in an hour or so they’ll transfer him to his own room.”

“His lung?” Ducky asks.

“We were able to save the middle lobe. He’s going to be sore for a while, but he’ll be fine.” The nurse smiles at them again, looking at this group of people standing around. “He’s going back to his room in an hour, and he’s going to be asleep for a long time. Next of Kin, you can stay, the rest of you, go home, rest, come back with lunch, which is about when he’ll be waking up.”

Everyone starts shuffling around, not happy about that, but not about to fight it either.

Tim quickly looks at Abby and she nods. He wraps his arm around Abbi, standing so her left hand is behind his back, hiding the lack of wedding ring, and says, “Okay, where do we wait?”

“Tim and Abby McGee?” Tim nods, and Abbi knows what he’s doing. “You can come with me. When he gets to his room, you’ll be there.”

Tim smiles a little. “Sounds good.”

* * *

 

The next hour of waiting goes faster. They know he’s okay. They know he’s going to be okay. And they’ve got their respective higher ups demanding updates.

Granted, he’s just letting Leon and Fornell know what’s going on, but Abbi’s got Admiral Zukunft, Commandant of the Coast Guard on her phone, explaining everything to him.

From what Tim can hear, the Admiral is not having a great day. From what Abbi’s saying, he’s going to be spreading his not great day around all over the place in the not too distant future.

They’ve got the first of the sit reps done when the nurse comes back with Jethro. And, like he said, Jethro is asleep.

His skin is pale, and he’s got an IV in his left arm, a pulse ox monitor on his finger, and an O2 tube in his nose, and more tubes coming out from under his blankets. But he’s in one piece, and he’s alive.

Abbi’s right next to him, holding his hand, gently touching his face, and the nurse looks awfully sure that this in not Gibbs’ daughter.

Tim shrugs at him. The nurse shakes his head, small smile on his face, and leaves them be.

Another hour goes by. It’s late and they’ve both hit the crash part of the adrenaline cycle. They’re drooping. She’s slouched in the chair, snoozing, and he’s trying to find a vaguely comfortable position on the sofa. Tim thinks he’d just fallen asleep when the surgeon comes in and explains the case, how they were able to save the second lobe, how right now Gibbs is on oxygen and a lot of antibiotics, and has a drain in his lung, but, assuming everything goes well, they’ll take the drain out the day after tomorrow, and he should be off the O2 in a few more days.

Tim finally notices the bandage on Gibbs’ arm. “What’s?” he asks, pointing at it.

The surgeon checks Gibbs' notes. (He didn’t handle that part.) “Apparently he got clipped on the arm as well. That one’s fairly minor. The bullet took a chunk of his deltoid out. He’ll have a hard time raising his hand for a while, but with enough PT…”

Tim holds up his own hand in the cast. “I’ve heard this song before.”

The surgeon nods. “He should be sleeping the rest of the night and the morning. When he wakes up, we’ll talk with him about what happens next.”

Tim and Abbi nod at that, and the surgeon leaves.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s morning, not lunchtime, when Gibbs starts to shift a bit. His eyes open, and he sees Abbi, looking down at him. He smiles up at her, and she bends down, kisses him once, and then leaves.

Tim can feel the angry pouring off of her, and he’s sure Gibbs can, too.

“She’s going to kill you when you get out of here,” Tim says.

Gibbs looks over at him, surprised to see him here. “Hi.”

“Hi yourself.” Tim stands up, trying to get his body to stop yelling at him about what he just did to it, sleeping on the sofa. “So, looks like you’re alive.”

Gibbs is grinning. “Yep. What happened?” He touches the tube in his nose, but doesn’t try to remove it. “Feel like I was hit by a truck.”

“Just about.” Tim explains what happened, and Gibbs sits there, listening, fiddling with his tubes and the little button that gives him more pain meds, looking really perky.

Finally, as Gibbs is grinning at the ceiling, Tim asks, “So, you and morphine get along good, or are you just in a stupidly good mood for someone who just got shot?”

Gibbs smiles. “Happy.”

“Yeah. I can see. You’re smiling more now than we got married.”

“We got married? Didn’t think I was  _that_  out of it.”

Tim rolls his eyes. “When Abby and I got married.”

Gibbs giggles. Or tries to. He gets about halfway through the first laugh before his lungs let him know that’s not on the menu. So he grins. He’s in a ridiculously good mood. Tim’s not sure he’s ever seen him in this good of a mood. (He’s also wondering if he’s this goofy when he’s on Percocet, because from the outside looking in this feels really weird.)

He’s still smiling. “C’mere.”

Tim does, half sitting on Gibbs’ bed. Gibbs wiggles his finger, signaling closer. So Tim leans in and gets as much of a hug as a guy who’s less than a day out of surgery for a bullet to the lung, and one more that took out a chunk of his arm, can give.

Tim hugs him back, as long and intensely as he can without hurting him, another wave of how close he came to never doing this again hitting him. “Scared the shit out of me.”

Gibbs nods.

“I love you.”

Gibbs kisses him and ruffles his hair. “Love you, too.”

Tim wipes his eyes and leans back, but he’s still holding Gibbs’ hand. “I’m new to this having a Dad I love thing, but I do love it, so don’t make me bury you, not anytime soon, okay?”

“Okay.”

“My kids gotta learn how to sail, and they’ve got to learn how to build, and I need them to have memories of you. I need them to know who you are.”

Gibbs nods.

“And I need you. I need you here, in one piece, being you.”

Gibbs smiles at that, too. “Was being me.” He’s looking at Tim, so very earnest right now. “I saved her.”

Tim closes his eyes for a long second, and then opens them, and kisses Gibbs again. “Okay.”

He’d said it to his own Abby. Gibbs failed. Any man who was ever worth a damn has one goal and everything else pales next to it, and that’s to make sure his wife and kids outlive him. And Gibbs failed, and he carried that around so long and so far he’d forgotten what it felt like to not have it. And then Kate. And Jen, probably, too. They haven’t talked about Jen, so he doesn’t know if Gibbs feels responsible for that.    

And for everyone he’s saved, for all the lives that have gone on and done big and beautiful things, the ones that mattered most to him personally,  _those_  he couldn’t save. Those he didn’t save.

Until yesterday.

Tim’s fingers hover lightly over the bandage on Gibbs’ torso. He can guess what would have happened to Abbi if that bullet had hit her. Only reason Gibbs is still here is because that bullet went through ten inches of files and a Kevlar vest. A direct hit to Abbi’s chest and that would have been the end.

Today Gibbs is smiling. Because last night years of would have, could have, should have, and soul scarring failure finally released their hold on him.

And of course, because he’s Gibbs, it took a bullet to do it.

* * *

 

Next time Gibbs wakes up, he hurts all over, and Fornell is sitting in the chair next to his bed. Fornell sees his eyes open and says, “The lengths you won’t go to to get out of having to give a speech.”

Gibbs begins to laugh, but that  _hurts._  He tentatively tries talking, and that hurts too, but not as bad as he thought it might. “Told you’d I’d rather die than give a speech.”

“Almost did. They dug a .50 BMG out of your back. Only reason you’re alive is it had to go through ten inches of paper and a Kevlar vest to get into you.”

Gibbs nods. He knew whatever hit him had to be the size of a rocket to get through all that.

“Didn’t get into her.”

Fornell nods. “She’s fine. Pissed at you.”

Gibbs nods again and rubs his eyes. He’s got no idea what time it is, and is starting to feel sleepy again. Though pressing that little button seemed like it was taking care of hurting. “How’s the case going?”

“Making Gillery… He’s the Agent who runs all of our high profile corruption cases…  _very_ happy. This one’s going to make his career.” Fornell inclines his head. “Abbi’s too. Admiral Zukunft just named her Acting Director of CGIS. She’s in charge until this case is done, and given the buzz, likely after, too.”

Gibbs smiles at that, too.  “What are…” he realizes he doesn’t know who made it out, or for that matter who else was involved with this.

“What are the survivors saying?” Fornell asks for him.

“Yeah.”

Fornell smiles and shakes his head, his  _you’re not going to believe this_  look on his face. “Shitting us about how Abbi’s part of the corruption ring, and that she wanted to take over, so she’s pulling a coup on them.”

For the first time all day, Gibbs is awake and not smiling. “Fuck that.”

“Yeah. That’s going nowhere. They’re claiming she planted the incendiary and was trying to burn everything that showed she was part of it.”

“Uh huh. They know about Severs?”

“You mean that we’ve got him, and his bag, which has explosive residue in it from the detonator he carried in it to set up his own little IED? No, they don’t.”

Gibbs sighs, that hurts too. “The lawyers are having fun.”

“Oh yeah.” Fornell can see Gibbs is drifting again. “Go back to sleep. Case’ll still be here when you wake up.”

Gibbs nods, eyes slipping closed.

* * *

 

 

There’s an in and out round robbin of people visiting him. That’s the whole first day. Mostly he’s asleep, but every time he wakes up, someone is there with him, and he does get at least a few minutes with everyone. Except Abbi.

Gibbs thinks that’s the second day, too. Time’s gone wonky for him, and he’s not sure when anything is happening. Though he does remember having the drain removed (that hurt, too) and Penny and Ducky were with him when that happened.

He remembers talking to doctors, and Abby there for that.

And lots of weird dreams.

He sees Tony and Ziva, and Jimmy and Breena are there at one point. He wakes up with Ducky holding his hand, and gets a stern lecture about how, as Ducky’s executor, he has a duty to outlive him.

Gibbs does a lot of nodding and smiling, and promising he’s not going to go off and die anytime soon.

Ziva tells him Abbi will come, but she’s not here, not now. She’s angry.

He can live with that.

She’s alive.

She’s alive, so he can live with pretty much anything right now.

 

 

* * *

 

On Thursday afternoon, Abbi slams the door shut behind her. She’s glaring fire at Gibbs, and he’s thinking it’s probably a good thing he’s stoned, because otherwise this would be scary. But as it is, he’s mostly just amused.

She is  _not_  happy, at all. And he’s realizing (as she’s getting into it) that this is her with however long it’s been to calm down. He’s had some _pissed off_ red heads yell at him before, and this one… This is a furious, red-headed,  _Marine_  yelling at him. He’s never been chewed out this thoroughly in his life.

“I saved you,” he manages to get in during one of the bits about ‘how could he possibly be so goddamned stupid.’

That doesn’t slow her down, at all. Abbi’s still yelling at him, and he doesn’t mind. It’s all good. She’s here to be pacing around yelling. He’s fine with that. She can yell as long as she wants, because it means she’s still here.

He’s smiling at her, looking pretty goofy, and that’s not doing much for her mood, because having him grin while she’s chewing him out is not the level of contrition she’s aiming for. Finally she just stops, because this is not hitting him, at all, the way it’s supposed to.

When she stops he says, “You saved me. Fornell says you got him, shot him from fifty feet away with a pistol, in the dark, while I was taking you down. Another shot and that would have been it for me.” He grins again, big, stupid, dopy, happy grin. “Thanks.”

Abbi sighs, and sits on the edge of the bed, and glares at him while holding his hand. “Go back to sleep.”

He nods, head resting on the pillows. “Okay.” His eyes are dipping low, and he’s still smiling. “I saved you.”

She kisses his forehead. “Yeah, you did.” She ruffles his hair. “Scared the hell out of me, too.”

“Sorry.”

“No, you aren’t.”

He shrugs. “If it means you’re still here…” He pulls her a little closer and kisses her. His eyes slide shut and he feels her breath on his face. His hand skims from the back of her neck to her throat, touching her skin where her pulse thrums. “I saved you.”

She kisses him again.

 

* * *

 

Once Gibbs is completely out of it, Abbi’s got to get back to work. There is  _a lot_  going on right now, and she’s got to get briefed, give briefings, and see how bad the destruction is.

As she’s getting ready to head out, she sees McGee and Abby also getting ready to head out. Ziva’s here, as well as Breena, so Gibbs won’t wake up alone, but they’ve all got casework that’s got to get done.

“Walk with me?” she says to the McGees as they’re getting ready to go.

“Sure.” Abby says. Tim nods along, too.

“What’s on your mind?” Tim asks as they head to the doors.

“He keeps saying, ‘I saved you.’”

Tim and Abby glance at each other. They know Gibbs has mentioned Shannon and Kelly to Abbi, they don’t know how much she knows about it. They don’t know what she knows about Kate, or about Jen, either.

Tim looks at Abby like he wants guidance, and she shrugs, seeming to say,  _Go ahead, worst comes to worst, he’ll be pissed._  Tim nods at her.

“Got time for a quick coffee on the way out?”

Not really, but she’ll get one. Abbi nods at him, and they head to the cafeteria. He and Abby both get lemonade. The coffee smells like burnt battery acid, and since he’s not getting any caffeine out of it these days, it’s not worth the taste.

Abbi gets coffee. But this stuff is bad enough she puts milk and sugar in it. Tim never thought he’d see coffee so bad she’d doctor it to make it better.

Abbi’s looking impatient, not really wanting to discuss her coffee.

“You know Gibbs is psychic,” Abby starts with.

Tim rolls his eyes a little, but he doesn’t have a better term for it. “The gut knows. And when Shannon got mixed up in that case his gut started screaming. And it kept screaming. He wanted to be home to make sure they were safe. He tried to get leave. But they wouldn’t let him have it. He was ordered to stay, so he stayed. Shannon kept telling him she was safe. She had DEA protection. Hernandez sniped them, hit the driver of the van they were in, the van crashed, and they died. He didn’t save them, and that’s been killing him for twenty-five years.”

Abby nods along. “He’s been wishing he’d gone AWOL, grabbed his girls, and gotten them safe for decades now.”

“With Kate, the gut knew.” Tim’s heard a little about this. Abby’s gotten more out of Gibbs. One day, a few months ago, after they’d talked about Mike, after a good Shabbos and a few glasses of wine, she had mentioned how she felt Kate’s spirit around right after she died, and she gently got him talking about it. “He was having nightmares about her dead. He knew Ari was bad news. Knew this was going to blow up. And they were on that roof, and Kate took the bullet for him. Full on Secret Service jumped into it, and took it. She saved him. They got the situation under control. Got the shooter. And they’re standing there, talking, and Ari pulled the trigger and… And she was less than two feet away from him and right in front of Tony, and…”

Tim takes over. “And you’ve got to get almost a full bottle of bourbon into him before he talks about that. He thought, that that was it. She was safe. She stood back up, the vest did it’s job, and they started to relax, and then she was gone.”

“Before she died, he told Tony and Ziva to keep eyes on Jenny. Keep close track of her. But Jen didn’t want a shadow. She wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. She ordered them off, and she outranked them, and she died,” Abby says, quietly, sipping her drink.

Tim nods. “He’s buried almost every girl he’s ever tried to save.” His arm tightens around Abby, who Gibbs has successfully saved. “He’s buried every lover, or… he and Kate never got there, but they both wanted it. Any girl he’s loved who’s been in danger, he’s put in the ground.”

Abbi exhales long and slow. She knew the bones of those stories, some of them, at least, but not all of that. “Shit.”

“Yeah. He’s not that smiley because he’s having a good time on morphine,” Abby says. “We’ve seen him on painkillers. He’s usually pretty crabby. But he saved you, so he’s Mr. Smiley right now.”

Tim adds, “And if you stay the Director of CGIS, that means this was your last run out into the field. From now on, the most dangerous thing you’re going to run into is boredom and paper cuts.”

“First time in years, he’s feeling like he didn’t fail,” Abbi adds.

Abbi nods. “He saved himself.”

Tim and Abby nod in agreement with that. “Yeah. I think a lot of scars just released,” Tim says.

Abbi takes a sip of her coffee, thinking about that, and about what he said to her, ‘You saved me.’ For the first time since the shooting stopped, she’s getting a minute to feel that. She doesn’t carry the weight of thinking that she should have somehow gotten her team out. She doesn’t blame herself for Liam’s death. The weight of living when he didn’t, that’s been there for years, but… there was no way to know. One minute they were fine, the next they’d bumped the IED and it was over.

But she can see it from Gibbs’ mind. See her history touched by his experiences, and how  _he_ understands that.  

She takes one more sip, and grimaces. “This is awful.” She stands up. “Gotta get back to work. Thanks for the background.”

Tim and Abby glance at each other and then her. “Okay.”

 

* * *

 

It’s ten hours later when she gets back to the hospital. Ziva’s in Gibbs’ room, holding his hand, reading while he sleeps.

She looks up and smiles at her as she comes in, quietly saying, “Done for the day?”

“For the next ten hours. Then back. Three quarters of our case files are gone. And that thing Brandis did to shut us down, it totaled every computer in the placed. Turned them all into paperweights.” One of the briefings she went to explained what had happened, and to answer McGee’s question, yes it was a small EMP. The idea being that if anyone was breaking into the building to get access to the computers, this would kill anything they could get (and kill all of their electronics, too). Supposedly, there are backups of everything off site so it’s not supposed to be  _that_  much of a loss, but, staring at a building with no functional electronics, and a strapped budget for refitting it, Abbi’s not having a good time.

Ziva nods. She knows how massive of a mess this is.

“FBI’s questioning everyone. Nothing’s getting done. I’m shifting all of our active cases to Baltimore, Norfolk, and Charleston. And even with that, they’ve got their own local FBI investigations going. No one’s sure exactly how far this goes and it’s going to be weeks before I’ve got enough personnel cleared to have a functional office again.”

“Sorry.”

Abbi smiles grimly. Then something hits her. “You just transferred to desk duty, right?”

Ziva nods.

“What’s your security clearance?”

Ziva knows where this is going. “High enough.”

“I need someone to help me get this up and running again. I need someone who I trust and who I know isn’t involved in this. Feel like spending some time getting CGIS up and running again?”

Ziva smiles. “I can do that. And I think my Boss will approve.”

Abbi sighs. Having another set of useful hands feels good. “Go get some sleep. Tomorrow morning, 08:00, my office. We start wading through everything.”

“Good.” Ziva stands up, gently stroking Gibbs’ face as she turns to leave.

“How’s he doing?” Abbi asks as she settles into the chair next to his bed.

“Sleeping. Asked for you a few hours ago when he woke up. Still in a really good mood. He’s being nice to the doctor and nurses.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.” Ziva shoulders her purse. “See you tomorrow.”

Abbi rolls her shoulders and kicks off her shoes. She should probably go home, get some clean clothing, get a shower, maybe eat something, but… nope. Right now she wants to be here. She scoots the chair around a bit, and puts her feet up on Gibbs’ bed, and then scoots down so her head is on the backrest. Time to grab some zzzs.

 

* * *

 

She wakes up feeling something rubbing her foot.

Sleepy blue eyes meet hers. “Hey,” Gibbs says.

“Hi.” She sits up, looking around, bit after 03:00 “You okay?”

“Yeah. More okay than I’ve been in a long time.”

Abbi nods. “Tim and Abby filled me in.”

He sighs. “Yeah.”

She leans in, taking his hand in hers, and kissing him. She’s looking into his eyes as she says, “So, how about we  _never_  do this again?”

He grins. “You know? I’m good with that.”

She chuckles lightly, and he starts trying to scoot over some. “What are you doing?”

“Making room. Wanna touch more than your hand.”

“Jethro…” She’s not too sure about him scooting over.

“If Abby could love on Tim when he was all beat up, you can snuggle me.”

“You’re not just beat up.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“Like fuck you have! They cut out a third of your lung.”

He shrugs.

She glares gently at him, but he’s all the way over, so she gingerly gets up onto the bed with him.

He smiles again, wrapping his good arm around her, holding her tight. That feels good.  “Not like I was doin’ much with it.”

She pulls back at that, putting some space between them, looking him in the eyes. “Jethro,  _don’t_! Don’t make light of it. Don’t joke it away. I am allowed to...” she doesn’t specify what she’s allowed, but he sees fear and anger and pain in her eyes, “And you laughing it off doesn’t help.”

More serious than he’s been since he got shot. “Okay.”

“I can still see your blood on my hands. Still smell it if I let my guard down.”

He nods and pulls her in close, kissing her forehead, feeling her warm against his side.

“And if you’re allowed to get shot for me, then I’m allowed to get mad and scared when you do it.”

He nods, kissing her again.

She pulls back again, wanting to be looking at him for this. “If this, what we have, is going to work, then… First off we’ve both got to be here. I’m not doing the dead fiancée thing again. I need a living, breathing man, not the memory of one!

“And I don’t need a hero. I’m the white knight. You’re out of the knight business. You hung up your armor and sword. From now on, you wear the pink poofy dress, and if need be, I’m saving your ass.”

He’s tempted to say, ‘you did’ but she’s on a roll, still lots of scared and angry needs to come out, and he knows breaking in right now is a bad plan.

“At the end of the day, I come home to you. That’s how this works. Every day. I come home to you. And I don’t get to do that if you go out there and get killed. So you don’t go out there and get shot! I don’t ever want to be scared like that again. Unless you’re donating it, your blood stays inside your body, got it?”

He nods, holding her face in his hands. “Okay. I’m okay.”

“I know.”

“Gonna heal up. Doc says my lung’ll expand to fill my chest. Won’t have quite as much wind, but as long as I keep working at it, I’ll get most of it back. Only got two lobes in the left side, right’ll be okay like that, too.”

“I know. I was there when you got out of surgery.”

“Right.”

She sniffs, and he realizes she’s been very determinedly not crying on him.

“I’m still here.”

“I know. But we aren’t doing this again.”

“Yeah.” He kisses her again. “Coming home to me every day?”

“Yeah.”

He kisses her once more. “I like that.”

 

 

* * *

 

In the end it was a ridiculously easy plan. Five guys, poker buddies, stationed out of the Miami Coast Guard, lamented how the people they were busting lived like kings, and they were scraping by on a beggar’s salary.

So, they came up with a plan. A way to build their own kingdom, get rich off the fat of the land, and still put the bad guys away. (Because, of course, in the plan, they weren’t the bad guys, and honestly, at first, they weren’t.) Simple really, be good at their jobs, really good. Get promoted, then promote each other, and once they had all of the power positions settled between them, they could do whatever they liked.

And, if they had stayed with just skimming off the drug money that flowed in with each bust, they could have lived like kings and probably done it indefinitely.

But they got greedy. When they started this plan, they didn’t realize that a King can burn through more money, faster, than they ever dreamed. They developed very expensive tastes. And expensive friends to go with those tastes. Which meant they needed even more money. And more money meant they needed help to maintain their operation, which meant more people learned what was up, and some of them were greedy too.

By the time Abbi had stumbled into it, the five kings had grown filthy rich, and covered in gnawing maggots level corrupt.

And like anything else so rotted it’s wriggling, all it took was a gentle push to topple it.

By the time Gibbs got out of the hospital, Abbi Borin, as the only Director at CGIS who was certain not to be part of the conspiracy, was the Acting Director of CGIS, in charge of “sanitizing” CGIS from the ground up if necessary.

 


	139. Variations on the Theme of Forever (I)

The door doesn’t open. Gibbs is sure of that, just as sure as he is of someone else entering his hospital room.

He smiles because he knows who it is.

“Hey.” His eyes haven’t opened, yet, and he’s speaking in a whisper. Borin’s snuggled up next to him, asleep.

“Hi.” He turns his face to her, still smiling, and feels her stroke his cheek as he opens his eyes. Shannon’s smiling down at him. “Been a long time since I saw that smile.”

He nods.

“I missed it.”

He keeps smiling up at her. “Dreaming?”

“Maybe?” She shakes her head, saying, “It doesn’t matter.”

“Nope. Thought you weren’t coming by for a while.”

“You know what they say about plans, Gibbs. They rarely survive contact with reality.”

“Yep.”

Shannon’s studying Borin, and he gently kisses the top of her head. Shannon nods and smiles. “I do like her.”

“Good.”

“And I’m happy.” She squeezes Gibbs hand, kisses him softly, looks him in the eyes and says, “Don’t screw it up. This is the best thing that’s happened to you in a long time, so…” He knows that look, that, I know you, and I know your patterns so tread right, Mr. He didn’t see it a lot when they were married, but enough so he knows it, and knows she’s serious.

“I won’t.”

That gets another smile, and a gentle pat on his cheek. “Good. I love you.” Shannon looks kindly at Borin. “And when we finally get to meet, I’m gonna love her, too.”

“Really?”

“Of course! Why wouldn’t I love someone who helped to put that smile on your face?”

Gibbs doesn’t have words for that, but it makes him feel good, feel settled and right in a way he hasn’t for a very long time. So he smiles at his first wife, and kisses the woman he hopes will be his last wife, and Shannon nods at him, and fades away. 

* * *

 

Gibbs wakes to the sensation of Abbi shifting around, getting out of his bed.

He’s got to get up, soon, too. His bladder is telling him time to get a move on. He supposes it’s a good thing they’re letting him walk around some, but he hates how out of breath just a ten foot walk makes him.

So, as she’s standing up, putting a call in for breakfast for them, he starts the slow process of collecting his various tubes, and shuffling to the head.

She comes in while he’s brushing his teeth, left handed, which feels godawful weird, but right now every time he does anything with his right hand his shoulder screams at him.

“Oatmeal and eggs coming soon.”

He gives her a half-hearted smile. “Don’t suppose there’s any coffee with that?”

She shakes her head. “If Ducky or Jimmy says I can sneak you a cup, I will.”

“They’re not going to say you can.”

“What a shock. At least you were on morphine the first few days.”

He nods at that. If you have to go from, on average, 120 ounces of coffee a day to cold turkey, being drugged to the eyeballs helps a lot. He’s also thinking this might be why, in addition to the pain killers, he’s sleeping so much.

Gibbs eyes the shower as Abbi gets in, but he still doesn’t have permission to get his bandages wet. Something about infection, and they only took the drain out of his lung yesterday, and just maybe it’s a good plan not to have a direct route for pathogens to get right into his lungs.

He’s making do with sponge baths, and supposedly will have to until he gets home on Sunday.

Home on Sunday.

He can’t speak loudly because of his lung, but he hopes she can hear him. “You serious about coming home to me?”

"Yeah." Apparently she can hear him over the sound of the water.

He pulls back the shower curtain, thinking he may look kind of silly, hospital gown, O2 tube still in his nose, hair sticking in fifty directions, but… Now, now’s right. “Then come home to me. Move in. Bring all your stuff and never leave.”

She’s staring at him, water pouring down her body, still a quarter asleep, and says, “Jethro?”

“Come home. Let’s make it home, for both of us.”

She steps out of the shower because she can’t pull him in, and kisses him, very gently. “Yes.”

 

* * *

 

 

Gibbs wakes up again several hours later. Abbi’s gone. Work’s eating up at least twelve hours a day right now, and would take more but she’s not letting it.

Tim and Tony are there.

“I don’t need you guys babysitting me.”

“Good morning to you, too, Sunshine,” Tony says.

“I never woke up alone when I was in the hospital, so you aren’t, either,” Tim adds.

“Besides, when you see what we’ve brought you, you’ll be happy we’re here,” Tony says with a grin, pulling a cup out of a bag.

Gibbs does look pleased to see that. He starts to sit up, and Tim reaches over to help him up.

Tony hands it over. “Just don’t tell Ducky or Palmer.”

Gibbs gently clasps the coffee in his left hand, reverently smelling the much too tiny cup of his one true love. “You’re good boys.” He takes a deep, savoring sip, and sighs, huge smile on his face, sublime joy lighting his eyes. “Missed this.”

“I’m sure,” Tim says dryly. He’s wondering if Gibbs is going to notice it’s decaf. (The ‘don’t tell Jimmy and Ducky,’ who of course know about this, is to help sell the idea it’s real coffee. Caffeine is a mild vasodilator, which means it effects blood flow to the lungs, and is, for the next few months, on Jethro’s no-no list.)

Gibbs looks up at Tim over the cup and smiles at him, again. “You know all about the first cup back after a while off.”

Tim nods. “And only five and a half more months until I get my next one.” Tim looks at Tony, “So, father to be, you doing anything…”

Tony shakes his head. “Unless Jimmy’s going to write me my own prescription for morphine for the next week, you don’t want to see me go cold turkey. You think you were annoying when you went off of it? I drink more coffee than you do and have been doing it for a decade… Hell, you started at like twenty, right?”

“Seventeen. Once I got to college, it was more or less glued into my hand. Every now and again before that, but it wasn’t a regular thing until college.”

“Okay, I’ve been doing it for fifteen years longer than you.”

Tim runs the math on that. “That means you started drinking coffee when you were eleven.”

Tony nods. “I was allowed to have a glass of wine with dinner then, too.”

Both Tim and Gibbs are just staring at Tony, with matching was your father insane expressions on their faces. “Not a big one. We were in Bern that summer. Dinner was long, started late, and if you were enough of a grown up to eat with the adults you got to eat what the adults ate. So, small glass of whatever went with the dinner, and coffee with dessert after.”

That lessens the insane looks a bit, but doesn’t entirely make them go away.

Gibbs takes another sip of his. “Dad always had a pot on. Back of the shop. When things were slow, he’d invite people to have a cup and hang out. Wasn’t allowed to have any until I was fourteen. ‘It’ll stunt your growth.’ Once I got taller than he was, I was allowed to have some.”

Tony grins. Gibbs is an inch or so shorter than he and Tim. “So, what, you should have waited another year or so?”

Gibbs almost laughs, but he catches himself, and then says, “Uh huh. So, you’re supposed to be what, six eight?”

Tony nods, standing up as straight as he can, looking taller. “Story in our family was that coffee puts hair on your chest. Should have started sooner, McSatinySmooth.”

“Yeah, as life goals went, a hairy chest was never on my list.” Actually, back when he was younger it was something he dearly wanted, and he was deeply disappointed in when his body quit at seventeen chest hairs, but he’s sure as hell not bringing that up in front of The Silver Wookie and Wookie Junior. “Would have just meant more time shaving.”

Tony and Gibbs do that thing where they look at each other and pointedly decide they aren’t going to ask.

“Don’t give me that. I know you’ve done it at least once,” he says to Gibbs, who looks very startled by that.

“When did that happen?” Tony’s not remembering any moments of not very fuzzy Gibbs. But, if given the option, Gibbs rooms with McGee… something about wanting peace and quiet… maybe he wouldn’t have seen.

“Scrubbing off the plague. Not a hair on him.”

Gibbs shrugs. “Elizabeth liked it.”

Tony lights up at that. “Nameless red-head has a name!”

Gibbs smiles. “Yeah.”

Given how good of a mood Gibbs is in, and the fact that he seems to be enjoying it, Tim presses a little more. “Current red-head was in a really good mood this morning.”

Gibbs nods, grinning, looking very pleased with himself.

Tony’s eyes go wide. “Here? With the nurses and doctors wandering in all the time. That's a trick out of Palmer's book.”

Gibbs glares at that. He’s not uninterested in sex, but it hasn’t gone beyond a mild passing fancy, and between the tubes, not having any real privacy, and the fact that he can’t walk more than a few feet without ending up out of breath, he’s not thinking that mild-passing-fancy is turning into anything real anytime soon.

However, both of the boys are looking exceptionally amused, and from the looks of it have misread his glare to mean that yes, that’s exactly why Abbi was in a good mood, so he clarifies. “Not why she’s in a good mood.”

“So, why was she in a good mood?” Tim asks.

“Moving party next week.”

Tim and Tony smile at that.

* * *

 

 

“You appear to be in splendid mood today, Jethro,” Ducky says as he ambles into Gibbs’ hospital room.

Gibbs smiles.

“I take it Anthony and Timothy’s pick-me-up helped?”

So much for not telling. Gibbs thought he smelled a rat on that. “It did. What happened earlier this morning helped more.”

“Good news from your doctors?” Ducky asks as he sits down.

“Nope. They’re still yammering about observation and antibiotics. Not letting me out until tomorrow.”

Ducky raises an eyebrow.

“Asked Abbi to move in and she said yes. Next week, we’re loading up her stuff and moving her in.”

Ducky smiles widely at that, too. “Jethro! That’s wonderful.”

“Yeah, feels good.”

Ducky nods. “As it should, my friend, as it should.”

Gibbs looks at Ducky’s wedding ring. “How long did that take?”

Ducky smiles widely, eyes sparking with joy. “Seven weeks. Are you thinking of making a purchase?”

“Was thinking it might be nice to have something to give her, her first night home.” That strikes Ducky as a very Gibbs sort of answer. None of the other wives lived with him before he married them, though Diane certainly 'stayed over' a lot.

“If you want custom work, it won’t be done that quickly.”

Gibbs isn’t sure if he wants custom work. He also isn’t sure if he wants to wait. He is sure that Tim and Ducky both had rings make, and they look awesome. Jimmy and Tony bought pre-made ones, and those are good, too. He thinks for a second and realizes he does have options. “Her birthday is in October.”

“That might be doable. Where’s your phone?”

“In about two hundred pieces in the basement of CGIS. Tim’s supposed to be bringing me a new one tomorrow.”

“Ah.” Ducky gets out his phone, and fiddles with it for a few minutes. “Mr. Blandon’s,” his jewler, “website. These tiny screens make it hard to see what he does, but I believe he has a mix and match menu you can customize from, and” Ducky touches his own ring, “obviously, you can continue to customize from there.”

Gibbs squints at the screen, and reaches over for his glasses. “Never thought I’d say it, but I want my laptop.”

“I understand.”

Gibbs flicks around, looking at the pictures. “This used to be easier.”

Ducky chuckles at that.

“I’m sure you can still walk into a jewelry store, hand them a pile of cash, and get the largest, most sparkly diamond available for that pile of cash.”

Gibbs eyes narrow at bit. He’d done that for Hannah. Diane and Stephanie picked out their own rings. Shannon’s he’d actually spent some time looking for the right one. His eyes narrow further as he thinks of the rings that didn’t result in anything good. Empty promises and broken lives.

“Doesn’t have to be a diamond, does it?”

Ducky is very pleased to see the level of thought Jethro is putting into this. “Depending on the woman, not a diamond can be an enticement. Penny would have been appalled to see a diamond on her ring.”

Gibbs inclines his head. He’s heard Abby and Penny talking about conflict diamonds, with Ziva adding how, before they’re cut, there’s pretty much no way to know where they come from, and yes, there are certification processes, but they are only as good as they people doing the certifying.    

He doesn’t know if Abbi likes diamonds or not. She doesn’t wear them. But she doesn’t wear much in the way of jewelry period.

Of course, having been engaged once before, there probably was a time she wore one.

He wonders what her first ring looked like. She’s still got it; he knows that, but he hasn’t seen it. And, beyond not wanting to get anything that looks like it, he doesn’t want or need to see it. She’s allowed to have her own past and keep it hers.

He’s flipping through options on Ducky’s phone, and there are a ton of them. He might not have anything by the time she moves in, but an idea of what he wants to do for her birthday is starting to shape up in his mind, and he thinks he may be able to get something that’ll work well for that plan.

Ducky sits next to him, watching Jethro scrolling through rings, and smiles. He introduced Jethro to Diane, and remembers when they were getting engaged, and while Jethro was happy and excited, it was surface happiness. Nothing about it touched him deep down. Of course, back then, nothing touched him deep down. Back then, Ducky didn't even know Jethro had a deep down.

But right now, he can see this is what truly happy Jethro looks like, and he’s immensely pleased to have his friend finally get there.


	140. The Other Shoe

No Shabbos today.

Between various job commitments, and the round the clock someone with Gibbs vigil, it’s not happening.

This week, it’s Shabbos on Sunday. Gibbs is supposed to come home on Sunday, and rather than try to stuff all of them, and food, and baby girls into a tiny hospital room, they’re going to wait for him to come home.

And then they will properly celebrate the Sabbath, and life, and love, and family.

 

* * *

 

Saturday is visiting with Gibbs (in the morning) and then time at the house.

And while it’s true that Gibbs is still way more smiley than usual, it’s also true he’s ready to go home. He’s been in the hospital for eons (or less than a week, as Ducky points out) and it’s time to get out of here.

He’s actually looking mopey at the idea that Tim and Tony are going to head off to the house to rip out drywall.

Tim squeezes his hand. “Home tomorrow.”

He nods, not thrilled.

 

* * *

 

Drywall time at the house. 

Tim likes ripping out drywall. It requires no precision or finesse. He can do it one (and a half, ish) handed. Yes, he's slow, and he's sore all over doing it, but pulling his own weight around the house feels really good. 

He also likes, as the walls are coming down, his ideas of how this house may look when they’re done with it. Obviously, weight bearing walls have to stay, but for the most part, they can rearrange however they like inside once they get this done.

Plus, as the guy who’s going to be doing the wiring (or at least as the guy who’s planning it out) it’s way easier to rewire from the studs out, than it is to fish wires through walls that are already up.

It’s him and Tony ripping down drywall on this side of the house. Jimmy’s around here somewhere. So’s, Breena. Abby and Penny have the girls today. (At his house. Abby’s having a sleepy day, so she’s taking it easy-ish, and Penny’s helping to keep an eye on everyone.)

Right now, he’s pulling down walls in what will, probably, end up being their great room and kitchen area.

“You’re quiet,” Tony says as they yank down another panel of drywall.

And he is, because he’s thinking through where the cables are going to go, and what sorts of electronics they’re going to put in this house. Tim twitches a little when Tony speaks, and then says, “Just thinking.” After a second, he gets off of electronics enough to ask Tony, “Okay, we’re not in the middle of an investigation, or cleaning one up. What’s going on with Ziva? She’s at Coast Guard now?”

Tony nods. “Yeah. She gave notice at NCIS. Borin offered her the job, and she took it.”

“Okay, I wasn’t actually asking for a rundown of the facts. I know what’s happening. I mean, why?”

Tony doesn’t look comfortable, and he’s very determinedly ripping down drywall as he says, “I shot a guy for looking at her. I got lucky because he had a gun and a knife and lock picks, but, all boils down, I shot him for looking at her. That was it. I can’t… I can’t work with her anymore. It’s just a matter of time until I fuck it up. ‘Till one of them isn’t really a threat and I… I can’t do it.”

Tim nods at that. He gently squeezes Tony’s shoulder and nods again.

“So that’s it? A nod?” Tony sounds defensive, like he’s expecting more.

“Yeah. I got out of the field so Abby wouldn’t have to deal with being scared for me. Not sure how I’d deal with it if she was in the field, let alone if I had to work with her every day. What’d you expect?”

“I don’t know. Some sort of lecture about respecting her choices and manning up and dealing with it better? Something about how if it’s my problem, I shouldn’t be forcing her out of her job.”

“Wrong generation of McGee. If you like, I’m sure we can arrange for Penny to give you that lecture.”

Tony winces.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t sign up for that, either.” One more block of drywall, and then Tim asks, “So, you got a line on a replacement for her?”

“Not yet. If… She’s only a month along, so…”

Tim nods at that, too. He knows what Tony’s too afraid to say out loud. So, he switches onto another topic they haven’t had the chance to talk much about. “How’s your house going?”

Tony smiles. “For once, so far so good. The bank’s happy with me. Mortgage is lined up. I’ve got a good interest rate. Closing date is October 1st.”

“Lucky you.” Tim says dryly. He’s still annoyed at the fiasco that was getting their mortgage.

“Yeah,” Tony smiles dryly, “amazing what happens when you don’t get your identity stolen seventeen times.”

Tim glares at the memory of the guy who basically turned him down for a mortgage.

“The paperwork is going great. Supposedly we get the inspection back next week. Though given how bad the house is, I don’t think there’s anything he’s going to say that could be a deal breaker.”

Tim smiles. “Guess we’re doing this for you soon.”

“Yeah.” Tony’s staring at the dry wall debris around them. “Gonna be weird without Gibbs.”

Tim yanks down another panel of drywall.  “He’s going to be there. Not sure what all he’ll be doing. Probably like a crime scene, he  _looks_ like he’s doing stuff, but it’s really all us while he keeps watch and drinks his coffee.”

Tony smiles at that, but Tim can see some tension there.

“Some cloud to go with all that silver lining?”

“Feels unreal. It’s my dad, there’s got to be a catch somewhere. A big nasty one that poisons the whole thing. I feel like I’m waiting for the roof to fall on us.”

Tim shrugs. He certainly knows that feeling, and he’s seen Senior in action too many times to just say, ‘Don’t worry about it.’

 

* * *

 

Tim’s phone chirps at him as he’s whacking the wall.

 _Help!_ It’s from Abbi.

 _What’s wrong?_  He’s feeling a sharp jolt of fear at that, wondering if it’s Gibbs or if someone is coming for her. Just because the sneaking around phase of things is done, doesn’t mean they’ve found everyone, yet.

_I’ve had six vendors show me new computer systems today, and I am literally clueless as to what I need._

Tim sighs. Abbi’s told them that there was a small EMP, which killed all the electronics in the building. (He’s not sure why it didn’t fry their cell phones, but since they’re alive because of it, he’s willing to put it in the Acts of the God He Sporadically Believes In category and leave it there.) But, in that she is now the acting Director of a Federal Department, and in charge of a building that’s current filled with a huge collection of shiny paperweights, she has to get new stuff so that everyone else in that building can go back to work.

This is made more complicated by the fact that her head tech guy isn’t exactly looking squeaky clean right now. (Apparently there was a reason why all the files were on paper, and that reason appears to be a combination of making it harder to pin things on people and never upgrading meant there was that much more money to embezzle. She has found that CGIS  _paid_  for a top of the line file system, they just don’t  _have_  one.) And, on top of that, she’s got no idea how many of the lower downs were involved, either.

FBI’s handling the main investigation for that, and she’s got Ziva using her NCIS computer to run her own checks on people she really needs, right now, as well. But it’s slow. Even moving fast it takes half a day to clear someone.

_You got written proposals?_ _Send them on. I’ll give them a look._

 

_THANK YOU!_

_What’s your budget for this?_

_HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA_

_We’ll have a chat about the miracle of ‘open source,’ too._

_You’re saving my life on this._

_No problem._

 

So, as the day wears on, Tim is not whacking down drywall. He’s sitting on the back patio, reading through a collection of proposals from different tech companies.

They look like they’re on the up and up, all of them are offering pretty much the same package for pretty much the same price. Little tweaks here and there depending on which vendors they use.

He spends an hour writing up his own proposal, what, if he were ever in the position of having to restock NCIS, on the fly, fast, with no budget, he’d want. He sends that back to Abbi along with a price range for what it should cost.  _Send this to all of them, and whoever can get you_ this _for the least amount of money/time wins the bid._

_What’s this?_

_What’d I’d stock NCIS with if it was my job. Once you’ve got it in place, we’re gonna talk paperwork software and the joys of functional databases. By the time you’re up and running you’ll be two years behind instead of fifteen, and you’ll have the platform you need to get ahead of the curve in the next three years._

_That’s the best news I’ve had all day._

_More guys get caught?_

_Tell you about it in person tomorrow._

 

 

* * *

 

“Okay. Yeah. I know… Don’t work too hard… Uh huh… Yeah… Love you, too,” And Tony hangs up his phone.

“Ziva?” Breena asks. They’re wrapping up with the house. She, Jimmy, and Tim are all heading back to Tim’s for tonight. Tony’s supposed to be getting ready to have dinner with Ziva, but apparently she’s working late.

“Yeah. She’s still in the middle of one of the guys Abbi really wants cleared.”

“That’s got to be an awful job,” Jimmy says.

Tim nods along. “I think that’s part of why she’s got Ziva doing it. Someone with instincts you trust, who’s good at the job, but far enough away to not get personally into it.”

Breena nods at that. “She liking it?” They’ve seen Ziva for about nine minutes since she took Abbi’s job, and thus haven’t heard much about how she’s liking moonlighting for the Coast Guard.

“Yes, she is. It’s useful and important and she’s good at it…”

“And it’s safe,” Jimmy adds.

“That’s why I like it,” Tony finishes. “Feels weird to have her working somewhere else. Part of it’s great, end of the day we talk, and we’ve got stories the other one hasn’t heard, yet. Part of it’s hard. She’s not in the desk across from me. She’s not that shadow watching my back. It’s going to take a while to get used to that.”

Tim nods at that. “Yeah. Felt that way when I moved downstairs. Was really weird not seeing you all every day. Still feels weird not to head into the lab to work some days.”

“This mean you’re on your own for dinner?” Jimmy asks.

“Yeah.”

“We can toss an extra burger on the grill for you,” Tim says.

Tony nods at that. “Please!”

* * *

 

 

“Sooo…” Breena says to Abby, looking really happy while Tim’s mixing up the burger meat and Jimmy fires up the grill.

“You look like you’ve got the best secret ever,” Abby says to her.

“Not a secret, but it’s good.” Breena’s still grinning.

“What!?”

“According to him,” she nods at Tim, “Gibbs asked Abbi to move in with him.”

Abby squeals with pleasure at that.

Tim finally adds his own two cents. “He was looking really happy, we” he points to Tony’s who’s sprawled out on one of the recliners, looking pretty tired, “asked what was up, and he told us there’d be a moving party next week.”

“Awwww…” Abby couldn’t be more pleased if she tried.

Molly’s watching this, not quite getting it.

“Uncle Jethro’s got something really happy going on,” Breena explains.

“Feel better?” Molly knows that Jethro’s not been feeling well. That he got hurt.

“I’d think this is going a long way toward making him feel better,” Tim adds.

“All of this is making him feel better. He’s still grinning all over the place,” Tony says.

Molly looks confused at that. Uncle Jethro’s generally a pretty laid back and happy guy in her experience.

The adults can see they’re just perplexing Molly, so they shift it a bit, “Are you going to help us get Abbi moved into Uncle Jethro’s house?” Abby asks.

“Oh yes! Pillows.”

Breena grins at her daughter. She’s been on a pillow kick lately. (First thing she did getting over here today was check out all the pillows in Tim and Abby’s house.) The chance to mess around with Gibbs and Abbi’s pillows is hitting her just right.

“If you ask, I’m sure Uncle Jethro will be happy to let you be the official pillow mover!” Jimmy says, before heading over to Tim to offer a hand with getting dinner ready.

Molly’s very pleased by that.

* * *

 

“You’re still looking worried,” Tim says to Tony as they’re cleaning up dinner.

He shakes his head. “I just… can’t shake the idea that the other shoe’s going to drop.”

“We talking about Ziva? She’s really liking what she’s on right now,” Breena says, coming in from the porch with the salad bowl.

“No. I know she’s good… It’s the house. My dad’s plans always have some sort of catch and… I can’t see it, but my gut is screaming, I know it’s there somewhere.”

“Everything going well so far?” Breena asks.

“Yeah.”

“Your lawyer look over it?”

“So far, he says everything is legal, and he’s impressed as hell, wants to spend a year with my Dad’s guys because he says this is one hell of a deal.”

“That’s great! Right?” Breena says, sitting down, watching Tim and Tony mess with the dishes.

“Yeah. I guess…” Tony shrugs. “So why doesn’t it feel great?”

They’re all quiet for a moment when something hits Breena. A very specific sort of something. A something that is a big part of why she and Jimmy do not live in DC proper. DC is madly expensive. But not just in property prices, it’s got (compared to the ‘burbs) high taxes, too.

“Tony, what’s the assessed value of the property?” Breena asks.

“Right now?” Tony’s not sure where she’s going with this.

“No, on the tax records. What are you paying taxes on?”

Tony’s eyes go wide. He’s an apartment dweller, has been his whole adult life, he’s never paid property taxes before, so it didn’t occur to him, but it is now. “Oh shit,” slips almost silently out of him. He’s springing up, stabbing his phone’s contact button, and a moment later they hear, “Seventy-eight thousand dollars a year in real estate taxes!” A moment after that, they hear, “Dad, that’s more than my take home pay!”

Five minutes go by, where Tony doesn’t get much of a word in, then he stalks back into the kitchen. Jimmy hands him a beer.

“How’d it go?” Tim asks.

“He’s telling me to buy it anyway. I can sell it right away, still come out ahead.”

Breena nods at that. “That’s what I’d do. Or anyone else in my family. If someone hands you a pile of cash, you take it. Do any work on the place at all and you’ll be way ahead. Then sell, and outright buy a place for you and Ziva. Pay in full, save the interest money, and make sure you won’t have a post-retirement housing payment.”

That sounds reasonable, but right now Tony’s still mentally scrambling on the house. If they get it, they’ll have to get it sold before the first installment of the taxes are due, that’s… “Anyone know when the taxes are due in DC?”

“January and June,” Breena says. “But it’ll be prorated for just the time you own it. Faster you sell, the fewer taxes you owe. How much are you getting it for?”

“Mortgage is for 300,000. We’re getting it for 175,000. The idea is the rest gets put into fixing it up.”

Breena’s running numbers in her head while Tim whistles low and slow, “Eight million dollars? That’s what the place is assessed at?”

Tony nods. “Yeah.” He hadn’t gotten into specifics on what the house was worth before this.

Jimmy shakes his head. “I’d be wetting my pants at that deal, too. How is that even remotely legal?”

Tony just looks at them with his _somewhat frustrated-can’t do anything about it_ look.

“Yeah, right, your dad and his cadre of lawyers worked it out. Okay. So, even destroyed, you’ve got to be able to float this, right?” Jimmy’s looking at Breena and she nods.

“Even with the mortgage you’ve already got, and beat to hell up, that property has to be worth enough to take enough equity out to fix it up properly, pay at least a year’s taxes, and then flip it. Plus buy a place you and Ziva intend to actually live in. And you’ll still have money left over. Your dad is right, take this deal. He’s basically giving you a…” she’s thinking again, “call it a three million dollar bank account. Even if the market completely tanks tomorrow, you should be able to clear a million on this.”

“You guys are going to help me fix up a home I’m never going to live in?”

The other four are nodding at each other, and Tim looks at his house. “I built my nest egg on you guys. Paying that back isn’t a problem. Telling Ziva though…”

Tony shakes his head, thumping it down on the kitchen table. “Just squeeze some lemon juice into that paper cut, will you?”

Abby lays her hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to work out. You tell her. She’s in charge of finding the house you’re going to live in. You’re in charge of getting the house you’re selling fixed up. Couple of months from now, the house is sold, the other house is bought, your retirement is funded, you’re done hyperventilating over this, and have moved onto kicking your car trying to get the car seat installed.”

Tony glances up at her, not looking particularly relieved by that. He sighs and glances at the clock. “Time to head home, and tell my ninja about the house that won’t ever be ours.”

Breena pets him, too. “Maybe a bit of repackaging on that, something like, time to tell her about all the other houses that could be yours…”

He smiles, but it’s flat.

 

* * *

 

 

“Hey.”

Ziva looks up from her laptop. She’s at home now, crumbs of something vaguely dinnerish beside her, and a collection of files open around her computer.

“Looks like you’re still working hard,” he says, kicking off his shoes and coming up behind her, resting his hands on her shoulders and gently kneading.

Ziva moans as he digs into sore shoulders as her head falls back against his belly. “Yes. Ahhh… That feels so good. I have found the final nail for Benjamin Mournt’s coffin.”

He continues rubbing gently. “And who is Benjamin Mournt?”

“He used to be the head of CGIS IT. Right before you got here I made the call to Omagi, and now he’s off with his team, a warrant, and with any luck, yet another member of CGIS wills shortly be behind bars.”

“Great.” He sounds a bit sarcastic, not because putting criminals in jail isn’t great, but because the guys with the badges aren’t supposed to be ending up in jail.

“Yes. I know.” She turns her head and kisses his wrist. “How was housebuilding?”

He smiles again, but it doesn’t hit his eye. “Funny you should mention that…” He lets go of her shoulders and sits next to her. Now she’s got her _Oh God, what next?_ look on her face. “So, I was having dinner with the McGees and Palmers, and talking about the house, and Breena asks me what the property taxes are.”

Ziva’s eyes go wide, too. She, like Tony, has also been an apartment dweller (or her billet was provided by her employer) her entire adult life. Like Tony, she’s never paid real estate taxes, and like Tony, it’s just hitting her that people gripe about property taxes for a reason and that reason is just about to bite them in the ass.

She winces. “How bad is it?”

“Seventy-eight thousand dollars a year.” He smiles sadly at her. “I… I can’t give you that home, Ziva. I know you want it, but…”

She raises her hand to stop him apologizing for what cannot be changed and is not his fault. Both of them working full time can’t afford that home. “I do not want or expect you to build me a palace. Just a home. We will keep looking.” She looks sad and frustrated.

“Both my dad and Breena are saying we need to buy the place. Fix up as much as we can, probably at least get sound floors in place, maybe new windows or something, as soon as we can, and then sell it. We’d have money for a home somewhere else, and probably college, and other stuff.”

Ziva nods at that. It makes sense, though she’s feeling herself tearing up at the idea of building a home they’ll never live in. _Stupid pregnancy hormones._

Tony kisses her. “Hey, none of that.” He wipes away the tear. “I’m going to be in charge of getting this one bought and sold.” He fires off the patented DiNozzo smile at her. “I know I got more than my dad’s good looks. I can do this, too. You find us the home we’re going to live in. We’ll get the one sold and buy the other and… And like Abby said, a few months and we’ll be breathing easy and cursing at the car seat trying to get it installed properly.”  

She swallows and nods and looks at him. “Okay.”

He nods back.   

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very quick (and VASTLY oversimplified) lesson in US property taxes. (Or what the hell was Senior thinking, or not thinking, in signing them up for an 8,000,000 house?)
> 
> Not sure how they do it in the rest of the world, but in the US, each county, city, and state sets it's own property taxes, and depending on where you live, you may end up paying out the ears every six months, or you might face no property taxes at all.
> 
> It's possible to end up in an area where you'll owe taxes to all three, or none, or some combination thereof. Most renters have that folded into their rent and never see the tax bill on their homes.
> 
> There's no Federal property tax, but if you sell/will/or give away you end up having to pay on any gains you make on said transaction. 
> 
> Federal taxes are on income (which generally means any money that comes to you, but there are a lot of loopholes and classifications on this.) On the Fed side, you can normally write off the state and county tax level, and not pay taxes on the income you used to pay state/city/county property taxes. Likewise, on the Federal level, any money spent on the interest on your mortgage is deductible. So, if you make 100,000 a year, and spend 2,000 on local taxes and another 14,000 on your mortgage interest, you only have to pay Federal income taxes on 84,000 dollars. (Clear as mud, right?)
> 
> This would be why the idea that this is worth mentioning is something that never occurred to Senior. In his world, a deal like this is used to shield income from Federal taxes. (Property taxes are almost always lower that Federal Income taxes. Better to pay 1% to DC than 39.6% to the Feds.) The problem is, this doesn't work if it leaves you with no income to live on. (Which would be where Senior got tripped up.)


	141. The Brave Heart

Book Five: Jethro

 

Gibbs is ready to go home. He’s  _beyond_ ready to go home. Yes, he’s been in a very good mood, especially for him, and definitely for him in the hospital, but that doesn’t mean he wants to be here a second longer than he has to be.

He’s up, out of his bed, sitting down in one of the armchairs, messing with his new phone, dressed in real clothing, and ready to get out of here NOW.

But he can’t leave until he gets the OK from the Docs, and apparently, having heard that he was supposed to be discharged today every Doctor in the greater DC region bugged the hell out, and it’s just him, and Abbi, and a horde of nurses who keep telling him the Doc will be in soon.

Finally, some high school kid in scrubs and lab coat shows up, claiming to be one of the surgeons who worked on him, making Gibbs feel seventy million years old, but, right now, he doesn’t care if Doogie over there really is a doctor or not as long as he lets him out of the hospital.

And he does. But, like everything else, it’s slow. Doogie makes him get out of the real clothing, for one last checkup. (Supposedly the one this morning, the reason he got into real clothing, in the first place, was ‘the last one.’) He gets gently poked and touched while Doogie makes some thoughtful sounds about how he’s doing.

Then comes paperwork. These guy need Tim to show up and beat their paperwork system into shape. Gibbs’s signing the stack of release forms, as well as he can, his right arm doesn’t want to do much of anything, and of course, he’s a righty, as the Doc drones on and on about what he’s supposed to be doing with himself when he leaves.

Gibbs can see it’s in the paperwork, and Abbi’s listening, so he’s not paying too much attention.

Unfortunately, apparently Doogie noticed he wasn’t paying too much attention and starts, apparently from the beginning, as soon as Gibbs looks up from signing the last form.

“Take it easy. Nothing strenuous. And for God’s sake,” the Doc gets up, grabs the 02 canister that’s on the opposite side of the room from Gibbs, “keep this nearby! It’s good to see you don’t need it right this second, but that does not mean it should be out of arm’s reach for you. Your oxygen levels drop too low, and you can be unconscious on the floor before you can grab this, so keep it close.”

Gibbs nods, taking the canister in hand, and thinking as soon as he gets home, he’s got to see if Tim can find him a smaller one, maybe something the size of a pepper spray canister, because he can’t see lugging this fire extinguisher looking thing every single place he goes.

“You’ve got a follow up appointment next week, and if you start a fever, feel achy beyond the sore of the surgery, you get to a hospital fast. You’re missing a chunk of your lung, so you cannot afford to have any sort of infection on top of that.”

More nodding.

The Doc goes over his pain meds, and Gibbs’s mostly listening, and he explains how he’s supposed to just rest for at least a week, and after the follow up they can talk more about really moving around, and as he’s wrapping that up, it occurs to Gibbs that there is some moving around he’d really like to do when he gets home.

Gibbs looks at Abbi, who’s also been carefully listening to this, smiles at her quickly, and then says, “What about sex?”

The Doc licks his lips and looks at Gibbs for a second, something that appears to be saying,  _good to see you’ve still got it in you._  Gibbs glares at him. He’s old and hurt, not dead.

“Once again, take it easy, keep your oxygen nearby, and don’t mess around if you have a hard time breathing. You know the signs of a heart attack and a stroke?” The Doc seems to be asking Abbi almost as much as Gibbs.

She raises an eyebrow at that, and Gibbs eyes go wide. Yeah, he does, but he was hoping it wasn’t going to be  _that_  dangerous. “You’ve just had major surgery. You exert yourself too hard, at anything, you might throw a clot and stroke out. So, slow, gentle, easy. That’s going to be as true for sex as for walking to kitchen to get a drink.

“You are on major painkillers, so your sense of touch is dulled down. Remember you’ve got three two inch spans of plastic mesh where you used to have ribs from where that bullet hit you. We had to pull aside or cut all the muscles between two more of them, then spread them apart, breaking the edges at the front and back where your ribs come together so we could do the work that saved the top two lobes of your lungs. Don’t let anyone lean against your chest.”

Gibbs nods at that, he’s been on his side or sitting up as much as he can, because just the weight of his own body leaning against his ribs aches, so someone else… Nope.

“If it weighs more than five pounds, someone else picks it up for you, and honestly, if it weighs less than five pounds and there’s someone else handy, have them pick it up for you.”

“So, now’s a bad time to ask you when I can go back to working construction?”

The Doc laughs out loud. 

* * *

 

“Take it you’ve got some plans for when we get home?” Abbi asks as she opens the car door for Jethro. He’s not loving that, but it does weigh more than five pound and his ribs really don’t like the idea of the effort involved in that, plus the seventy foot walk from the wheel chair they wouldn’t let him leave the hospital without to Abbi’s car has him out of breath. Still this little, lizard brained,  _male_  part of him hates standing there while she does it.

But he does like the question. So he kisses her, gently, and then sits down in the passenger seat. “Got some hopes,” he says with a big smile as she closes the door.

“Got a bunch of people who are going to be there when we get home, too.”

Gibbs nods. He knows that, and he’s looking forward to seeing them. And he’s looking forward to them going home, too. Then he smiles again. “Won’t stop me from thinkin’ about it.”

“Be good, don’t tire yourself out too much, and maybe you’ll get to do more than think.” Abbi says, deadpan, and then looks at him with a grin.

Gibbs grins at that, too.

* * *

 

Mona hears the car pull up before the rest of the party does. Everyone else is at Gibbs house, getting ready for him to come home, talking, joking, having a good time. But when she makes a ninety mile an hour beeline straight to the front door, barking at it, everything stops.

Abby’s got the sense to grab Mona before Gibbs gets to the front porch, because as soon as she hears his footsteps she’s trying to bound through the door to him.

They hear “Take it someone’s looking forward to seeing me,” as Abbi opens the door and Mona tries to leap out of Abby’s grasp to knock Gibbs over with slobbery kisses.

She doesn’t get free, and Gibbs shuffles over to her, looking at Abby, letting her know not to let go, and then kneels down and pets Mona all over with his head pressed to her neck. “I’m home. You’ve got to be gentle with me, okay? Can’t be jumping up on me anytime soon.” Ecstatic barking marks Mona’s response. “I missed you, too.” After a few more minutes of “Good girl!” and petting, Abby’s able to let Mona go without her leaping up onto Gibbs, and then he moves away, and she follows, right at his knee, as he goes into the house to get hugs from everyone else.

Hugs from everyone else also means that Molly gets basically the exact same ‘no leaping on Uncle Jethro’ lecture Mona just did, though Molly, at twenty-seven pounds, weighs less than a third of what Mona does.    

Eventually, he’s been hugged and kissed and petted, and he’s sitting down at the head of the table, food all over it, home with his family for Sunday dinner.

* * *

 

It’s not late, at all. Like with some of the previous Shabboses they didn’t bother with waiting for sunset. The spirit of the thing matters much more than the timing. And an early night for Gibbs, who is looking awfully tired, seemed like a good plan to everyone involved. (Except for, maybe, Gibbs, who’s looking annoyed to be this tired at 4:30 in the afternoon.)

There’s the usual getting ready to go hoopla, made a bit less by the fact that at least right now little girls don’t need warm weather gear, but Tony and Ziva, and Ducky and Penny have said goodbye to everyone and pulled out long before Tim and Abby, or Jimmy and Breena, have collected all of the baby stuff and babies into their respective cars.

But eventually, after a warm dinner, with everyone around, party time is over. Gibbs is sitting on the sofa, waiting for Abbi (who saw everyone out to their cars, he wanted to, but everyone glared at him, so he stayed in and sat around while they said their goodbyes) to come back in.

“Come on, up you get.” Abbi says with a gentle arm around Gibbs’ waist a minute after she’s back. He is tired, and breathing harder than she wants to see. “Naptime and some O2.”

He doesn’t glare at that, but he’s not thrilled, too. And with the kids gone, he’s willing to lean a bit more heavily on her, let how much he’s aching really come through.

“Yeah, I know that look. I’d rather you didn’t feel this way, too. Come on.”

He nods and they start the trek up to his room.

Being back in his bed feels good. Seeing her pillows on her side of his bed feels even better. Slipping in between her sheets is excellent. Trying to find a comfortable position, and getting used to not having a bed that raises and lowers itself as well as inclines, is a less awesome experience, but he does, eventually, get himself on his side, O2 cannula in his nose, more pain meds in his system, and by that point he’s just about unconscious.

But, just about isn’t the same thing as fully there, so he reaches over, and squeezes her hand. “You’ll be here when I wake up?”

Abby gently strokes his cheek, fingers skirting over the O2 tube. “That’s what come home and stay forever means, right?”

He smiles at her, “Yeah. It does.”

“You get a nap. Eventually we’ll have dinner and get you a shower, and if you’re feeling up for anything after that, there may be some sex.”

He really smiles at that, and then pulls her hand to his lips to kiss her palm.

* * *

 

Gibbs wakes up, sore and a little disoriented. It takes him a second to figure out that he’s back in his own bed, and the tapping noise next to him is Abbi working on her computer.

“Good nap?” she asks, as he blinks himself awake.

“Yeah. Weird dreams.”

She looks at him curiously.

“Don’t really remember, just felt like they were silly while they were happening.” He slowly starts to lift himself up, and once again wishes he had the sort of bed that inclines for him.

Abbi gives him a hand at that, helping him get the pillows behind his back. Once he’s up he says, “Working hard?”

She wiggles her hand indicating so-so. “Annoying, not hard. I’m writing up a briefing to our Union Reps who are screaming about how many people I’ve got on leave right now.”

“Not thrilled with guilty until proven innocent?”

“Not at all. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve got so many of them banned right now, I think they’d be threatening a strike.”

Gibbs quirks an eyebrow.

“At my office I’ve got six out of ten of them gone already. Nine out of ten on anything sensitive. Not like saying goodbye to the others will matter all that much. I’m already moving at a glacial pace.” 

He sighs and rubs her shoulder.

She exhales, and flashes him her,  _I’m done with this shit_  look. “Start moseying toward the shower. By the time you get in there and the water on, I’ll have this wrapped up.”

Hot shower sounds great to Gibbs, so he unhooks the O2 tube, or starts to, but she gives him a little glare, so he leave it in place, and begins his mosey.

* * *

Warm, humid air does make it easier to breathe, so that feels good. After a few breaths he takes off the tube and tentatively tries to breathe as deep as he can. His lungs and ribs tell him to stop that before he gets to anything that might be called a decent breath.

It takes Abbi a bit longer than she anticipated, so Gibbs takes a moment on his own to really see what happened to him. His shoulder feels tight, and hot, and sore, and swollen, and all of that is true. The divot on his delt has been sewed into a small, tidy scar, but the flesh under it looks like someone took an ice cream scoop and hollowed out an inch wide trench of his arm.

He’s got a long, thin scar that runs from one side of his ribs to the other between the second and third from the bottom ribs. Looks a bit like a smile. A smile he could do without.

He turns his back to his mirror, and checks the bullet wound. Part of his shoulder feeling so tight is they did stretch the skin to sew the wound back into a nice tidy line. But under too tight skin is a huge hole. The bullet took out six square inches of his back, just below his shoulder blade.

They built some sort of mesh to replace the missing rib pieces. Supposedly the bones will eventually grow into the mesh. Supposedly the two lobes he’s got left of his right lung will expand to fill his rib cage. Rumor has it the muscles that they reconnected and reattached and stretched all over the place will get stronger and start doing their jobs again.

Supposedly, he’ll heal.

But unlike Tim, no one’s saying anything about him regaining full use or strength on his right shoulder. And Gibbs doesn’t know if they aren’t saying anything because they’ve decided he’s just too damn old to get it back, or if it’s physically impossible for him to do it.

Either way, he intends to prove them wrong.

* * *

 

“Looks better than I thought it was going to,” Abbi says as she steps in and finds him naked in the bathroom looking at his back.

He makes a noncommittal noise at that. He doesn’t much want to get into her thinking he was going to die. He can guess how bad it had to have looked/felt when she was getting him patched up in that hallway. He’s been on the other side of that, and usually with worse results.

Her fingers trail over his scars, and he gets the sense that just because he doesn’t want to deal with this doesn’t mean he can avoid it, and now might be a really good time to work on his  _don’t screw it up_  technique.

So, unlike with Shannon, he doesn’t try to hide. That was beyond stupid the first time he tried it. Unlike with Jen in Paris, he doesn’t try to pretend he’s not hurt. (Speaking of stupid, attempting to pretend you’re fine to the woman who dug the bullet out of your leg is more or less the definition of stupid.) And unlike with Diane, or Stephanie, or… honestly, every woman he’s been with, he doesn’t try to run away from her angry and hurt and scared.

He turns to her, not sure, what, if anything, he should even try to say, probably with something of a hang dog look on his face, and she purses her lips and shakes her head at him. Then she nods to the shower. “Come on, before all the hot water goes down the drain.”

He nods and steps in, sighing happily as warm water goes streaming down him. Abbi strips off her clothing and gets in with him.

Gibbs smiles at her, eyes trailing over her body. “Missed seeing this.”

Her hands rest on his chest, very gently, and she steps close, forehead on his unhurt shoulder. She doesn’t say anything, but he can feel the edge of fear coming off of her. He starts to wrap his arm around her, but she shakes her head, so he keeps it at his side. She’s slowly stroking her hands over his arms and chest, hips and legs, from the back of his neck to top of his thighs. Her touch is feather light over the scars, and firmer, reassuring that he’s really there, over the parts of him that aren’t hurt.

She’s chewed him out up and down for almost getting killed. She literally yelled at him for breaking protocol, and how it was his job to clear the room, her job to cover HIM, not the other way around. Not until she had moved forward past him. (He’s got a somewhat different interpretation of what happened, but he’s sane enough to know  _that_  isn’t anything they need to argue about.)

Now though, they’re alone, no nurse is going to walk in, there are no doctors around, it’s just them, and he feels it when she starts to shake. Feels her drop the anger that’s been keeping fear and sorrow tamed down. He can tell the exact second she drops work, drops the ‘I’m okay’ façade she’s been wearing since Tuesday night, since she stuffed her jacket between his Kevlar vest and the hole in his back that was bigger than her fist.

He kisses the top of her head as her arms circle low on his hip (she wants to hold him tight, but can’t around his ribs) and she stands there, shaking, crying, silently. He doesn’t hear any sobbing, but he feels her shuddering.

He rests his hand on her back, between her shoulder blades, and holds on, letting her get it out.

Sad, scared, angry woman in his arms isn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. Of course, unlike the times he’s tried to get out of this before, he’s (most likely) not going back to what he’s trying to get her calm from.

The job came first. Even with Shannon, the job came first. It called, and he went. And he thinks part of why he couldn’t stand this before, why he was willing to do anything to avoid it was that he knew the job would win, and that it didn’t matter how much it hurt the woman in question, he was going to go back to it.

And right now there’s nothing to go back to. Hell, the most dangerous thing on his menu right now is trying to get girls into the US, and that’s been put off for however long it’ll take to heal up, and after that… he’s not planning on getting into shootouts for that. He’s not planning on going into pirate infested waters, and the Coast Guard won’t shoot him if he does what they tell him to do (which he will.)

He smiles to himself as he thinks that, what with the fact that the whole reason he’s standing here, holding Abbi, is because the Coast Guard just shot him… Won’t happen again, though.

At least, not on the water.

He kisses the top of her head. She’s starting to slow down, and he’s fairly sure she can hear him over the water. “You come home to me. I promise.”

Abbi looks up at him. Her eyes are red, and she swallows hard before saying, “You damn well better.”

“I do. I’m going to be here.”

Her eyes search his, looking deep, making sure he’s on the up and up, and then, though he knows she wants to grab him, hard, and pull him tight to her, she gently reaches up and lightly kisses his lips.  

He smiles at that kiss. “Not gonna break me. Kiss me like you mean it.”

Her tongue slips over his bottom lip followed by a quick nip, and he growls low and deep at that, very pleased, which sounds good and sexy for two tenths of a second until he starts to cough. She steps back, looking dryly at him. “Oh yeah, you’re so ready for this.”

He flashes her that hangdog look again.

She gently pushes on his good shoulder. “Turn around, let’s get you washed up, and we’ll see what happens when we get you back on dry land.”

Getting washed up feels amazing. He’s never appreciated having his hair washed the way he is today. And by the time they’re contemplating dry land, he’s decided that he will chew his tongue off rather than cough because there is no way in hell he will make any move that might derail them having sex.

Warm soapy hands all over his body have focused his mind with laser-like precision of getting both of them naked in bed and doing way more than just cuddling.

Finally, they get into bed, and finally she’s touching him all over, sitting in his lap, her skin on his in soft, ghosting touches that light his whole body up and make him want to pull her close and grind into her hard and deep.

He’s not doing that, and she’s touching him like he’s made of paper thin porcelain, so soft and slow and gentle, and he’s just about out of his mind at these gentle, teasing brushes of her skin against his by the time she slides down his aching dick.

He wants to groan,  _loud_  at that, but he keeps it to a soft whimper, which doesn’t use up too much oxygen, and is vocal enough that she gets how much he’s liking this.

She’s rocking slowly against him, and in this position, he’s able to easily kiss and nuzzle her breasts, which he loves, seeing if with soft, wet sucks and gentle nibbles he can turn her on enough to get her to move faster, take him deeper, let him get off.

This soft and gentle ride is killing him. He’s close, can feel his orgasm a few inches away, but it might as well be miles because he’s can’t really move enough to get there.

His head is back against the headboard, and he’s trying his hardest not to breathe deep or hard, so these soft, little panting breaths are slipping between clenched teeth as she keeps up a slow, easy grind.

If he were even remotely near healed up, he’d be grabbing her by the hips, or better yet, thighs, and slamming her down onto him, pumping up to meet her, deep and wet and hard, and he’d be groaning, loud, telling her in quivering muscles and non-verbal song how much he loves this.

But he’s not, so he’s got a little bit of motion at his hips, and one hand knotted in her hair, as he’s trying to do her some good with his right hand, but getting it to the right place makes his shoulder and back ache, and eventually she grabs his wrist and presses that hand to the bed.

She’s doing herself, which he loves watching. Her fingers long and swift on her pussy as she slips, still so slow and soft, up and down on him.

He feels her body going tight on his, and he’s so close, and working so hard at not breathing deep, at keeping air moving in and out and in and out and he’s focusing on that and on her and the up down in out one two of sex and life and how it all blends and bleeds together, and she shivers all over, body twitching on him and it’s  _almost_  but not quite enough and he’s begging, flat out “Please, please, please,” begging her to move just a little faster.

And she does, still twitching on him, up down hard and fast and it only takes twice before he’s burning and pulsing all over with one of the most welcome orgasms of his life.

When he’s come back to himself enough to know what’s going on, beyond happy chemicals flooding his body and the feel of her (gingerly) against him, she’s watching him carefully.

He is breathing hard, but he’s not coughing. He gives her a lopsided smile. “So worth it.”

“You feeling okay?”

He nods, slowly. “Really, really okay. Haven’t felt this good in years.”

She doesn’t look like she buys that, but she kisses him gently, reaches for the tissues, pulls off of him and cleans them both up. Then she hands him the 02 tube, and he tucks it into place without any complaining, the extra oxygen does feel good, and maybe keeping it in place would be a good plan for next time.

It’s still not very late, but he’s wiped out. She’s in the head, finishing up her clean up, and he carefully scoots himself down onto the bed, rolling onto the side that doesn’t hurt, then, feeling experimental, tries rolling onto his stomach, which… actually feels okay.

He’s drifting close to sleep when she comes out, pads over to the bed, and lays down next to him, resting her lips on his shoulder and her knees pressed into his hips.

He reaches over enough to kiss her and says, “Thanks.”

“Thanks?”

“Yeah. For not running off.”

“I’d never…”

“Not at HQ. After. From me. Five years ago, I’d have rather shot myself in the head than do what you just did. I would have run away from it. So… Thanks.”

She kisses his shoulder. “You’re welcome.”

He nods slowly at that. “I love you.”

He feels the smile against his skin. “I know. I love you, too.” It’s the first time she’s said it, and it feels brilliant, a beautiful flush all through him.

He smiles at that and kisses her again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original structure for Shards To A Whole was a five book epic. The original plot line was Tim putting all of the bits of himself into a whole, while his family did as well. 
> 
> Splitting off of that left me with something of a quandary. Tim's major plot arc is done in this tale. Lover, Husband, Father, Boss, are all accomplished for him. As of this point he's as whole as he's going to get. But Jethro's story isn't done. 
> 
> So, for this version, Book 5 is Jethro's last bits becoming whole. The story will shift more into focusing on him. Is Tim's story going to be abandoned? No way, but the motive plot that's going to take him through Book 5 in STAW doesn't happen in this version, so more of the attention is going to focus in on Gibbs. 
> 
> Feels odd to realize that for Shards, we're getting pretty close to endgame. In story time, we're going to Christmas 2017. But updates are likely to be fewer and further apart (both in real time, and in where they take place in the story.) 
> 
> That said, we've still got Sean and Dave (?) to meet, Tony's got to get used to "his" team, Gibbs and Borin need to ride off into the sunset, and through it all Tim'll be being Tim.


	142. Variations on the Theme of Forever (II)

A bored Jethro is a dangerous Jethro. Ducky’s known this for quite a while. What he’s also known is that Jethro is rarely bored.

But right now, retired and, supposedly healing, is the perfect time for a bored Jethro to do something stupid. So, for his first day, on his own, at home, Ducky and Jethro have _plans._

Ducky’s hoping this will keep Jethro occupied for at least a day.

* * *

 

Jethro wakes up, after Abbi left for work, and, after a few false starts he got himself up, medicated, showered and dressed, and all the rest of it. It takes a lot longer than he would have liked, trying to do things with his right arm in a sling, and his side and back aching isn’t fun. But he’s damned if he’s going to let a little thing like a missing third of a lung and several inches of ribs keep him down.

He gets a bit of time playing with Mona in when he finishes breakfast. She wants to go running. He’d like to go running, too. Running isn’t going to happen. His lungs are letting him know in no uncertain terms that mosey is his top speed right now, and he better not try that for more than a hundred feet at a time. 

So, instead of a run, they play catch. He tosses the ball, and she runs after it.

He’s distressed about how playing  _fetch_  gets him out of breath, but he’s also thinking that he’s got to keep doing things like this, or he’s never going to get his wind back. So he tosses the ball again, and maybe a little harder than necessary. Mona leaps after it, running full out, bounding into the air and catching it on the fly. She’s happy as a clam to play this hard and wouldn’t mind some tug of war and wrestling, too.

Eventually, the smoothly purring engine of Ducky’s Morgan breaks the sound of happy doggy barks and small feet scrambling around on Gibbs’ back porch.

A moment after that, as Gibbs is tucking away the tennis ball, while promising Mona that he will come back, and he won’t be gone long, and she’s staring at him with the biggest, saddest puppy dog eyes in the history of puppy dog eyes, Ducky heads around to the back yard.

“I take it you’re getting some morning exercise in?”

Gibbs nods a bit, patting Mona on the head. “Lucky for her, Abbi’s willing to take her for a morning run, or she’d be going stir crazy.”

“I’d imagine.” He eyes Gibbs, wondering how stir crazy Gibbs will be by the end of a week at home “resting.”

Ducky notes that Gibbs is behaving. He’s not using his O2 tube, but he does have it nearby, along with the little back pack looking thing it lives in when Gibbs expects to go anywhere.

“You look ready to go.”

“I am.”

“Do you have your parking tag?” Ducky asks as Gibbs sits in the passenger seat.

“God, Duck…”

Ducky sends him a stern,  _I’m taking no bullshit from you Mr., and if you want to get out of this house, you will follow the Doctor’s orders,_ look.

Gibbs flashes him his  _annoyed_  look. “On the table.”

When Ducky gets back with it, hanging the handicapped tag on his mirror, Jethro glares at it. “Those spaces are supposed to be for people with real issues.”

“A third of your lung is in a bio-hazard waste dump. You have  _issues,_ Jethro.” Gibbs wants to glare at that, but, Duck’s right. And what’s worse, he’s really not up to walking more than a few hundred feet at a go and there might not be any other parking that close.

Still, he’s going to want to slap himself upside the back of the head if someone with a wheelchair can’t park close because his sad ass is having a hard time breathing.

* * *

“Ducky!” Stephen Richards, Tim’s, and now Ducky’s, jeweler looks up, very happy to see him come through his door. (Of course, as a jeweler who does custom work, men with taste, money, and women they like to buy goodies for are  _extremely_  welcome in his shop.)

“Hello, Stephen,” Ducky says warmly.

“Is this the whole family? Do I now have all three generations?”

By way of explanation, Ducky says to Gibbs, “When I was working with Stephen to design our rings,” he gently touches his own wedding ring, “he asked how I had heard of him, I mentioned Penny is Timothy’s grandmother.” Gibbs nods, as Ducky says, “Stephen Richards, Leroy Jethro Gibbs.”

“Not your son then. Penny’s?”

Gibbs shakes his head, that’s territory he doesn’t want to get into. “Tim’s dad.” That’s true enough, keeps the relationships straight, and if Stephen wonders about Gibbs and McGee, he doesn’t ask.

Stephen takes Ducky’s hand, checking his work, and nods, satisfied. “I take it your plan went smoothly?”

Ducky smiles. “It did.”

“Wonderful, and did she enjoy Istanbul?”

“Yes! It was a lovely trip.”

“Istanbul? That’s where you went?” Gibbs asks.

“That is where we began and ended our trip. We made it to several port cities on the Black Sea.”

Gibbs shakes his head at that. After more than six months of mystery on where they’d gone… None of them had guessed  _there._

“And how is Tim?”

“Flourishing!”

“Wonderful. I saw him back in the spring when he was looking for a present for Abby to celebrate Kelly’s birthday.”

“And she loved it!”   

“Splendid!” Gibbs is starting to feel uncomfortable with how excited and happy everyone is. He drifts off to go look at the rings while Ducky and Stephen gossip about everyone they know, and possibly the history of the Black Sea, along with how rings are made, and likely a few other things. He zones the gentle burr of the two of them chattering away out.

He’d been thinking about this for a few days now, trying to get a handle on what sort of ring he should get Abbi. His first flush of inspiration was something with red gold and emeralds. Red and green, like her hair and eyes.

But that was just the first flash, and those colors mean more to him than to her. How she looks is an accident, one he quite appreciates, but not who she is.

Plus, though he saw some things he liked, none of them were jumping up and down yelling, PICK ME! I’M THE RING. (He’s starting to get some sympathy for Tim taking so long to find Abby’s ring. Though he does not share Tim’s patience with shopping for months on end.)

The thing that got him off of emeralds and red gold was a pearl. White pearl, wrapped in white gold, little white diamonds around it. He likes the idea of that, but it doesn’t look sturdy. It looks like the kind of ring where one wrong move and the pearl would be last seen skittering away.

He hopes that Abbi never has to fight again, but if she does, he doesn’t want some large, bulky, fragile thing on her hand.

He also doesn’t want a men’s style class-ring type thing either. Yes, that’ll put a dent in a guy if she needs it to, but… He wants something more elegant than that.

But he likes pearls. He likes the ties between her and the water. Likes the idea of the ocean on her hand. He likes the idea of this being something that comes from something alive.

So, he’s drifting along, looking at the already made pearl rings, and they all look so fragile. He’d be afraid of holding her hand if she was wearing one of those, for fear of accidentally whacking her hand wrong and breaking the damn thing.

“What are you thinking, Jethro?” Ducky asks, popping up from nowhere, with Stephen hovering on the other side of the counter.

The other part of doing this with someone else, let alone getting it designed, means having to put, into words, what he’s thinking about for this. Which isn’t exactly something he’s loving.

“Can you cut a pearl?”

Stephen looks appalled at that. “Yes, but… Why would you want to?”

“She works with her hands. Wears gloves a lot. Can’t have this bulky stone sticking out of the ring.” Gibbs is looking at the pearl rings in front of him. “Cut it in half, set it, and it wouldn’t stick out so much.”

Stephen is doing a good job of not visibly wincing. “Perhaps a smaller pearl? When you cut them… they never quite reflect the light properly after that. Which for a low grade pearl or paste jewelry isn’t an issue, but for a ring, especially… an engagement ring?” Gibbs looks up and nods. “I would assume you’d want the main stone to be as beautiful as possible. Why are you thinking a pearl?”

“She was a Marine, works for the Coast Guard now, her life’s tied to the ocean.” Ducky looks very pleased with that answer.

“And she works with her hands, and you want something strong and sturdy and beautiful?” Stephen adds, starting to think of a suitable ring.

“Yes.”

“Colors?”

Gibbs shrugs. “I like red gold. She’s got green eyes.”

“Small hands?” Stephen asks.

“Not for a woman. She’s an inch shorter than I am.”

He nods at that, too. “Do you want an engagement ring wedding ring combination, say a piece in two parts? She gets the first part when you propose and the second part when you get married?”

Gibbs isn’t sure what Stephen’s talking about on that, so he takes a few steps and grabs one of the traditional diamond engagement rings. “This band” and he twists the ring, and the band with the diamond solitaire splits off from the band with the tiny diamonds all over it, “Is the engagement ring. This band is the wedding ring.”

This is way more complicated than it was when he did it last.

“Don’t know. Probably two rings. What are you thinking?”

“Mother of pearl…” Stephen’s sketching, fast and sloppy right now, but Gibbs can see the idea he’s working. There is a pearl, a smallish one, in the middle, and on each side of it is a band of gold with a mother of pearl inlay. It’s thick enough so the pearl doesn’t stick out, but small enough, thin enough that it doesn’t look like a class ring. Stephen leaves the sketch for a moment to go find a diamond ring. It's the same basic idea, but there's a diamond instead of a pearl, and prongs keeping it in place instead of the hovering the pearl is doing in his sketch. 

"Like this, with a pearl." 

Gibbs likes how it looks, but it’s just a pearl stuck between the bands of stone and metal. He’s not seeing anything to keep it in place. “Will it stay put in that?”

“Yes. Between the glue and the tension mounting that pearl isn’t going anywhere.”

“How do you size something like that?” Off the top of his head he doesn’t know Abbi’s ring size. That would have been good information to bring with him for something like this. He can estimate based on the memory of how her fingers feel between his, but…

“The inlay won’t go all the way around. Just down the sides, the bottom will be solid gold, platinum, titanium, whatever you pick. Otherwise the tension mounting wouldn’t work properly, either.” Stephen grabs a different ring, this one with a diamond between the band. “This part,” he touches the band, “is basically a spring. It holds the gem in place by wanting to snap shut. Add a touch of epoxy, and you’ve got a solid ring that’s never going to lose its stone.”

Gibbs sees that.

“Here…” Stephen head off, and comes back a moment later. “Don’t have too many of these. This is all the examples of mother of pearl I’ve got in stock right now.”

Gibbs looks at them, and immediately knows he’s found his wedding ring. They’re wood, beautiful, polished, burnished wood, with a mother of pearl inlay all around.

And he knows something else. The one he wears, the ring he hopes he’s buried with, and the one he’s going to put on her finger, is a ring he’s going to make.

He thinks for a second longer, about how Abbi would probably like some sort of engagement ring, and how wood does tension, too. He’s staring at the wood and mother of pearl rings in front of him. He can make one of them. Need to get a mini-lathe, and he’d certainly have to study up and practice, but that’s just a matter of time.

He can’t make the ring that’s sketched out in front of him. But he bets Abbi would like it. Really like it. And he can make a wood band that would fit into it, or around it, so that when it’s done, it’s a white pearl, held by… white gold probably, and silvery-purple-green watery mother of pearl, all cool and ocean, wrapped in some sort of golden-red, warm-living wood. It would be thick by the time it was done, but all of the girls, besides Penny, who’s just got the one ring, have two, and they take up a decent block of space on their ring fingers.

“Can you make that?” Gibbs taps the sketch.

“Of course. All we have to do is figure out what you want it made out of. Would you like to look at loose pearls?”

Gibbs nods.

 

* * *

 

Gibbs is squinting at a collection of pearls (Which all more or less look the same to him. Really, it’s time to get to the eye doctor; his glasses can’t be strong enough.) when his phone buzzes.

 _Lunch?_ From Tim.

_Sure. Duck’s with me, too._

_Cool. Swing by the house?_

_We’re not home._

_You want to come to me, or should I come to you?_

_Wrapping something up here. How about_ “What’s a good place to eat around here? Tim wants to meet us for lunch.”

“Beverly’s is two streets over. It’s a very nice little lunch spot,” Stephen says.

Gibbs nods and flashes  _Beverly’s? Forty minutes._

_I’ll see you there._

Gibbs tucks his phone back into his pocket and goes back to squinting at the pearls. That one, little guy, about the size of a small pea, is a very pretty, luminous, just barely tinged with blue sort of white.

“This one.”

Stephen picks it up, staring at it, and starts sketching some more, making little humming noises as he does it. “Go look at the rings, find one with a metal you like.”

So Gibbs does that.

* * *

 

“What has you two out here?” Tim asks as he slides into the booth next to Gibbs and across from Ducky, noticing there’s a glass of iced tea waiting for him. He takes a quick sip. “Thanks. Hot out there.” Only a few days of August left, but they’re making up for it by being as fierce as possible.

Ducky raises an eyebrow at Jethro, asking if Timothy is going to be let in on their adventure.

Gibbs is still thinking about it when Tim says, “I mean, what’s even out here…” Then his eyes narrow slightly, he sees Ducky grinning and looks at Gibbs. “Oh! You buy it premade or are you designing one?”

“Stephen asked me to tell you hello if I could do so without blowing our cover,” Ducky says.

“Well, tell him hello back when you go in to pick it up.”

“Designing,” Gibbs says, still feeling a little winded. He’s using his O2 right now. They were able to park next to Stephen’s. It’s right next to the handicapped spaces. They weren’t able to park nearly as close, even with the handicapped sticker, for Beverly’s. The resulting walk’s left him feeling a bit like a fish out of water.

He’s also feeling bad about the times he’s sent Tim into places that triggered his asthma.

Tim’s grinning at him, very pleased look on his face, and then it jolts up about a million watts. “So, wait, does this mean you’re heading to Montana to have a chat with her dad?”

Ducky seems to enjoy that idea, too. 

Gibbs does not groan at that, but right now especially, Montana might as well be on the moon. And he’s never so much as said hello to Abbi’s dad. He’s heard of him, and seen pictures, and he assumes that at some point Abbi will likely mention that she’s moving in with him, but…

“Rhgh,” is the closest approximation of the sound that comes out of Gibbs at this idea.  

Tim gently nudges Gibbs with his shoulder. Very gently. “Come on, you’ve got lots of practice at this, right?”

Gibbs glares at him.

“No? Really?” That surprises Tim.

“Not since ’79.”

“Shannon’s dad is the last time you did this?” He really can’t believe that.

Gibbs looks a bit frustrated at how surprised Tim is, but says, “Eloped with Hannah, partly because her parents didn’t like me. Her dad would have said no if I’d asked, and he would have been right. Diane and Bill weren’t talking, so I didn’t have to talk with him. Stephanie’s dad was dead, and I never met her mom.”

Tim exhales, very surprised while shaking his head. “I wouldn’t have guessed that.”

“You do seem to have more of a reputation for maintaining traditions than that, Jethro.”

Gibbs shrugs. “Not much I could have done on two of them.”

“What are you going to do with this one?” Tim asks.

Gibbs thinks about it for a moment, but unlike the twenty-year-old Lance Corporal he was once upon a time, getting ready to ask his nineteen-year-old girlfriend to marry him, he cannot make himself imagine asking her father’s permission to do so. Especially not before talking to _her_ about it. “Abbi and I are both too damn old for me to be asking permission. Especially since he’s not paying her bills or part of her everyday life. Almost feel like… some sort of slap to her.”

“But you want to do something to introduce yourself to her family and show that you’re an honorable man of good intentions.” It’s not a question as Ducky says it.

“Yeah. Something. Before I talked to Shannon’s dad, Jack said to me that it was important, part of showing you’re worth being part of his family and his daughter’s life.”

Tim and Ducky nod at that.

“At least I’d met John a few times first. Wasn’t asking him cold.”

“Not like you aren’t use to just walking up to people and talking to them,” Tim says.

Gibbs shrugs, that’s not untrue, but that’s  _Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs_  and he can’t imagine pulling that on Abbi’s dad.

“She’s moving in next weekend, maybe the next time she calls home, you could pick up the phone and say hello,” Tim adds.

Gibbs sighs at that, too. And then nods. Granted, talking on the phone to strangers is also something he’d rather have his toenails ripped out than do, but that’s probably how to do this. And by the time he’s got the ring done, he’ll have a better idea of what he wants to do with letting her family know they’re doing more than shacking up.

The waitress heads over with their lunch, which Tim is pleased to see, apparently Gibbs ordered lunch for him, too, which is fine because that means things go smoothly, less waiting around. Plus after more than a decade of stakeouts, late nights, and meals together, Jethro can reliably figure out what Tim wants off a menu.

Grilled chicken salad with spinach, strawberries, and walnuts is a fine summer lunch for him. Nice and cool.

When the waitress leaves, Tim asks, “What’s it look like? I know you’ve got a sketch on you somewhere.”

Gibbs pulls out his phone and brings up the sketch. Tim stares at it and nods slowly. “Can’t wait to see it.”

Gibbs looks proud at that.

“Can I tell? Obviously not Abbi, but…”

Gibbs thinks about that, too. “Yeah. No sniggering about it when she’s around.”

“We won’t blow your surprise.” Tim doesn’t press for a time frame for when Gibbs might be moving to the next step. Mostly because he knows how ‘custom made’ does not always mean ‘shows up the day you expect it to.’ He does happily chew the next bite of his salad, because he’s very much looking forward to being at Gibbs’ last wedding.  

 


End file.
